Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller Read Online Free Page B

assumption?”
    Sitka swallowed hard and said, “Yes.”
    “What is it that you aren’t telling me?”
    “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
    “Why don’t you tell me anyway. I’ve heard some crazy stories over the years that turned out to be true. I try to come into this kind of thing with an open mind. So try me.”
    “It’s ridiculous really. Impossible , actually. That’s why I didn’t bother telling anyone about it. I can hardly believe it myself.”
    “The man at the door. You recognized him, didn’t you?”
    Sitka bit his lower lip and nodded.
    “Who was the man that assaulted you?”
    Fear crept back into Sitka’s eyes. “You won’t believe me.”
    “If you aren’t honest with me, I can’t help you. Now, who was the man at the door that assaulted you?”
    “It was me,” Howard Sitka said. “When I opened the door, the man standing on the other side of it was me .”

    “Pillar of the community or not,” Defries said as Alan exited the interrogation room, “the guy’s gone batshit crazy. That blow to the head must’ve knocked him silly.”
    Deputy Defries might not have been wet behind the ears, but he hadn’t spent as much time as Alan or Detective Pete Weathers had when it came to studying the smaller nuances of human behavior.
    Weathers was shrewd, Alan had to give him that, and it wasn’t lost on him that Weathers was studying him now.
    “You don’t think so, do you?” Weathers asked.
    “What’s that?”
    “That he’s crazy.”
    “What was your impression of Sitka when you were interviewing him?”
    Weathers shrugged. “I saw a guy that believes he’s telling the truth. Of course, he didn’t go all Twilight Zone on me about being clubbed by a carbon copy of himself either. But I didn’t catch any overt signs of deception. You and I both know that the truth comes in many shades.”
    “Not for me,” Alan said. “I see it all in black and white.”
    “That makes you fortunate. Just because he could pass a polygraph doesn’t mean he’s speaking the gospel truth.”
    “Is the D.A. bringing charges?”
    “Hell yes. Sitka’s respected in the community, so they’ll have him in front of a judge first thing tomorrow morning. Set bail. That could go either way. Personally, I don’t think the guy’s a flight risk, but he’s got enough money in the bank, he could hightail it out of Dodge if he wanted to. Given his stature, he’s probably part of the Good Old Boy’s Club, if you know what I mean. Wouldn’t surprise me if they release him on his own recognizance.”
    Alan didn’t like to see an innocent man take the rap for something he didn’t do. His radar, his sixth sense or whatever you wanted to call it, was rarely wrong. Given the evidence, and depending on whether the D.A. was the overzealous type, they weren’t going to let Sitka walk. Not based solely on Alan’s intuition that the man was innocent.
    “Anything else we can do for you, Agent Lamb?”
    “I’ll need to speak with the wife. And employees of the bank.”
    “I’ll get you Nancy Sitka’s address. My suggestion, and you can take it or leave it, would be for you to interview her at home. Not much reason to haul her down to the station. I’ve already interviewed everyone that was on duty that day at the bank. Not a one of them believes Sitka would do something like that. If you ask me, it’s what I would call complex stupidity.”
    “Complex stupidity?”
    “Yeah, when a criminal tries so hard to be clever that they end up making the dumbest mistakes.”
    “I like that. ‘Complex stupidity.’”
    Weathers handed Alan his card. “Keep in touch, yeah?”
    “I’ll do that.”

    Alan phoned Nancy Sitka shortly after leaving the Richmond County Sheriff’s Department. He told her that he realized it was getting late, but asked if there was any way she would be willing to speak with him. Understandably, she was badly shaken in light of recent events, but she reluctantly agreed to see him.
    He