Read Nobody Lives Forever for Free Online

wet hair when the police arrived. And that policewoman had noticed. You can lose everything so quickly, Harriet thought, even your life. One mistake and it can all be gone. Achieving what is most dear to you and then holding on to it is never easy.
    Harriet promised herself that she would do whatever she had to.

Five
    The first twenty-four hours, the most crucial in a homicide investigation, led the detectives nowhere. Dead ends, blind alleyways—the lab found no prints and little physical evidence. Ballistics matched no other outstanding cases. Dusty volunteered to stay on and help work the Thorne case, though she would not officially rejoin Rick’s team until the first, which was Sunday. “Appreciate it, but catch some rest while you can,” he told her. “By then we’ll need somebody fresh. There’s not much you could do now anyway. We’ve got nothing.”
    Divers had spent the daylight hours since the murder plumbing the waters around the islands and the causeway, on the theory that the fleeing killer might have deep-sixed the gun. They found tin cans, junk and old tools.
    A police chopper crew patrolling the bay spotted something else—another corpse. The find created a flurry of excitement. Hopes were that the killer had botched his getaway and drowned trying to swim from the murder scene, or that his car had plunged off the side of the bridge.
    â€œWe don’t get that lucky,” Jim said glumly. “Things never come wrapped up that neatly.”
    He was right. The uniforms who got there first radioed that the body, floating facedown in the mangroves at the edge of a small uninhabited island, appeared to have been submerged too long to be linked to the murder on San Remo.
    Nonetheless, Barrish and Ransom boarded a police boat at the mouth of the Miami River. “Just what we need. I hate this.” Ransom looked pained. The twenty-five-foot patrol boat sliced through the water, a damp breeze lifting the thinning hair Jim had carefully combed to cover his bald spot. “If I wanted to go to sea, I’da joined the Coast Guard. I know I’m gonna be sick.”
    â€œYou think about it too much, Jim,” Rick shouted over the noise of the twin engines. “I’ve seen you go green just standing on the dock. Relax. Enjoy it. Look at that.” The late summer sunset was spectacular, the western sky and the mirrorlike water aflame with blood-scarlet color.
    Jim shook his head and glared accusingly at the darkening eastern edge of the world, where the bay already gleamed silver. “It wuz the goddamn full moon,” he muttered. “Full moon. It happens every time.”
    â€œI tell you Rick, twenty-seven years is enough. I shudda bailed out a long time ago. I don’t know why I waited this long. My back is killing me from lifting too damn many dead bodies. The job is getting worse, not better. Always on call, the fucking hours, you don’t eat right, you don’t sleep right, you don’t go to the bathroom right … The public doesn’t give a shit. Now with all these damn Cubans…”
    The swarthy young patrolman at the helm, a native of Camagüey Province, swerved smack into a swell, throwing Ransom off balance. The heavyset detective lurched across the deck and clung to a rail. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
    The corpse floated facedown where the mangroves and the roots meet, awash in crystal-clear water over white sand. The mottled skin on his naked body looked gray. Several patrolmen stood by, along with a crime lab photographer. Ransom unfolded a polypropylene body bag. Rick stripped off shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs and stepped gingerly into the shallows for a better look. Bay water lapped gently around his ankles, cool and soothing. Wiggling his toes, he sighed, inhaling a deep breath. Then he sniffed again. The body did not have the usual unmistakable odor. It smelled more like an old septic