Read Online The Last Blue Plate Special by Abigail Padgett - Free Book Online

office by seven at least. This is going to take some time.”
    “I want to run vocabulary analyses of both the letter and the tape, but especially the letter,” I replied. “There may be some
     clues in the language of the headlines selected to glue all over the page.”
    We were working, talking to ourselves, not to each other.
    “Better get some sleep,” Roxie said.
    “You still didn’t tell me about BB and the preacher,” I reminded her.
    “Oh, the guy sounds okay. He called BB after BB called here, told him he did a chaplaincy at Sing-Sing for five years and
     knows everybody who makes a mistake isn’t necessarily toxic. Then he and BB went for an eight-mile run around Mission Bay,
     after which they had lattes and made plans to attend a gospel concert tomorrow afternoon. The run calmed our boy down. Right
     now he’s in an agony of indecision over what to wear to a gospel concert. When we hung up he was leaning toward a Stokely
     Carmichael look. Black suit, narrow tie, you know.”
    We were doing okay, I thought as I felt Rox stretch and relax into sleep beside me in my queen-size bed. Everybody in my little
     world was doing okay. But somebody out there wasn’t. Somebody out there was either killing or wanting to be seen as a killer.
     Somebody out there wanted to
be
a sword. The thought of that warped personality brought a bitter taste to the back of my throat. Just knowing it was out
     there made me happy about the Smith and Wesson now tucked snugly in my waist pack. You never know. You just really don’t.

5
Profiles in Deadliness
    R oxie was up at five, an hour I rarely acknowledge, much less see. For the record, in the Anza-Borrego Desert in late October,
     five A.M. smells like aluminum and seems to be deeply absorbed in a game that would turn out to be chess if you could see it. I sat
     up in bed feeling the clean desert chill and told myself a killer might strike again if I didn’t get up. Then I curled under
     the comforter and began a delicious drift back into sleep. Brontë, stretched across the foot of the bed, was snoring softly.
    “You and that dog were not raised on a farm,” Rox noted as she applied makeup in the bathroom.
    “Neither were you.” I yawned from beneath the comforter.
    “You and that dog do not understand the work ethic.”
    “Dogs do not have a work ethic,” I muttered, well aware that some dogs do. Border collies, for example.
    “I’ll need your analysis of the clippings that were glued to the letter by ten-thirty, Blue. That will give me a couple of
     hours to mesh your findings with whatever I can come up with and get the profile over to Rathbone by one. We don’t have much
     time.”
    “What are you going to give them?” I asked, opening my eyes in that way you know means you’re going to get up. “FBI stuff
     on serial killers?”
    Rox was bustling around my bedroom dramatically, moving the air in guilt-inducing patterns.
    “Some,” she said tersely. “Some of the Holmes serial killer typology, probably. More on the medical aspect.
If
somebody’s manipulating blood pressure to murder people, then that person has had some medical training. Doctor, nurse, maybe
     pharmacist. Or anybody in a tech support position that involves knowledge of blood chemistry and systems. We’re not looking
     for a dietician or an X-ray tech. We’re looking for a medical professional familiar with the circulatory system who’s cracking
     up. Probably not a true antisocial personality disorder, or the aberrant behavior would have shown up before or during medical
     training. This one’s been repressing a big rage for years. But now something’s triggered it.”
    “What about somebody who just learned about blood pressure by having it?” I offered.
    Roxie laughed as she scrounged for a shoe under the bed.
    “Blue, anybody who doesn’t have blood pressure is dead.”
    “I meant high blood pressure,” I said. I have never understood people who can use words correctly