The 7th Canon Read Online Free Page B

as if to kiss him. “Tae kwon do is taught up here,” she whispered, gently touching his temple. “It has nothing to do with this.” Her hand beneath the covers grabbed his groin.
    “Ow. Hey, OK, OK, I’m sorry.”
    She laughed. “Two can play at that game, Mr. Donley.”
    He rolled on top of her, pinning her arms. “I tease you only because it makes you horny.”
    “It does not.”
    She halfheartedly struggled but was physically no match for him. At six feet two inches and 215 pounds, he outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds. He kissed her.
    The telephone rang.
    Kim groaned.
    “Let it ring.” He ran his fingers along the curves of her body.
    “It could be the hospital,” she said.
    “You’re not on call tonight.”
    “It could still be the hospital.” She reached for the phone, but he grabbed her arm.
    “Not tonight,” he said.

Chapter 4
    They treated him as if he were something to be placed in a plastic evidence bag, zipped closed and tagged. Father Martin sat in a folding chair, the events continuing to swirl around him, the pain and nausea causing the room to tilt and whirl, everything black and gray.
    Uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, and crime-scene technicians came and went, stepping around yellow sticky notes marking the drops of blood on the floor. They took photographs, dusted for fingerprints, and drew sketches. A doctor from the medical examiner’s office and his assistants attended to Andrew Bennet’s body. Static echoed from radios, and flashes of red, white, and blue lit up the windows from the lights atop the patrol cars parked in the street.
    Father Martin cradled his arm, now immobilized in a splint and elastic wrap but still painful. His wrist had swollen to the size of a lemon, and he remained so light-headed, he thought he might lift from the chair. He pressed the soles of his sandals to the floor, desperately trying to keep the room from spinning.
    The African-American detective who had introduced himself as John Begley held out a pack of cigarettes, but Father Martin declined. Begley returned the pack to his jacket pocket and started again with his questions.
    “Did you know this boy?”
    “Not really, no.”
    “He’s never come to the shelter before?”
    “No. Tonight was the first time.” Andrew Bennet’s body remained in the manger, a pool of blood beneath the straw.
    “And you say he left?”
    “Yes.”
    “But you don’t know when.”
    “No.” His head pounded.
    “Your procedure is to lock the front door at ten, but tonight you didn’t do so. Why not?”
    “I didn’t get around to it.”
    “What were you doing?”
    “Stalling, hoping for one more.” The cracks in his hands looked like red rivers from the dried blood. He’d pulled Andrew Bennet to him, clutching the boy, disbelieving. His white T-shirt had become a rose-colored mix of blood and perspiration.
    “Why did you come into this room?”
    Father Martin’s stomach gripped, then lurched. “I think I’m going to be—”
    He bent forward and threw up his dinner, splattering the detective’s black wingtip shoes.
    After the dry heaves and waves of nausea had passed, Father Martin sat up, fighting to catch his breath. He watched Detective Dixon Connor duck beneath the police tape strung across the doorway. Stocky, with a square jaw and well-trimmed crew cut, Connor strode toward them looking like he’d walked off a Marine Corps recruiting poster. Father Martin had crossed paths with Dixon Connor more than once. On the most recent occasion, Connor had come to the shelter looking for a particular boy. When Father Martin refused to provide him any information, Connor accused him of harboring prostitutes and drug dealers and threatened to shut him down. Father Martin told Connor he could arrest the boys from now to eternity, and each time they’d be back on the streets before Connor finished the paperwork. He was offering an alternative.
    Connor didn’t see it that way.
    Connor spun a