A Perfect Grave Read Online Free Page B

bar, Jason noticed that the other had a patch over his eye.
    Farther back, under the glow of lowered white lights, there was a pool table and a game in progress between a gap-toothed woman whose T-shirt strained the words DON’T TALK TO ME across her chest, and a tall slender man, whose arms were sleeved in tattoos. Beyond the game, six high-back booths lined the walls. All were empty except the one where Jason’s father was sitting.
    Alone, except for a glass filled with beer on the table before him.
    It appeared untouched.
    Henry Wade looked up from it to his son, who stood before him.
    “You drink anything tonight, Dad?”
    His old man shook his head.
    Encouraged, Jason sat across from him in the booth, nodding to the white rag wrapped around his father’s right hand.
    “What happened?”
    “Changing the blade in my utility knife to replace a bathroom tile.”
    “This is why you had the bar call me? Dad, I’m working now.”
    His father rubbed his temples as if to soothe something far more disturbing than a household mishap.
    “Jay, you have to help me, son, I don’t know what to do here.”
    Jason squirmed in his seat, then held up his finger.
    “Hang on, it’s my phone. I gotta take this.” Jason fished through the front pocket of his jeans. “Dad, whatever you’ve got going on, I want you to go home just as soon as I—Wade— Seattle Mirror. ”
    “Yeah, Wade—it’s Grimshaw at the East Precinct. Got your damn messages.”
    “What’s up near Yesler?”
    “Report of a homicide.”
    “A homicide? Anything to it?”
    “Something about a nun.”
    “A nun? Can you give me an address?”
    “Let me see.” Jason heard keyboard keys clicking, then the cop recited the location and Jason wrote it down in his notebook.
    “Anybody else in the media calling you on this?”
    “Not yet. We’re just getting people out there.”
    “Thanks,” Jason hung up. “Dad, I have to go, now. It was good that you called me and didn’t drink. Now, I’m getting you home. We’ll talk later. I have to go.”

Chapter Five
    J ason got his old man into a cab and sent him home.
    It was good that he’d called, good that he didn’t drink and that he was trying to open up, but they’d have to talk later. Jason had his hands full with a story.
    He laid rubber pulling his Falcon from the Ice House Bar and the neighborhood rushed by with his fears. Man, everything was at stake because after his dad and his job at the Mirror , what did he have in his life?
    Seriously.
    He had squat.
    After things had ended with Valerie, he’d started up with Grace Garner and it was going great. Until she broke it off, saying that their jobs complicated things. That was a head-shaker. He thought they’d connected. He thought they had something real happening until— wham —she breaks it off.
    He didn’t get it.
    Then he’d heard she was with some FBI guy. That was months ago. Jason hadn’t seen her since and, if fate was kind, he wouldn’t see her tonight. Picking through his CDs he played a live cut of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” from the BBC Sessions , letting its ferocity pound Grace out of his mind as he upshifted to the murder.
    A nun.
    Everyone would be all over this one. He had to get on top of it, had to concentrate on the story.
    As he drove, he alerted the night news assistant to wake up the on-duty night photographer and get him to the scene. Then he tried in vain to reach the East Precinct sergeant for any new info, while gleaning whatever he could from his portable scanner. But he wasn’t hearing much. Wheeling through the fringes of Yesler Terrace, he glanced up at the glittering condos of First Hill, soaring over the public housing projects.
    This was not the crime scene.
    He went farther, coming upon a tangle of marked cars, radios crackling, emergency lights washing a group of well-kept town houses in red.
    Blood red.
    Yellow crime-scene tape protected the yard of one of them. The place of death. People