Until Judgment Day Read Online Free

tell us what happened?” Mackay asked.
    â€œEveryone was inside at the raffle.”
    â€œAnyone hear a shot?”
    He shook his head. “Apparently it was a pretty boisterous crowd. They were raffling off some expensive prizes.”
    â€œSo, we don’t know what time the reverend was murdered?”
    â€œHe delivered the ten-fifteen mass. Sometime between when it ended at eleven-twenty and noon, a parishioner went to the rectory to get Thompson for the grand-prize drawing and found his body. We’ve got more people to interview, but I doubt they’ll be able to add much.”
    When Mackay walked out, the bright sun blinded her, and she didn’t see Sheriff Granz climbing out of his unmarked car. He called to her and waved.
    When her eyes adjusted, she smiled and waved back.
    He kissed her. “How long’ve you been here?”
    â€œAbout ten minutes. I got paged out of noon mass and dropped Emma off at Ruth’s on the way here.” Ruth was a friend who’d been her daughter’s sitter for years. Mackay hesitated, then said, “Emma and I missed you at mass.”
    â€œKate—”
    â€œYou’re Catholic, Dave. I don’t understand why the three of us can’t go to church together as a family, and neither does Emma.”
    â€œI stopped going to church when I was a teenager, and don’t want to ever go again. I don’t expect you to understand,” he told her.
    â€œIf you’d explain your reasons to me, I’d try to understand.”
    â€œI don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œAs usual.” She knew a crime scene was neither the time nor place to pursue the touchy personal issue further, and let it drop. “You said you were going to catch up on some work this morning. I tried to call your office before we left for church, but you weren’t there.”
    â€œI think I had to go out for a while.”
    â€œYou think?”
    â€œYou know what I mean. What’s up here? County Comm said there’s been a murder.”
    She quickly filled him in on the skimpy details she’d gleaned from her conversations with Yamamoto and Miller.
    â€œSomeone just walked past a couple hundred people into the priest’s office, shot him in the head, and walked out without anyone noticing?” Granz asked.
    â€œApparently. Miller’s team is still interviewing. Maybe they’ll get lucky and find someone who heard it, tell us exactly what time Reverend Thompson was killed.”
    She glanced up and noticed him staring absently at the sky. “Dave?”
    â€œHuh? What?”
    â€œDid you hear me?”
    â€œNo, sorry. What did you say?”
    â€œI said your detectives haven’t finished interviewing witnesses yet.”
    â€œWhy don’t I check in with Miller, wrap things up here, then meet you at the morgue.”
    â€œSure. Are you okay?”
    Without answering, Granz turned and walked away.

Chapter 6
    M ACKAY RODE THE ELEVATOR to the basement of County General Hospital and unconsciously wrinkled her nose as the doors swished open into the hallway of the morgue, anticipating the unmistakable stench of formaldehyde and death.
    At the far end of a spotless tile-floored hall, double doors opened to a loading dock where coroner wagons backed up to discharge their lifeless cargo. An adjacent door accessed the cold storage vault where an assistant called a diener cleaned, weighed, measured, photographed, X-rayed, and stored bodies before autopsy. The door on the opposite side of the hall opened into an atmospherically self-contained isolation unit called the VIP Suite. There, bodies harboring contagious diseases or those in advanced stages of decomposition were examined while powerful extraction fans sucked up noxious or offensive gasses, forced them into a high-temperature incinerator, and neutralized them.
    Mackay sucked in a deep breath, then hurried down the corridor past several doors that