Blood Innocents

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Book: Read Blood Innocents for Free Online
Authors: Thomas H. Cook
Tags: Mystery
ravaged the shore for someone to rescue him, looking for help, overturning garbage cans and stripping wharves. They burned off the surrounding fog and split open the dunes and overturned the cottages behind them, but still there was no one to save him. His last scream was stifled by the salt water flooding his mouth as he went down.
    Reardon woke, gasping for breath, his hand groping in the darkness, at last finding the light switch near his bed. For a while he sat up in bed and allowed his eyes to roam about the room, rooting his mind once again in the familiar, comfortable objects around him. But he could not find comfort in them. He felt almost like an intruder in his own room, as if the old brown suit that hung in his closet had been molded to the body of some other man more composed than himself. He rested his head in his cupped hands and waited for dawn.

4
    TUESDAY
    The next morning Reardon did not go directly to the precinct headquarters. Instead, he walked to the Children’s Zoo. For a while he sat on a bench opposite the cage of the fallow deer. The bodies had been taken away, and the cages had been meticulously washed of all signs of the violence that had taken place before dawn on Monday morning.
    He gazed around the park, trying to determine in which direction the killer might have fled. Then he looked beyond the bars to the chalk-drawn positions where the bodies had been found. The back of the cage was a solid stone wall almost fifteen feet high. Without a ladder or a rope no one could have climbed over it. But in front of the cage two sidewalks led in different directions. The one to the right turned into a winding trail that eventually led all the way to the opposite side of the park. The other led directly to a flight of stairs which ascended to Fifth Avenue. The killer would have taken the route through the park, Reardon thought. He shrugged. It was a mundane assumption. Bloodied as he must have been, of course the killer would not have lurched up onto Fifth Avenue, even between three and three-thirty in the morning.
    â€œMorning, John,” Mathesson said. He stood towering over Reardon, a breeze gently flapping the collar of his coat. He brought his large hands out of his coat pockets and pressed his hat more firmly down on his head.
    Reardon had not seen him approach. “Hello, Jack,” he said.
    â€œTrying to think like a freako this morning?”
    â€œNo,” Reardon said. “I’m trying to think like an inexperienced murderer.”
    â€œSo what did you come up with?”
    Reardon smiled at the absurdity of what he had come up with. “That the killer probably took the trail through the park rather than the stairs to Fifth Avenue.”
    Mathesson laughed. “That ought to get you a citation,” he said. “How are you this morning, John?”
    Reardon knew Mathesson was still bothered by his response to the deer on Monday morning. “I’m fine.”
    â€œGet a good night’s sleep?”
    â€œI guess,” Reardon said. He looked at the cage again. “Did you check with the precinct this morning?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œAnything interesting?”
    â€œWell, the lab is finished with the autopsy on the deer. There were fifty-seven wounds on one of them and just that one on the other.”
    â€œAnything else?”
    â€œYeah, they’re bringing out another crew to look for the weapon. I guess the first crew just did a quick search. Anyway, the first group didn’t come up with anything, so they’re sending out another one.”
    â€œSince when do they send out two separate crews to search for a weapon?” Reardon asked.
    Mathesson smiled. “Since Wallace Van Allen got his deer sliced up, that’s since when.” He glanced resentfully at the great houses and luxury hotels that towered over the park. “Don’t this goddamn hubbub about a couple of animals seem a little much to you?”
    â€œI

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