Read Online Death Match by Lincoln Child - Free Book Online

the wooden bench and placed the bulky manila envelope beside him.
    He did not open it right away. Instead, he reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny volume:
Narrow Road to the Interior
, by Matsuo Bash–o. He’d seen copies for sale on the counter of a Starbucks in Sky Harbor International, and the coincidence seemed too great not to pick one up. He thumbed through the translator’s introduction, found the opening lines.

    The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

    He put the book aside. What had Lewis Thorpe said about the poetry of Bash–o: so dense, yet so simple? Something like that.
    Lash had many professional rules, but the preeminent one was Keep your distance from your patients. It was a rule he’d learned the hard way, profiling at the FBI. So why had he allowed himself to become so fascinated with Lewis and Lindsay Thorpe? Was it simply the mystifying nature of their deaths? Or was there some special allure in the perfection of their marriage? Because by every account he’d been able to obtain, their marriage had, in fact, been perfect—right up to the moment they put dry- cleaning bags over their heads, embraced, and slowly lost consciousness in front of their infant daughter.
    Normally, Lash did not permit personal introspection. It led nowhere, dulled his objectivity. But he decided to allow himself another observation. He had not chosen this place at random, after all. This sanctuary, this pathway—and, in fact, this very blind—had been the spot where, three years before, Shirley said she never wanted to see him again.
    Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Lash wondered what kind of a journey the Thorpes had embarked on. Or for that matter, what kind of a journey he himself was undertaking to discover their secret. It was a journey his better judgment told him to resist even as his feet led him farther down the path.
    He passed his hand wearily across his eyes, reached for the bulky envelope, and tore it open with a tug of his index finger.
    Inside were just over a hundred sheets of paper: the results of Lewis and Lindsay Thorpe’s inkblot tests, administered by Eden during their application process.
    As a high school student, Lash had been fascinated by inkblots; by the idea that seeing objects in random smudges could say something about you. It wasn’t until graduate school, when he studied test administration—and took the test himself, as all psych students were required to do—that he realized how profound a tool of psychodiagnosis it could be. Inkblots were known as “projective” tests because—unlike highly structured, objective written tests like the WAIS or MMPI—the concept of right and wrong was ambiguous. Looking for images in an inkblot required bringing deeper, complex areas of personality to bear.
    Eden used the Hirschfeldt test, a choice Lash wholeheartedly approved. Though indirectly based on Exner’s refinement of the original Rorschach, the Hirschfeldt test had several advantages. There were only ten Rorschach inkblots, and these were kept secret by psychologists: it would be easy for a person to memorize the “right” responses to such a small number of blots. Each administration of the Hirschfeldt test, on the other hand, drew from a catalogue of five hundred catalogued blots—far too many to memorize. Thirty blots were shown, rather than ten, generating a deeper response pool from the subject. Unlike the Rorschach, where half of the inkblots were in color, all of the blots in the Hirschfeldt test were black and white; its supporters thought color to be an unimportant distraction.
    Lindsay Thorpe’s test results came first. Lash paused a moment to imagine her in the examination room. It would be quiet, comfortable,