Jackpot (Frank Renzi mystery series) Read Online Free Page B

grief-stricken son of a dead lottery winner.
    “Her necklace is missing.”
    Instantly alert, Frank picked up his pen and jotted a note. Last year his boss had sent him to the FBI Academy to take a course on serial killers. The behavioral analysis instructor said serial killers often took trophies, a souvenir they used to relive their crimes later. The most depraved killers took body parts. Some took underwear, panties or bras. Others took jewelry.
    “You’re sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure. It was a birthday gift. She wore it when we went out for dinner. I took her picture.”
    “A picture? Great! Can you send it to me?”
    George agreed to Fed-Ex the photo, and Frank promised to call if he had any news.
    Sickened by the brutal murders, he rubbed his eyes. Ross Dunn, the FBI agent he’d met at Quantico, had asked him to act as liaison on the case. Three murders in Vermont, Connecticut and, most recently, a town west of Boston. Three Caucasian females, the youngest fifty-nine, the oldest sixty-seven. Two were widows, one had never married, all lived alone.
    The telling detail: before the murders all three had collected lottery prizes ranging from one million to six million dollars. In each case, cash and credit cards were readily accessible but not stolen. George’s mother was the first. A sixty-three-year-old widow, Lillian Bernard had lived in Vermont. George, her only son, lived in California.
    He opened his desk drawer and took out a pack of Merit Lights. Five months ago he'd pretty much quit smoking, but George had gotten to him, his voice shaking with grief and outrage. Frank didn’t blame him. His own mother had died three months ago, and he was dealing with his own grief.
    George’s kids missed their grandmother. His daughter Maureen was in college, but she missed her grandmother, too. He clenched his jaw, recalling the final days when he visited his mother, a shadow of her vibrant self, wasted by the cancer that ravaged her. He missed her, missed confiding in her, telling her things he would never reveal to his father. Or his wife.
    He left his office and rode the elevator downstairs. The District 4 lobby was noisy: police-radio chatter and the belligerent voice of a man mouthing off at the officer who’d collared him. Later it would be worse. District 4 covered the South End, Back Bay and the Fenway, a wide area with a dozen colleges and 27,000 residents. And after dark the thugs came out to play.
    He went outside and lit up, his first cigarette in two weeks. The first drag gave him a head rush. Clouds hung low in the dusky sky. He hunched his shoulders against the chilly wind, listened to horns honking, drivers jockeying for position in rush-hour traffic. In the distance, a siren squawked, the distinctive whoop of an ambulance headed for Boston City Hospital a few blocks away.
    He should call Evelyn and tell her he’d be late, but he didn’t feel like it. He didn’t want to go home. His marriage had been on life-support for years, held together by his daughter. Now it was dead, a dry husk with the juice sucked out of it. A pang of regret hit him. Eighteen years ago he couldn’t wait to go home and play with his daughter.
    Now when he pulled into his driveway, he felt only dread, the essential question being: How would he get through another night with Evelyn?
    When he really wanted to be with Gina.
    Was she home, he wondered, or still at work? He decided to call her, but when he took out his cell, it began to ring. He punched on. “Renzi.”
    “Frank, you home?” The distinctive bass voice of Lieutenant Harrison Flynn, his supervisor.
    “No, outside the D-4, getting some fresh air.” I’m in no hurry to go home these days.
    “I just got a call from the State Police. We got another dead lottery winner down on Cape Cod.”
    “Damn! I just got off the phone with the first victim’s son. Where was this one?”
    “Chatham. Postman rang her bell around noon, got no response and called