Read Only Human for Free Online Page B

She sat up, alarmed. "Mother, if you ask Freddie Chen to escort me to Grandmother's party I'll never speak to you again. He's an octopus. A sweaty octopus. With bad breath."
    "Then ask this other man. What is his name?"
    "Rule—" Lilly's beeper went off. "Just a minute. I've got a call." She unclipped the beeper from her belt and checked the number quickly. "Got to go, Mother. I'll call you later."
    "Ask him," her mother said. "Or I will speak to Su Lin." She hung up.
    The number on Lily's beeper was one she knew all too well. She had it on speed dial on both her land line and her cell phone. Lily punched it listened, asked two questions, then headed for the door, grabbing her holster on the way out.

    THIS TIME THE victim was a woman. Charlene Hall had been forty-eight, African American, probably single. No wedding ring, and her credit cards were in her name. She had a California driver's license, an unpaid traffic ticket, and a whole slew of those wallet-sized school photos millions of parents buy every year.
    A dozen pictures, Lily thought, her gut clenched tight with pity. All of the same two boys, taken over many years. The two pictures on top were the most recent. One showed a young man in a sailor's dress uniform, his dark face solemn, his eyes gleaming with pride. The other was a family shot minus the husband-father element. The boy who in one photo had been missing three teeth was a young man now, his smile still wide and happy. He wore a suit in this photograph, and stood behind a young woman holding a baby dressed in blue ruffles and lace.
    Charlene Hall had taken these photographs with her everywhere. Even when she went for a run by the lake atMissionTrailsPark.
    Lily glanced at the body, almost ignored at the moment. Charlene had worn the same brand of running shoe Lily favored. Lily sighed. It was too much to hope that her mother wouldn't read about this.
    There was no crowd this time, and so far no press. Just the police, a couple of park rangers, the victim, and the poor guy who'd found her. They were only twenty yards from the start of the trail near the sturdy adobe building where tourists bought sodas, postcards, and film. Charlene had nearly made it back when the killer struck.
    Lily was talking with the man who'd found Charlene when Rule arrived.
    "Detective?" called one of the patrol officers from farther up the trail. "This the guy you're waiting for?"
    She turned. Rule stood beside the officer at the edge of the lights cast by the police spots. His face was shadowed, his expression shuttered. He was wearing black.
    Rule waited for Lily to come to him. He was a patient man, he reminded himself. Which was just as well. He would need to be. If she felt what he did, she was fighting it. Maybe she
    felt nothing more than a sexual buzz. He rubbed his chest, but the ache wasn't one he could touch.
    The scents were rich here, away from the nose-clogging odors of the city. The green smells of growing things mingled in a pattern too complex to easily yield its separate notes, but he was aware of creosote, cypress and sumac, wild mustard and cholla. The lake, invisible from where he stood, was a rich, damp presence blending water, fish, a whiff of decay. He smelled dust and people, one or more of whom gave off the faint, sour tang of fear.
    The ground was hard and dry beneath his feet. A lumpy three-quarter moon squatted near the horizon, peering at them through the dark lace of leaves in the trees to his right. He felt its pull in his blood, a song without words or notes: one long, slow pulse timed to a rhythm those around him would never hear.
    He couldn't see the body. Too many people were in the way. But he smelled blood, sweet and sharp. And waste, the body's involuntary surrender to the insult of sudden death.
    Lily stopped in front of him, her pretty black eyes flat and official, but the pulse in her throat throbbing. “Thank you for coming right away."
    "I want the killing stopped, too."
    She nodded and