Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun Read Online Free Page A

Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun
Pages:
Go to
socks,
shirts, and four pair of Ferragamo flats into a suitcase. I'd already packed
Elmo's dog food, dishes, leash, his Flagyl for colitis, Benadryl for allergies,
Butazolidin for leg pain, and Ascriptin for arthritis. Elmo was proof positive
that anyone who lived with me would ultimately end up on drugs.
    I
stood in front of the full-length mirror viewing my five foot seven inch frame
and sucked in my stomach. The unflattering light seemed to highlight the laugh
lines around what were, even I had to admit, not-bad green eyes. I brushed my
punked auburn hair straight up. When gravity takes the body south, brush
everything north.
    I made
the rounds, checking doors and windows and setting the security alarm system.
Fully barricaded, I turned on the ten o'clock news. After the sixth murder
story, I punched the Off button on the remote control and lay still in the
dark.
    This
was when I missed living with someone, this time just before sleep when I
wanted to discuss what had happened during the day and what would happen
tomorrow. Sort of a nocturnal debriefing in the spoon position. That moment in
the night when fears and frailties take over was the reason God created
coupling. It was why the passengers on Noah's Ark didn't proceed up the plank
single file. God didn't create couples merely for procreation, because mankind
can too easily circumvent the Divine plan with petri dishes and test tubes. God
created couples for that moment between "news and snooze," that
moment when there is comfort in an icy bottom up against a warm belly and the sounds
of rhythmic breathing in the night. Elmo must have sensed my sadness at being
alone because he curled up in the small of my back, and we both went to sleep.
    An
hour later I awakened to one long ring of the fax startling my heart nearly out
of my chest. Too tired to even turn on the light, I stumbled into the office,
where the machine was printing out its message. The metallic chunk-a-chunk of
the fax paper spewing out made an eerie sound in the quiet room as the machine
printed out the message, Open your front door.
    I
froze. There was something about an anonymous fax that was more terrifying than
a burglar. This stalker could slide into my home at any time of the day or
night on optic fibers, threaten me, and then hide in a tangle of technology. I
looked at the fax again. The remainder of the page was blank, the return fax
number obliterated.
    I
pressed my back against the cool stucco of the living-room wall and tilted a
wooden slat on the bay window shutters just enough to catch a glimpse of the
porch steps. No one was standing there. Lowering the shutter again, I tried to
get control of my nerves. I fumbled around on the desk for Detective Curtis's
card and quickly dialed the number he'd left me. It rang ten times and no one
answered. There was always the option of dialing 911, but how could a fax
telling me to open my door be construed as an emergency, even by me?
    Oh,
hell, I'll have to open my door sometime, I thought. If not now, then in the morning. Is there a bomb, a note,
a package I can't see from here?
    "Well,
shit!" I whispered to Elmo.
    Slipping
open my desk drawer, I pulled out my loaded .38 and peered through the slats
one more time. Total serenity outside. Forcing myself to move to the front
door, I took a deep breath, then pressed down on the latch suddenly and kicked
the door open with the sole of my foot, hearing it reverberate against the wall
of the house. Elmo launched himself from behind me, through the front door and
into the courtyard, baying wildly.
    As
the door swung toward me, something flung itself at me from overhead, batting
against my face. I jumped back and screamed as two large, dead rats dangling
from cords dripped blood onto my doorstep. My scream got Elmo's attention. The
sight of the rats swaying in the doorway sent him into another round of barks.
He stood still, staring at the grotesquely dead animals. I flipped on all the
floodlights around the
Go to

Readers choose

Katherine Holubitsky

Franz Kafka

Charles Stross

David Lee Malone

Tara Hudson

T. C. Boyle

Paul Christopher

Ella Grace

Sibylla Matilde

Nikki Carter