Read Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) for Free Online Page A

she handed it to me.
    And it did. It was a dark, almost ebony jungle with black jagged mountains and dark clouds in the background. The only touch of color was a small yellow orchid on a gnarled tree in the foreground. The dark jungle, night sky, and the gothic mountain was definitely me, and the small touch of living color was about the right size.
    I got to meet the artist, Stig Dalstrom, one afternoon at Patrick’s restaurant on Main Street. He specializes in paintings like the one Flo had given me but Flo said he also did commissions.
    Dalstrom was taller than me, a little broader, with glasses, a slightly receding hairline, dark blond hair, and an echo of his dark paintings in his eyes. He had a slight Swedish accent.
    Our conversation had been brief and I wondered what haunted his past. I wondered how much one of his paintings or prints would cost. I told him I’d like to look up from behind my desk and see more of that haunting darkness and those little touches of light.
    I was deep inside that tiny orchid when I heard a voice.
    “Mr. Fonesca, are you all right?” the man across from me said, and I brought myself back from the jungle.
    “You’re…?” I asked.
    “Severtson, Kenneth Severtson. She took the kids,” he said to me to open the conversation.
    “Nice to meet you,” I answered.
    “She had no right,” Severtson said, leaning toward me and staring into my eyes without a blink.
    I don’t play “who blinks first.” I didn’t speak. He waited. It was my turn. I wasn’t playing.
    “You’ve got to find her.”
    He won.
    “Who do I have to find?”
    “My wife, Janice, and the children.”
    “I’m a process server,” I said. “You want the police.”
    “There’s no crime, not yet.”
    I was about to give him my standard line about needing a private detective.
    “You find people,” Severtson said.
    “That’s what a process server does,” I agreed.
    “Find my wife and children.”
    “Mr. Severtson, I don’t do that kind of thing.”
    That was a lie. The truth was that whatever “that kind of thing” was I had probably done it when someone pushed the right tender buttons of my despair.
    “Sally Porovsky said you might be able to help.”
    “How do you know Sally?”
    He turned his head away and lowered his voice.
    “There was an incident about a year ago,” he said. “Janice and I had an argument. The neighbors called the police. The police called child protection. Sally Porovsky was the caseworker. She saw us a few times. So when Janice left three days ago, I called Sally. She told me to wait a few days and then come to see you if Janice and the kids didn’t show up.”
    I held up a hand to stop him, reached over, picked up the phone, and dialed Sally’s cell phone.
    “Hello,” she said, her voice cell-phone crackly.
    “Kenneth Severtson’s here,” I said.
    “He’s in your office?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can you help him?”
    “Can you?”
    “No,” she said. “But my deep-down instinct is that if you don’t help him, he’ll try to help himself, and I think he has the kind of personality that could snap.”
    “Professionally put,” I said.
    “If I put it into social-work babble, it would say the same thing but you wouldn’t understand it. I doubt if the people I write reports for understand them. I doubt if they even read the reports. Lewis, you are starting to depress me.”
    “I have that effect on people,” I said.
    I looked at Severtson, who strained to figure out what was going on. I didn’t say anything.
    “Lew, you still there?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Well?”
    “You want me working instead of spending the afternoon in bed with Joan Crawford.”
    “Something like that,” she said.
    “Dinner Sunday? My place,” she said. “Seven?”
    “I’ll bring the pizza.”
    “Kids want Subway sandwiches. They like the ads on television.”
    “What kind of sandwiches?”
    “Your choice. Seven?”
    “Seven,” I said.
    “Call me later,” she said.