The Constantine Conspiracy Read Online Free

nothing, so he returned to his dad’s body and examined the desk around it. The computer screen saver flashed images of him and his dad hiking, riding mountain bikes, fishing—all the things they enjoyed together. On impulse, Rick punched the Enter key and the screen saver disappeared.
    Four letters appeared on the screen—CONS.
    What?
    He read the letters again—C-O-N-S—all caps, no punctuation at the end.
    Eyes narrowing, Rick inspected the desk and saw blood under his dad’s wounded hand but nothing else out of place. He checked the keyboard for blood but saw none. His eyes landed on the printer; a page sat in the out tray. Although he knew he should wait for the police, Rick yanked out the paper anyway and read three words.
    “i could not.” No punctuation of any kind, no caps on any of the letters.
    Even more confused, Rick studied the paper and weighed the possibilities.
    A suicide note?
    “i could not.”
    Could not what?
    He reread the letters on the screen—“CONS.”
    If his dad had printed a suicide note then why add another word and leave it on the computer? And what did “CONS” mean? And why capitalize those four letters but not the others?
    Carelessness? Or did it all mean something? A message of some kind?
    Remorse maybe? Perhaps his dad wanted to say one more thing after he left the note and injected the drugs into his body. But what and why?
    And what about the knife?
    A man didn’t pump a drug overdose into his veins, then pin his palm to a desk with a knife. The cops would realize that, wouldn’t they? But what did the knife mean?
    Rick scanned the area again but saw nothing more, so he dropped the paper with its cryptic message on the desk and squatted by his dad again.
    “What happened, Dad?” he whispered.
    Silence filled the room.
    Rick stood again and forced himself to inspect the knife still lodged in his dad’s hand. His stomach lurched, but he held back the bile and studied the weapon. A row of bead-sized rubies, partially obscured by blood seepage, lay inside a gold edging on the handle. Unable to stop himself, Rick stepped to the bed, took the slip case off the pillow, then moved back to the knife and gently wiped the handle.
    The rubies emerged more clearly and Rick shuddered against what he saw. Although not at all religious, he still recognized the pattern and it sent an icy finger down his spine.
    The rubies were arranged in two rows—one vertical, one horizontal; the vertical longer than the horizontal.
    Rick buried his head in his hands. An assassin had murdered his dad and left behind a knife decorated with rubies shaped in the form of a cross.

3
    Detroit
    A light rain fell as Bobby Stiller parked the pickup truck provided by his employer, slid a black vest over his thin chest, covered it with a Dallas Cowboy jacket, and climbed out of his vehicle. Under the jacket, needle marks tracked Bobby’s arms like somebody had walked up and down his forearms in steel-spiked golf shoes. His hair—long, oily, and brown—fell onto his collar, and his eyes showed an oily mix of red, yellow, and brown sloshed in together.
    Bobby didn’t particularly want to finish what he’d started out to do this morning, but he didn’t see much way to escape it. A heroin habit that had cost him his job, driven off his wife and three-year-old daughter, and bitten him with a case of terminal AIDS tended to steal most of a man’s options. He turned a corner and saw his destination about a block away, so he stopped, pulled a whiskey bottle from the pocket of his jeans, uncapped it, and took a long swig of liquid courage. Putting the bottle away, he hefted his vest and told himself to breathe easy. Within an hour it would all end.
    Thoughts of his wife and daughter filled his head and Bobby almost smiled. Other than catching the winning touch-down pass for the Thompson High Eagles his senior year when they won the 2-A state championship, marrying Tina and fathering Lisa gave him the only other