The Devil in Gray Read Online Free

on the floor in the nursery, but it only has a two-inch blade, and although it does have a few drops of blood on it it obviously wasn’t the murder weapon.”
    â€œKitchen knives?”
    â€œAll of them clean except a small cook’s knife used for cutting a chicken sandwich.”
    Decker said, “Hicks—we need to do another search and we need to do it now. I want this whole house taken apart. Look outside in the yard. Take up the floorboards. Look in the toilet cisterns and the water tanks. For Christ’s sake, a weapon that size—it has to be somewhere.”
    Hicks raised his eyebrows at Cab in a mute appeal, but Cab nodded his assent. “Let’s just find this sucker, shall we?”
    While Hicks called in five uniformed officers for another search, Decker and Cab stepped outside the front door, onto the porch. It was stiflingly hot out there, but at least it didn’t reek of blood. One or two reporters shouted at Cab for a statement, but he waved his hand and shouted back, “Five minutes! Okay? Give me five minutes!”
    He dragged out a large white handkerchief and loudly blew his nose. “Goddamned allergy. It’s the myrtle. I’m a martyr to myrtle.”
    Decker said, “Maitland was frisked, I hope? I mean he couldn’t have smuggled the weapon out of the house down the leg of his pants or anything?”
    â€œNot a chance. Wekelo subjected him to a full body search before the paramedics carried him out of the house.”
    Decker brushed back his breeze-blown pompadour. “I don’t know … I’m beginning to smell something wrong with this already.”
    â€œSo we haven’t located the murder weapon. We probably will, but even if we don’t we can still get a conviction. Who else could have done it?”
    â€œYou’re probably right. But it kind of reminds me of the Behrens case. Like, Jim Behrens obviously garroted his entire family, but there was no apparent motive, and we never found the garrote, and Behrens claimed that some invisible force had come into his house and done it. The whole thing was so goddamned far out that the jury wouldn’t convict.” He put on his black-lense Police sunglasses. “Juries watch too much X-Files .”
    Cab sneezed and blew his nose again.
    â€œI bet you’ll shake that off, once you’re out on the lake,” Decker reassured him.
    Cab frowned at him. “What are you talking about, lake?”
    â€œYou’re going fishing this weekend, aren’t you?”
    â€œWho told you that?”
    â€œEr— you told me.”
    â€œ When did I tell you?”
    â€œI don’t know … couple of days ago.”
    â€œI only decided last night.”
    â€œWell, you must’ve mentioned that you were thinking about it, that’s all.”
    Cab narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I’m going fishing with Bill and Alfredick, if you must know, out to the Falling Creek reservoir.”
    â€œThat’s great, Cab. You deserve a break.”
    â€œYou think so?” Then—even more suspiciously, “Since when did you give a fuck?”
    Decker was tempted to say, “Every time you’re on duty,” but all he did was shrug and say, “I care about my fellow officers, Cab.”
    Cab still looked unimpressed, and blew his nose again.

CHAPTER THREE
    Decker went back to headquarters. The first thing he wanted to do was listen to Alison Maitland’s 911 call. Down in the basement, Jimmy Freedman, their sound technician, played it back for him, his chair tilted back, chewing gum and sniffing and tappety-tapping his pencil against the recording console.
    â€œThere’s definitely a fault on the line, Sergeant, but it’s not like any regular fault. The regular faults are usually opens, which give you white noise, or shorts, which gives you, like, static, or else you get intermittents, which are usually caused by earth