Read The Dead Will Tell for Free Online Page B

except for the back porch light and the bulb above the stove, which he keeps on for me when he knows I’ll be arriving home late. I let myself in, anticipating a shower, a warm bed, and the feel of him solid against me as I drift off to sleep. The aroma of homemade spaghetti—onions, green peppers, and garlic—still lingers when I enter the kitchen, and I smile because I like this new life I’ve stepped into. The domesticity. Having someone I can count on. Someone I look forward to seeing at the end of the day. Someone I love …
    Leaving my boots next to the door, I set my keys on the counter and drape my holster and jacket over the back of a chair. I’m midway to the stairs where our bedroom is when a voice comes out of the darkness.
    “Kate.”
    I startle and spin. I spot Tomasetti’s silhouette against the living room window. He’s standing ten feet away, something in his hand. I have a sort of sixth sense when it comes to his frame of mind, and I know immediately something has changed since I left a few hours ago. There’s an edge in his voice that unsettles me. Something else in the way he’s standing there, not moving.
    I start toward him, suddenly needing to touch him. To make sure he’s really there. That he’s okay. That we’re okay. “I thought you’d be sleeping.”
    “Couldn’t sleep.”
    I stop a couple of feet from him, wishing I could see his face. That’s when I notice the bottle in his hand. The careless way he’s holding the neck. I smell cigarettes and whiskey on his breath and I know whatever it is that has changed, it’s bad. “What’s wrong?”
    “Joey Ferguson walked today.”
    The words strike me with the force of a physical blow. Joey Ferguson is the last living person involved with the murders of Tomasetti’s wife and children three years ago in Cleveland. According to the evidence and witness statements, he hadn’t participated in the assaults on Nancy Tomasetti or the two preteen girls, Donna and Kelly. But he’d driven the getaway car and he’d helped set the house on fire afterward. The fire that ultimately killed them. The trial had been over a year ago. Tomasetti had taken the stand and painted a horrific picture for the jury, telling them what he found the night he came home to a burning house. That when he’d left that morning, he’d been a husband and father of two. When he arrived home that night, his family was dead, murdered by a career criminal intent on intimidating a cop who’d dared cross him. The media had capitalized on every minute of it, running photo after photo of Tomasetti’s pretty wife and his curly-haired little girls, sensationalizing a brutal triple murder that had destroyed a family, shocked the country—and sent Tomasetti spiraling out of control.
    But the evidence against Ferguson was sketchy. We’d been relieved and left with a sense of closure when he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to thirty years in prison. But his high-profile, high-powered attorney immediately appealed. Tomasetti hadn’t talked about it. Not once. We didn’t discuss it or let it into this new life we’ve built for ourselves. But I know he followed the proceedings.
    “What?” I blurt. “How?”
    “He got off on a chain-of-command technicality.”
    For an interminable moment, I can’t speak; I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to reconcile this or help him deal with it, and I’m filled with a sense of injustice and impotence.
    “I’m sorry.” I reach for him, but he moves back slightly. “What can I do?” I ask.
    “Thanks, Kate, but I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do. It’s done.”
    For the span of a full minute, the only sound comes from the tap of rain on the roof. The water running through the spouting. The slap of it against the ground as it overflows gutters that are clogged with leaves. And for the first time in the four months that I’ve been living here with him, I feel something lonely