Read Online Sorrow's Crown by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online

Lowell," she said. "Whatever is happening, you're going to need his help. I'll call him now."
    "No, it's all right."
    "You have to do everything alone, in your own way, don't you?"
    "It'll be fine."
    "You're going to get hurt." She stood quickly on her toes, threw a kiss at my lips that sort of missed, spun back inside and shut the door.
    The driver was hardly more than spectral: a thin, ashen-faced man in a bad-fitting black suit who smelled like he'd gotten into Oscar Kinion's bathroom and used up the rest of his cologne.
    Another guy with a white crew cut stood half out of the passenger seat, as if ready to come in and get me if I hadn't been persuaded to follow the woman. The etched lines of his face bent around his mouth like a poorly folded map—his sneer had been affixed to him for decades. He looked a very healthy, fit, and forceful sixty. His upper lip dipped at an improper angle, almost like a harelip. Once he'd been punched in the mouth so hard that he'd bitten out a large piece of his lip, and the sew-up job had mauled him further. The lower half of his front teeth showed through, yellow and dry. He said, "Stop looking at me."
    The woman opened the rear door of the limo, and I got my first glimpse of Theodore Harnes .
    Nondescript was the best description I could come up with. Nothing about him stuck with me, no simile or metaphor came to mind. I sat beside him with my body slightly twisted in case he wanted to shake hands. He stared straight ahead. Jocelyn got in beside me, pressing me over until I sat in the middle between her and Harnes . If this was a Chandler, Block, Williams or Vachss novel I'd have been "scrunched between the heaving shoulders of two guys named Vincenzo and Popgun Rolly ." The woman felt like smoke beside me, a presence but not a pressure. Harnes , though we didn't touch, was the opposite. A live pressure but no sense of a living presence.
    I was starting to think that getting into the car was a bad idea.
    Theodore Harnes , who had married one of my grandmother's bridesmaids, said, "I want to thank you.”
    â€œYou do?"
    "Yes."
    "For what?"
    "Catching the man who murdered my son."
    An autopsy report wouldn't be completed for at least another day. The kid's teeth had been broken and scattered and it would take a while for him to be identified by his dental records or whatever other means they had. I wondered why, under these circumstances, a father wouldn't reach out with both hands for even the slightest hope that his child wasn't dead.
    "It might not be your son. There's no real evidence yet that...”
    In a tranquil, toneless voice, he said, "He did not come home."
    â€œBut there's a chance that ..."
    "My son always came home."
    I could see he was a man who brooked no opposition of any kind, not even by natural events. All things had to follow in the same course, at his insistence. What he expected must come to pass. His demands would be unrealistic and unobtainable. Only death proved to be an acceptable excuse for Teddy. What would having this man for a father do to a boy? To what lengths would someone forced to live in that shadow go to get away?
    "I don't think Crummler did it," I said.
    He showed no bewilderment, as if prepared for my response. "A raving lunatic covered in blood holding the murder weapon? He is guilty."
    " Crummler wouldn't hurt anyone."
    He ignored my comment and said, "I've heard of your past, helpful interests in certain investigations. The kidnapped Degrasse child. The sheriff's recent troubles. You found the murderer of your parents. You and your grandmother, I believe. You are a formidable pair. She sounds like a most intriguing woman."
    "Oh cripes."
    So, he would take the tack that he didn't know Anna, or perhaps he'd forgotten her, or only remembered her in a haze from before he had such power to wield.
    "Why was Teddy at the cemetery?" I asked.
    Jocelyn gazed at me, the driver glared into the rearview mirror, and the other guy kept his grin up,