Lippman, Laura Read Online Free

The family had been rich and connected, with enough resources to drive the department crazy. When told that the things they wanted—searches, long-shot lab work—would have taken much of the department’s budget for the year, they shrugged and said “So?” It was three years before the body showed up, not even ten yards off a state highway on the upper shore, discovered by a shy-bladder type who had walked into the weeds to take a piss. Blunt-force trauma, the medical examiner concluded, so it was a murder, all right. But there was nothing more to be gleaned from the body or the scene, and the husband, who had been the primary suspect since the start, was dead by then. The only lingering question in Infante’s mind was if the fatal blow had been an accident, another Saturday-night fight in a house that had seen no shortage of such battles, or if there had been more intent to it. He’d spent a lot of time with the husband before cancer of the esophagus got him. The husband even came to believe that Infante came around out of friendship or kindness. He put on a good show of grief over his missing wife, and Infante decided that the guy saw himself as the victim. In his mind all he’d done was give her a push, a shove, no harder than any of the other pushes and shoves he’d meted out over the years, only this time she didn’t get back up. So hubby picked her up, dumped her in the woods, and spent the rest of his days believing himself innocent. You’d think the wife’s family would have been content that he died, fast and ugly at that, but it wasn’t enough for them. For some people, it was never enough.
    Infante stepped out of the shower. Theoretically, he was only thirty minutes late. But he was almost sick from hunger; and drive-through didn’t do it for him. He went to the Bel-Loc Diner, where the waitresses fussed over him, made sure he got his steak-and-eggs exactly the way he liked them, the yolks just this side of runny. He pressed the tines of his fork into them, letting the juice flow over the steak, and wondered once again:
What the fuck did I do to piss off Debbie
?
     
     
    “WE GOT A babbling brook of a lunatic at St. Agnes Hospital, saying she knows about an old murder,” his sergeant, Lenhardt, said to him. “Go.”
    “I’m on the McGowan case. In fact, I had to catch someone this morning, before he left for work. That’s why I was late.”
    “I gotta send somebody to talk to her. Late boy is the lucky boy.”
    “I told you I was—”
    “Yeah. I know what you
told
me. Still no reason to miss roll call, asshole.”
    Lenhardt had partnered with Infante last year, when the department had been shorthanded, and he seemed to be more of a hard-ass since he returned to his sergeant’s duties full-time, as if Infante needed to be reminded who was in charge.
    “What’s the point? You said she’s mental.”
    “Mental or making shit up to deflect attention from the fact that she left the scene of a bad accident.”
    “Do we even know what case she’s promising to solve for us?”
    “She was muttering something about Bethany last night.”
    “Bethany Beach? It’s not even in the state, much less the county.”
    “The Bethany sisters, funny guy. An old missing-persons case.”
    “And you’re betting she’s a wack job.”
    “Yep.”
    “You’re making me waste half my day—St. Agnes is about as far from here as you can get and still be in Baltimore County—to go talk to her?”
    “Yep.”
    Infante turned to go, irritated and angry. Okay, he deserved to have his balls busted a little, but Lenhardt couldn’t
know
that for sure, so it was unjust.
    The sergeant called after him, “Hey, Kev?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You know that old expression, egg on your face? I always thought of it as metaphorical, but you reminded me this morning that it can still be literal. You been out talking to people all morning, and no one mentioned that yellow smear on your face?”
    Infante’s hand flicked up,