Read Online A Visible Darkness by Jonathon King - Free Book Online

fisherman?”
    “Exactly,” she said. “But you’re in luck. The special is red snapper, and it’s very good here.”
    I opened a menu as if to make a decision on my own. Took a breath, looked up into her face.
    “You’re looking fit, detective. Climbing the gears right off that Stair Master?”
    One of our connections was a passion for exercise, a shared habit of sweating through a pain we both understood.
    Her husband had been a street cop who had died in the line of duty. He had confronted a kid in a holdup and never expected a thirteen-year-old to aim a gun in his face. According to his partner, that night he’d just stared at the barrel and seemed to tilt his head in confusion when the kid pulled the trigger. It was still not long enough in the past.
    “No more Stair Master,” she answered. “Got a new thing. Aerobics boxing. Great stuff.”
    “Figures,” I said.
    She raised an eyebrow, then let the comment slide.
    “So, what’s up on the river, Freeman? Anything we should know about?”
    Her question reminded me how hard it was for her not to always be a cop. There had been some loose ends in the abduction case. A witness, an eighty-year-old legend of the deep Glades, had disappeared and was never found for questioning. The detectives knew he had picked me out as a conduit for special information and wondered if I would ever put them in touch “just for conversation to fill in some holes,” they said. What they didn’t know was that the old man had saved my life. My repayment was his anonymity.
    “Everything is quiet on the river,” I said. “But we’ve got to get you out there again, work on that paddle technique.”
    “Yeah, sure,” she said, but there was a grin on her face.
    “No,” I said. “This time it’s your side of the woods where I think I need some help.”
    The waiter came and took orders, and as we sipped iced tea, I told Richards about Billy’s theory about the insurance scam and murder. I gave her what sketchy information I could about the women’s locations and similarities, and about the insurance investigator who, for lack of a better word, was working with me.
    She listened, nodding and only interjecting with the proper street names and neighborhood tides. When the fish came, sizzling off the grill and surrounded by dirty rice, we both went quiet.
    She finally broke the silence. “Even that many naturals, in that section of the city, wouldn’t necessarily raise any flags. And even if Billy alerted us to it, I doubt it would push anyone off the dime to take a closer look.”
    I looked up from my plate.
    “It’s a high crime zone, Freeman. You know the drill. Keep the lid on. Try to make insider friends, keep the politics in check and don’t sweat the small stuff. They’ve got bigger problems over there.”
    It was my turn to raise eyebrows, first at the small stuff comment and then as an unspoken question about the bigger problems. She took a few forkfuls of rice, pulled a loose strand of hair back behind her ears and began again.
    She told me about a string of rapes in the same area over the past several years that had also passed across someone’s desk. Some were reported, some were just street talk. The women involved were street girls, prostitutes and addicts feeding their habits and not too particular about what they traded for an eight-ball of crack or a dose of heroin.
    “They only got reported when the guy got too rough and the women were found hurt. I answered one while I was still on patrol. Girl had marks around her throat like a thick rope had been wrapped around it. She said it was the guy’s hands.”
    That case, like the others, had never been solved. The witnesses were too high to give good descriptions. The crime scenes were either forgotten or so contaminated that they were useless for processing.
    She saw me looking at her eyes, watching the way they kept jumping away from mine.
    “Goddammit, Freeman. I worked it as much as I could. I was only