Read And Leave Her Lay Dying for Free Online

grinned broadly. “Yeah. Never get into a fight with somebody uglier than you because the other guy’s got nothing to lose.”
    â€œDamn right. You leave Berkeley Street, you leave because you want to, not because of Kavander.”
    McGuire glanced at his watch. “Speaking of leaving . . .”
    â€œYeah, I know. I know.”
    â€œI’ll drop in tomorrow. Keep you posted on what’s happening.”
    â€œOnly if you’ve got the time.” Ollie’s eyes swung back to the light across the bay.
    â€œThank you, Joe,” Ronnie said to McGuire at the door. “He really appreciated you coming. I could tell by the sound of his voice.” She stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “That’s the happiest I’ve seen him since he came home.”

Chapter Four
    â€œJack the Bear” they called him, for his disposition and his oversized, shaggy appearance.
    Jacques Charles Kavander stood six-foot four and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. His mother, Marie, a volatile and fiercely proud Québécoise, had been working as a cook in a Maine lumber camp when she first tangled with Charlie Kavander, a cutting crew foreman with massive arms and a constant snarl. Their marriage produced dozens of physical battles, three charges of disturbing the peace, and one son. Over the years they were separated only long enough for Marie to storm out the door and ride a bus back to her family in Rivière-du-Loup where she would call Charlie, demanding that he drive up and bring her home immediately. Which he always did without fail.
    When Jacques was sixteen years old, his father sat watching him chop wood, approached him and rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You’re going to be a big guy,” he said. “Big mean guys like you and me, there are two things we can do. We can stay here, work in the lumber camps, ducking trees and axes, getting drunk every Saturday night. Or we can become cops. I think you should be a cop. It’s safer.”
    His son shook his head. “I’m going to do both,” he said. “I’m going to work with you in the bush and save my money for college. Then I’ll be a cop. But not a dumb one.”
    He obtained his degree in criminology, graduating
cum laude
and with more than passing interest from two professional football teams, whose entreaties he ignored. In over twenty years as a Boston beat cop and detective, Jack Kavander drew his service revolver only once although he was shot at on three different occasions. On one occasion he had been hit, and with a 38-calibre bullet buried in his thigh had launched himself at his assailant with such ferocity that the man, a parole violator caught ransacking a warehouse, turned to flee just as Jack the Bear’s massive hand clamped on his shoulder.
    Later, Kavander and the fugitive both rode in the same ambulance to the hospital. Kavander was released several days before the other man, who was treated for several broken ribs, a broken jaw, a severely sprained arm and mild concussion suffered from falling downstairs while attempting to escape custody. Or so it was recorded in the official files.
    Now nearing sixty, Kavander still carried his massive frame ironing-board erect. His hair was white and close­cropped, the limp from the bullet wound grew more noticeable every year, and his voice had acquired the rasp and growl of an idling diesel.
    Kavander’s appointment as Captain of Detectives ten years earlier had at first elated the Boston police force. “He’s one of us,” the officers nodded to each other. “A cop’s cop. He knows what it’s like out on the street.” But the optimism soon grew jaded. Within months, Jack the Bear began his conversion from top cop to common bureaucrat, distancing himself from the everyday concerns of police officers and placing emphasis on procedures.
    â€œYou have to admit, Kavander’s living