Read Online The Midnight Road by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online

prostitute, both in the city and in Suffolk. In and out of rehab. She’d tried cleaning up her act but kept creeping back into the life.”
    “She have any kids?” Flynn asked.
    “Why?”
    “Maybe the CPS has something on her.”
    “We don’t know yet if she had any children.”
    “Who’d she work for?”
    “Strictly freelance so far as we know at the moment. Every now and again she’d come out here and visit her mother for a few months, wind up working a few side jobs in Centereach. She’s got a detailed rap sheet.”
    “She was pretty, and young. I bet a lot of people felt a need to help her.”
    Watching the tip of his own finger, Raidin tapped Flynn’s chest gently, prodding the stains. “And nobody could. That’s the way it is.”
    “Maybe he was one of her johns.”
    “Who?”
    “The hitter.”
    It made Raidin’s face tighten. “The hitter?”
    All the film noir euphemisms slid through Flynn’s head. Torpedo. Shooter. Button man. “The guy who shot her. He chose her for a reason. He probably knew her.”
    “We’ll check.”
    Flynn’s eyes darted around the emergency room. More kids in assorted states of illness and injury stared blank-eyed. Elderly people who wouldn’t last out the winter appeared to know their fates and accept them with a common but assertive dignity.
    The smell of the place, and himself, and Angela Soto’s blood and excavated interiors began to swarm up against his face again. He had to put the back of his hand over his nose and wait for the stinging in his nostrils to pass.
    “Any idea where the shooter was standing?” he asked.
    Raidin let his lips slide into the smile again, but his eyes were heating with controlled resentment. He didn’t like answering questions from someone like Flynn, but he wanted to engage in dialogue, get a feel for who he was talking to. “East end of the lot, close to the building, probably back where they park the ambulances. With a rifle. Damn difficult shot from nearly a hundred yards off. In a storm. This perp’s had some experience. Or he’s lucky as hell.”
    “He had plenty of time to ice me,” Flynn said. “He waited for her to approach from the other direction.”
    “And you didn’t see anyone?”
    “No.”
    “You’re absolutely certain about that?”
    “It was snowing. I have a rental Taurus and couldn’t find it. I didn’t notice anybody else out there. Maybe folks were coming and going, but I didn’t pick up on it.”
    “And so he waits until she delivers the message,” Raidin said.
    “She was the message.”
    Raidin nodded, already on the same track. It made talking out loud so much simpler. He thumped Flynn’s chest again, same spot, a little harder. The way an excited friend might do it. “Sent as a warning. From whom? And what for?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I see.” Raidin drew out a little plastic bag containing the note. “And why would someone do this do you think? Go to all this trouble to send you a message? What is all your fault?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Raidin turned the bag over and over, holding it out as if he wanted Flynn to take it, like this was some kind of card trick. “You receive the note and she immediately dies.”
    Flynn didn’t know what the hell else to say. He nodded and waited.
    “Have you tussled with anyone recently? Do you have any enemies that you know of?”
    “Who would kill somebody else instead of me? That I don’t know.”
    “How about in general? In conventional terms. In the broadest definition, as it were.”
    They were definitely going to hunt down and interview Marianne and Frickin’ Alvin. Flynn talked about the death threats but didn’t mention the woman whose husband had been tossed into prison. He knew she was just acting out because she felt betrayed, unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt. “In general, you’d have to devote a lot of man-hours. The list is long and varied.”
    “And if you had to abbreviate it?”
    “Christina