Scar Tissue Read Online Free Page A

town like Reddington?” He turned to Sprague. “Ed, do you know this scoundrel?”
    The chief shook his head and held out his hand to me. “Ed Sprague,” he said. “You’re waiting to see me, right?”
    I shook his hand. “Right. And don’t worry. I’m not all that slick.”
    â€œThat tragedy over on River Road, huh?”

    I nodded.
    He shook his head. “Two wonderful young people. Just a shame.” He turned to Nash. “We should probably talk some more, huh, Mr. Nash?”
    â€œYes,” said Nash. “I’ll call you.” He clapped my shoulder. “Brady, good to see you again. It’s been too long. How’s about I buy you a drink sometime.”
    â€œWhy not?” I said. “I rarely pass up a free drink.”
    After Nash left, Sprague turned to me and said, “Let’s go to my office.” He waved toward the coffee urn. “Coffee?”
    I shook my head. “Tried it.”
    He smiled. “Yeah. Sorry.”
    I followed him down the short corridor. Along the right wall were several closed doors. One was labeled MEN and one WOMEN. The others had small square windows of glass sandwiched around wire mesh. Conference rooms, I guessed. Or interrogation rooms, if they ever actually hauled in criminal suspects worth interrogating in sleepy little Reddington.
    On the left was a big open room, the cops’ bullpen. I guessed it had been a couple of parlors in the original Victorian layout, but now the wall separating them had been removed. There were six or eight metal-topped desks piled with manila folders, in- and out-boxes, computers and telephones, and the walls were lined with gray chest-high steel file cabinets and copiers and fax machines and wastebaskets. Officer McCaffrey, the big redheaded cop, was sitting at one of the desks. He was hunched forward with his elbows on his desktop and his chin in his hands, staring at his computer monitor.
    Sprague had the end office, which was in the back corner of the building. It might once have been a downstairs bedroom. Waist-high maple wainscoting was topped with a mural-like wallpaper depicting a Revolutionary War scene. Tall double-wide windows on two walls looked out over the Reddington village green, and a big square oak desk sat in the corner between them. One inside wall was dominated by a fieldstone fireplace, which was set with birch logs waiting to be fired up.
    â€œNice office,” I said.
    Sprague shrugged. “I practically live here. Might as well try to make it homey.”
    Above the mantelpiece hung a print of pintail ducks bursting into panicky flight from a salt marsh on a wintry dawn. I jerked my head at it. “Do you hunt?” I said.
    He smiled and shook his head. “I like birds.”
    The fireplace was flanked by built-in bookcases. They held worn leather-bound volumes—Dickens and Trollope, Hawthorne and Melville, Whitman and Eliot, Plato and Aristotle, Dante and Machiavelli, Cicero and Aquinas, Darwin and Adam Smith.
    I slid out his copy of Moby Dick and thumbed through it. “I’ve been trying to read this for years,” I said.
    â€œI plowed through it in college,” he said. “Took me an entire weekend. It was hard going. I keep thinking I should try it again, see if I can figure out what all the fuss is about.”
    A dozen or so framed photos hung on another wall. They all showed Ed Sprague shaking hands with somebody. I recognized Bill Weld, Ted Kennedy, Rick Pitino, Nomar Garciaparra.
    If it weren’t for the photos, I could’ve been in the office of a college professor.
    The floor was covered with the same industrial-beige wall-to-wall carpeting as the corridor outside. Along one wall stood a faded upholstered sofa. Facing the desk were two wooden armchairs. Sprague waved at them, and we each took one.
    He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and said, “So you know our DA, huh?”
    I