Act of Betrayal Read Online Free

to Rick by his mother. There were initials RWS on the face of the ring, and on the inner band, Schultz knew, was the inscription Love from Mom and Dad.
    Schultz was struck down by the sight of the ring, like a giant redwood felled by a saw. He dropped to his knees, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed.

Three
    P J CAME UP BEHIND Schultz, placed her hands on his shoulders as he knelt, and let her tears flow hotly down her cheeks. After sharing Mike Wolf’s grief for his wife just hours earlier, she didn’t think she had any tears left, but she proved herself wrong.
    She hadn’t known Rick personally, but she knew with utmost certainty that Schultz was facing what no parent should ever have to see.
    His sobbing subsided as abruptly as it had begun, like a storm over the Sahara. She put an arm under his elbow as he clumsily got to his feet. His arthritic knees must have been screaming while he was kneeling, but sensory information connected with things other than what was in front of him just wasn’t being processed.
    PJ found her voice. It came out strong and sure, and she was glad of that.
    “Leo, come with me. Let the others work in here now. We’ll wait downstairs.”
    She got him as far as the second floor, but he couldn’t seem to go any farther, as if he were tethered to his son’s body and the cord only allowed him to travel that far. Folding chairs materialized, brought by a considerate officer from outside the building. Schultz sat, his large hands on his thighs and his eyes focused on the stairs. She waited next to him, one of her hands resting on his, refusing to let her thoughts stray into the dangerous territory of imagining what she would do in his place, if Thomas had been the one in the chair.
    The thing in the chair.
    The Assistant ME, Dr. Georgia Morton, came down the stairs, and Schultz stood to meet her.
    “Tattoo?” he said. He had no room for civility, for extra words.
    “An apple with a worm, and the word ‘rotten,’ in blue letters, I think, on the left buttock,” she said. “It’s hard to tell the color.” Her voice was low and sympathetic, and didn’t carry beyond the three of them.
    Some time later, the body was brought down on a gurney, impersonal in its zippered black bag.
    Schultz sighed as the gurney was maneuvered down the stairs, past the two of them on the landing, and out the front door.
    “We can go now,” he said.
    Out on the sidewalk, PJ winced at the sun and heat. At ten in the morning on the third of August, the humid air sat on St. Louis like an unwelcome crowd of houseguests who refused to get off the couch and leave. Already the sidewalk felt warm under her soles, and the sunshine was an oppressive weight on her shoulders.
    Schultz seemed oblivious to the heat. His eyes followed the van bearing his son’s body as it made its way down the street.
    “Let’s go to Millie’s,” PJ said. “We can get some breakfast and figure out what to do next. We’ll both do better if we get a little distance.”
    She knew neither of them would ever forget those images in the hot building, but she was offering comfort and companionship, holding them out like a menu, for him to pick and choose whatever would do him the most good.
    His head turned toward her, and she saw something frightening in his eyes, something primitive that evoked rending and bloody revenge—justice of a wild and very personal kind. He blinked, and it was gone. “Okay,” he said. “You buy.”

Four
    T HE EXPANSIVE WINDOWS OF Millie’s Diner were fogged over. Millie hated the heat, and she must have had the air-conditioner dialed down to sixty-eight degrees. The hot air outside pressed against the window glass like a dog at a butcher shop. PJ could practically hear it panting to get in.
    Inside, she let the cool air, the familiar sounds, and the forthright sanity of the diner envelop her. The aromas of coffee, bacon, and even greasy hamburgers were welcome, and pushed away the odors of ammonia