Nick of Time (A Bug Man Novel) Read Online Free Page A

my best man, Donovan—isn’t this part of your duties?”
    “No, it isn’t. ‘Best man’ just means I’m supposed to prop you up in church if your legs start to give out, and I have to come up with some lame toast at the reception. Oh—and I also throw your bachelor party.”
    Nick groaned. “Do I have to come to that?”
    “You’re the only bachelor I still know.”
    “Is this going to be one of those humiliating, primitive male-bonding rituals?”
    “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
    “Wonderful.”
    “Look, I need to get back to work—but I want to ask you something, and I really want you to think about this.”
    “Okay.”
    “Why are you going to Philadelphia?”
    “I told you. I have a Vidocq meeting—”
    “You’re not listening, Nick. The woman you say you love is back in Virginia, and the event that will change your life forever is taking place in just a few days . . . So why are you going to Philadelphia?”
    Nick paused. “I don’t know.”
    “Well, you need to figure it out—because Alena wants to know too.”

4
     
    PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
     
    A s the elevator doors slid closed, Nick took one last look at the imposing rotunda of the Public Ledger Building: the gleaming marble walls, the barrel-vaulted ceiling inlaid with gold, and the statue of Benjamin Franklin floating like a demigod against a panorama of dramatic clouds . . .
    Welcome to Philadelphia , he thought.
    Nick loved the old building, once home to the most popular newspaper in all of Philadelphia. He loved the entire surrounding area of Society Hill and the Center City District. This was old Philadelphia, and the place was just dripping with history. Right across the street was Congress Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated and the Bill of Rights had been ratified; Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell were just a stone’s throw away. The whole place just felt important, and Nick liked to think that what he was here to do was important too, because Nick was here to help set a man free—or to send him to prison for the rest of his life.
    Nick punched the button for the twelfth floor twice more, as if the elevator were some senile octogenarian that needed to be reminded what it had just been told to do. But he knew that nothing would speed the trip along; the aging elevator would slowly and stubbornly groan its way to the top, just as it had done since it was first installed back in 1921.
    For almost two decades now the members of the Vidocq Society had gathered on the last Tuesday of every month in the stately Downtown Club on the top floor of the Public Ledger Building in the heart of historic Philadelphia. The society had been founded by three men: an ex-FBI agent who once worked an area of Boston known as the Combat Zone; a forensic sculptor who specialized in reconstructing the faces of murder victims from only their skulls; and a criminal psychologist who had profiled some of the most infamous murderers in history.
    They were Nick’s kind of people—so when he had been extended an invitation to join the society several years ago, he jumped at the opportunity.
    In just twenty years the society had expanded to more than a hundred members from almost twenty states and eleven other countries. Each member was required to be an expert in some field of forensic science, and current members represented subdisciplines as varied as forensic hypnosis, arson investigation, and ritual murder. But despite their varying specialties, their purpose in meeting was the same: to assemble a dream team of working and retired forensic specialists who would help solve murders no one else had been able to figure out.
    For a case to be considered by Vidocq, it had to meet four strict qualifications: It had to be an unsolved case at least two years old to ensure that local authorities had made every effort to solve the case themselves; it had to be formally presented to the society by the appropriate law enforcement agency;