Read 17 Stone Angels for Free Online Page B

silence that seemed to engulf the car and the arid vacant lot. The wound in Waterbury’s inner thigh was bleeding heavily and his groin was worse. He had another wound in his chest, and Fortunato could see blood bubbling in with his saliva. His eyes looked like those of a deep-sea fish pulled suddenly to the surface. Fortunato took out his Browning. He could feel Onda watching him.
    People said that the first person you killed was always the worst. “Look, hombre ,” the Chief had told him at a barbecue the following week. “There are unpleasant things to be done and one has to have the balls to do them. That’s how it was during the war and that’s how it is now. This Waterbury was mixed up in something .” He’d spotted Fortunato’s discomfort. “Besides, the truth is that it was the other two morons that killed him. You just put him out of his misery. Should you have let him suffer for a few more hours?”
    La Doctora reached the end of the first declaration and hurried through photocopies of various receipts and credentials. The first photos of the crime scene stiffened her.
    Even in black and white, they were horrific. The first was an exterior of the car with the back door hanging open. The front of the car was blackened from the fire, its hood flung open. The windshield was shattered by the heat. Through the dark opening in the door projected a shoe, and a leg in light-colored trousers.
    The next photo was closer, through the open window. Waterbury lay on the seat with his mouth half-open, his skin laced by rivulets of black blood. The next photo was a closeup.
    Athena gasped, turning away and dosing her eyes.
    Fortunato stared dumbly at the photo, remembering how it had looked the night of the operativo , the haze of gun smoke in the auto, Waterbury’s last twitches as he settled into the seat. Behind him Domingo: “You calmed the hijo de puta , Comi.” Yes, everything was calm. And then the next day, at the clinic, when the doctor told Marcela why she was losing so much weight, it had just kept getting calmer and calmer. She’d given up and dissolved away, leaving only that calm empty house that found him every evening. Perhaps like the house of Robert Waterbury.
    A clerk knocked at the door and thrust his head in. “Comisario, forgive the interruption. Something has happened outside.”
    Fortunato came to his feet and hurried out, followed by the Doctora.
    A dog lay bloody and yelping in the road beside an unmarked police car while the driver, Inspector Domingo Fausto, was fending off the furious attack of an eight-year-old boy. Fortunato recognized the dog and the little boy as residents of the house across the street. He always kept a few pieces of candy in his pocket to give him when he passed by.
    â€œ Chico !” He grasped the little boy’s shoulders from behind and pulled him away from Domingo. The boy’s face was flushed and shining with tears.
    â€œIt wasn’t my fault, Comiso,” Domingo began, flustered. “The dog jumped out from between the cars.” He turned to the boy. “Why didn’t you hold onto him, retard! ”
    The child’s anger collapsed into a whimper and he bent down close to the dog and stroked his head. “Tiger!” he cried. “Tiger!” The dog’s front legs waggled uselessly before its crushed body, and Fortunato could assess the hopelessness at a glance. He looked back at Domingo, who dismissedit all with a click of his tongue and a toss of his head. Beyond them, La Doctora was watching.
    â€œTake care of it,” Fortunato told him under his breath, then he crouched down to the boy’s level and turned on him the full sympathy of his weary face. “ Chico , come with me over to the kiosk. Let’s get a soda. I want to explain something to you.”
    â€œBut what about Tiger?”
    â€œTiger is badly off, but we’re going to help him. Come on.