Where There's a Will Read Online Free PDF Page A

white-sand beaches.
    Felix was a robust man given to loud speech and expansive gestures. His reaction to reading the print-out of Inge’s e-mail (he didn’t like reading computer screens; all of his e-mail was automatically printed out) was to utter a not-so-muffled oath and to fling the sheet of paper ceilingward. Or rather skyward, inasmuch as he was sitting on the balcony of his condo. A man of quick reactions despite his size, he managed to jump to his feet and snatch it out of the air before it drifted over the edge and got away. Then he sat down again with the end-of-a-good-day’s-work double martini he had mixed for himself and reread it, his open, cheerful face slowly darkening.
    Inge was wrong about its being no big deal. It could turn into a very big deal indeed, with outcomes that none of them would care to see. The important thing was going to be to keep the police out of it. And that might not be so easy, inasmuch as they were already aware the plane had been found. But the more he thought about it (and the more of the martini he drank), the more it seemed to him that there might not be so much to worry about after all. Really, why should the police want to get involved again? So the plane had been found. So there were human remains in it. What did that prove? What unanswered questions did it raise?
    No, if they handled this calmly and rationally and made sure they were all on the same wavelength, there would be no problem. He went to the railing, taking in his vast domain of sea, sand, and hotel, thoughtfully swirling the ice in his glass. Almost directly below him, adjacent to Kuhio Beach Park, was the Waikiki Division of the Honolulu Police Department, which shot another little jolt of worry through him. Not about HPD itself-they had nothing to do with it-but about John Lau, who had worked in that very building before he’d hired on with the FBI. The idea of having an FBI agent and ex-cop hanging around at this particular time, even an old friend of the family’s like John, was a little nervous-making. And that friend he was bringing-Gideon Something? Oliver Something? Wasn’t he some kind of forensic expert, too?
    He shook his head slowly back and forth. They were going to have to watch their step, all right.
    Oh boy.

THREE
    “Billie? Hi, it’s Norma. Guess where I am right this minute. I’m sitting on the plane in Honolulu. Yes, I am…”
    What was this irresistible impulse, Gideon mused, sitting six or seven rows in front of the speaker, that compelled people to flip open their cell phones the second they got on a plane or train, and inform someone, somewhere, that they had just gotten on a plane or train? And what was it that then turned ordinary, perfectly-normal-voiced men and women into people who could be heard-who couldn’t be ignored-from six or seven rows away?
    Ah, well, these were mysteries best left for another day. Right now, he didn’t intend to let anything bother him during the brief flight to the Big Island. He was relaxed, even a bit sleepy, he was looking forward to the next few days, and he was, frankly, a little hung over-enough to want to do nothing but vegetate for the next forty-five minutes, looking down on blue water and lush green islands, and maybe catching a doze or two.
    At a large-boned, well-put-together 6’1” he was cramped in the window seat, but he was used to that, and in a flight this short it wasn’t going to bother him. It’d be nice, though, if the aisle seat beside him remained empty. Now there was another mystery for you: Why did the seat next to you so often remain appealingly vacant until the last minute, so that you got your hopes up, only to have a sweating, panting 250-pounder come jogging down the aisle just as the door closed and the jet-way swung aside? He sighed. How the gods loved to toy with our emotions.
    Gideon Paul Oliver, Professor of Physical Anthropology at the University of Washington’s Port Angeles campus, was, in general,