Read Online Hannah Jayne by Under Suspicion - Free Book Online Page A

of them and Harley asked the woman to describe what she saw; his brows were knitted, eyes rapt.
    “Es un demonio.” She clawed her hands and growled, her lips curling into a fearsome snarl. “Es un chupacabra. No lo creia, pero lo vi con mis propios ojos.”
    “She says it’s a chupacabra,” Officer Romero informed me with a disbelieving head shake.
    “My grandmother used to tell us the chupacabra would snatch us from our beds if we didn’t go to sleep. I thought it was a legend.”
    “It is,” I said, beelining toward Harley.
    By the time I got to him, he was on to another woman, zeroing in on her as she used huge arm gestures. Her cheeks were flushed as she stared into the camera.
    “It was Tiamat,” she said, with an exaggerated shudder. “They pulled her in, and when she opened her mouth, I saw the serpent inside.”
    Harley had a slight, abusive smile on his face as he ping-ponged his microphone between the two women.

    “No, no,” the other woman shook her head, stepping in front of Harley’s camera angle. “Es un chupacabra!” She did the growl again, and a team behind her nodded enthusiastically, backing her up with a chorus of “Sí! Sí!”
    I yanked on Harley’s sleeve. “Can I talk to you, please?”
    Harley hid his annoyance at my disruption like an absolute pro; his smile never faltered even as he ushered aside his interviewees still fighting over the identity of the body on the dock.
    “Sophie, right?”
    “What are you doing? You’re riling everybody up.”
    “I’m simply interviewing these bystanders.”
    I put my hands on my hips and cocked an eyebrow. “For your next book?”
    Harley stared me down. “What does it matter? Do you have a theory on John Doe over there you’d like to kick in?” Harley’s brown eyes slid over me, head to toe, and I stiffened, feeling immediately violated. “I bet you’d look great on camera.”
    “Aren’t you interested in my best friend?”
    Harley blew out a sigh and waggled the microphone in front of me. “Do you have something to add or not? This is for a major network, you know. Not cable.”
    “I don’t care. There is nothing to see here. If you know that”—I pointed to the body that was now being moved, still under cover of the tarp—“is a regular John Doe, why are you interviewing these people?”
    “I sell books, Sophie, and people like these”—he spread his arms as if he were among his brethren— “keep the myths that I debunk alive. More myths, more books.”
    “More sales.”
    “Spoken like a true capitalist.” He pressed the microphone underneath my nose. “Are you sure you don’t have anything to add?”
    I looked from the fallen centaur to the woman with the hairnet, wringing her hands; the woman beside her was still muttering “Tiamat” and describing the evil attributes of the sea legend.
    Harley may not have had fangs, but he looked every inch the bloodsucker lurking beside them, his microphone at the ready.
    “I have nothing to say to you.”

    I was inching through traffic and listening to Nina’s cell phone ring in my ear after my run-in with Harley and the centaur. By the time a Muni bus cut me off, and a line of Art Institute students zigzagged in front of my car, Nina picked up and I screamed, “Finally!”

    There was a short pause and then, “Sophie?”
    “Sorry, Neens. I’m stuck in traffic and I just came from the docks.”
    “Trolling for dates again? Do we need to have another talk about acceptable places to meet men?”
    My left eye started to twitch. “I was on the dock because the police pulled a centaur out of the Bay.”
    “That’s weird. Centaurs are not known for their swimming prowess.”
    “He’d been murdered.”
    “Oh.”
    “I called Dixon. Investigations is coming out to take care of it.” I shook my head, tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. “This is scaring me, Nina. First Mrs. Henderson, and now a body in the Bay?”
    Nina harrumphed. “Do you know how many