Death's Shadow Read Online Free Page B

in a fight, was attacked, had fled town?
    No , Ruth thought, he would have come home, no matter what . Her Pasquale always came home. She kept thinking back to the night before, the last time he had been in the house. Ruth had heard Pat leave to go see Charlisa. She had wanted to stop him. But Flavio had recently given her a hard time about being so protective of their son. “Don’t phone him all the time; he’s a man,” he had said.
    When Ruth asked Pat about the argument she had had with Flavio, however, he said, “Don’t ever stop bugging me, Ma; it just shows you love me.”
    That night, when he had just left for Charlisa’s, Ruth had had a mind to call him on his cell: “It’s too late, Pasqua, tomorrow’s Father’s Day — come on back; we’ll have some coffee, talk a bit.” Ruth knew if she had called that he would have come back. No question about it. How many times had he cancelled dates in the past if she needed him? Many times. But no, she had not called him. Why? Why hadn’t she just called him once more, kept him home where he belonged?
    Just after 5:00 p.m. Monday, Don Forgan and Dave Place pulled in in front of the Del Sordo home, the house the family had renovated. Pat himself had helped screw down every new floor. Just 15 hours earlier, Dave Place had stood in Sue Ross’s kitchen to pass along the news of Charlisa’s death. And now he was doing it again. Place dreaded such notifications, personally bearing the worst news in a family’s life, a dark moment of the soul they would never forget.
    The detectives were invited inside. They told the Del Sordos one of the victims in the apartment on King Street East was Pat. Some sat in silence. Pat’s brother Anthony punched a pane of glass in the china cabinet, slicing a tendon in his hand. The family wrapped it and rushed him to hospital. Ruth just sat there, absorbing the news, her heart shattered. My boy is gone , she thought. My music man . My Pasquale .
    Pat’s cell phone was recovered from the apartment. Detectives monitored it, waiting to see if anyone called in the days that followed. There was one person who dialed the number several times. It was Ruth. She yearned to hear his voice on the recording, the one that said without fail, “Hello, this is The Pasqua — if you got something hot or interesting to say, just leave a message after the beep. Ciao.”
    Ruth focused her energy on the investigation, her sorrow competing with puzzlement and anger. Her boy was gentle, full of fun. Who could want to harm him? Moreover, she could not fathom it — he was a large man, with big arms and shoulders, muscled from weight lifting and building houses; a gentle giant but so strong he could kill a man with a punch. Who could possibly have done this to him, she wondered? Surely not just one man.

— 5 —
    Cold Blooded
    After it had all gone down, Carl crashed at a friend’s apartment. In the morning he rose, stood on the balcony high in the sky, thought about what he had done, what he had seen and heard. Jump? Should he? The thought crossed his mind, and not for the first time. Except Carl had issues with suicide. Not that he considered himself religious, but, still, he wondered: What if it was true that you burned in hell for it? On the other hand, what if, when you die, everything was just black? That would be good; he would choose suicide if that were the case.
    Mostly, he wondered if he had cleaned up enough back at the apartment. So much blood. After it was over, he had hopped off the low-rise balcony of the apartment on King East to escape. But then he had returned, scaled the wall again, through the open balcony door, and wiped down everything: walls, light switches. What had he touched? Anything that would stick? He hopped off the balcony again, threw one of his shoes in a dumpster, another in a second dumpster. Then he returned to the apartment a final time, remembering he had handled a wallet in there. Grabbed the wallet, a set of car