Read Online Murder One by Robert Dugoni - Free Book Online Page A

working undercover narcotics. He’d grown his hair long, along with a scraggly goatee, and one of the members of the unit likened him to the pirate Jack Sparrow playedby Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Nobody called him Kinsington, his mother’s maiden name, or even Kins, which had been his nickname growing up.
    “Never could,” he said, “even as a kid.”
    “But you can chew them?”
    “Everyone can chew.”
    Crosswhite shuddered. “It gives me the willies.” They continued down the path. “Why don’t you have the surgery?”
    The hip had been a problem since Rowe’s senior year playing football for the U. The team doctor had called the injury a hip pointer, and Rowe had played through the pain. More extensive X rays later in life revealed a fracture that had developed avascular necrosis from a decreased blood supply to the head of the femur. Rowe fell back on his degree in criminology and applied to the FBI but couldn’t pass the medical exam, so he joined the police force. He would eventually need an artificial hip.
    “Because I only want to go through this once.”
    “Don’t they use titanium now? I thought that stuff lasts forever.”
    “Twenty to thirty years, according to my doctor.”
    “I hope someone lets Boeing know.”
    “Boeing?” he asked.
    “I read they make airplanes out of that stuff now.”
    At thirty-nine, Rowe felt too young to be walking around with an artificial hip. But every time he stepped on the front lawn to play football with his sons, reality replaced fantasy; the pain inched him closer to pulling the trigger. Until he did, he chewed the ibuprofen.
    A Mercedes Roadster sat parked near the front entrance.
    “So this is how the other half lives,” Crosswhite said, looking over the car and the three-story residence. Rowe estimated the house to be nine thousand square feet, several million dollars, at least. Expensive home, expensive car—the owner had money or a lot of debt.
    Two uniformed officers approached.
    “Who’s Adderley?” Rowe asked.
    The taller of the two, African-American, adjusted the utility belt around his waist. “That would be me.” The bulletproof vest beneath his navy blue shirt puffed him up like a marshmallow.
    Rowe introduced himself, and Adderley explained that he had received a call from dispatch, an anonymous report of a prowler.
    “A prowler? Not shots fired?” Rowe asked.
    “Prowler.”
    Under the word “ANONYMOUS” in his notebook, Rowe wrote: Prowler? And beneath that: Thunder and lightning .
    “What next?”
    Adderley explained that after backup arrived, he radioed dispatch to try to reach someone inside the home to tell them not to shoot him in the ass. “I asked that they keep the air open while we walked the perimeter. We found the victim in a room off the patio. Shooter shot through the sliding-glass door. I called it in ‘person down’ and held for more resources.”
    “Did you attempt to enter?”
    Adderley shook his head. “No.”
    Adderley and the second officer both wore black gloves. “You wearing your gloves, then?” Rowe asked.
    “Haven’t taken them off.”
    “Show us.”
    Adderley led Rowe and Crosswhite to a concrete patio at the back of the house. The sliding-glass door was shut, the glass pierced by a single hole that had caused a spiderweb of cracks, though the glass had not crystallized. Blood splattered the interior, and Rowe could see the bloodied back of a head resting on the arm of a leather sofa. A pool of blood had accumulated on the hardwood floor where the Persian rug did not reach. The flat-screen television mounted on the wall remained on, a movie Rowe did not recognize.
    “When SWAT arrived, we cleared the house, taped it off, secured the perimeter, and waited,” Adderley explained.
    “Did you do anything else? Talk with anyone? Go anywhere else on the property?”
    Adderley shook his head.
    “Search the yard?”
    “Just a visual from the patio. Something else,