Read The Fregoli Delusion for Free Online Page B

chin down the hallway. “This way,
Lieutenant.”
    “Thanks.” Hank moved around Jarvis
and nodded at Carleson, glancing involuntarily, as he always did, at the jagged
scar on the detective’s pale, shaven scalp, the result of an altercation involving
a broken beer bottle and an angry drunk when he was a rookie patrol officer.
    Carleson led him down the hall to
a small staircase on the right, just short of the kitchen. “Down the stairs and
straight ahead through the door. They’re in the back yard.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Jarvis is a prick, but he’s
right. Didn’t you get the word?”
    Hank looked at him. Carleson had
skipped shaving this morning, and the stubble on his pasty skin looked like
grains of pepper spilled on a tablecloth. He was taller than Hank by about two
inches, but much bonier. They’d always gotten along well enough in Homicide,
and Hank had no reason to believe that Carleson harbored any ill will against
him. He understood that when Jarvis had offered the secondment to his task
force, Carleson had correctly recognized it as an important career move.
    “Martinez probably found out after
you sent Peralta and Horvath over,” Carleson went on. “Maybe she left a message
on your cell.”
    “Maybe.” Hank went down the stairs
and through the door into a narrow space between this building and the next. He
walked down to the back yard, a small rectangle of dead grass and weeds
littered with garbage, bicycle parts, and a rusted child’s swing set.
    Horvath looked relieved to see
him. He stepped forward and touched Hank’s arm, turning him around. They went
back into the space between the buildings.
    “Her husband got here ten minutes
ago. Byrne cleared him to come back here; they’ve already processed the
outside. He’s talking to her now.”
    “What happened?”
    Horvath rubbed his face with both
hands. “It’s a bad one, Hank, but not that much worse than what she’s seen
before. The old man and woman were in an upstairs bedroom, tied and gagged.
They were tortured with knives. The woman was raped and they cut off the old
man’s dick before they shot them both in the head. Both sons were home at the
time and both were shot downstairs, one in the hall and one in the kitchen.
Looks like they broke through the front door, took out the two downstairs,
caught the parents before they could get away, and dragged them upstairs.”
    “Executions,” Hank said.
    “Exactly. A message from the
Dragon Head to anyone stupid enough to think they can disobey. Both sons have
the usual Triad tatts, so I’m guessing they supported the wrong side. There’s a
lot of blood. The bastards used it to scrawl Chinese signs all over the bedroom
wall. I don’t know what they mean, but I’d say they’re a pretty clear message
to whoever’s supposed to read them.”
    “Peralta,” Hank prompted.
    “Yeah.” Horvath swallowed. “We
were here, what, ten minutes, looking around, talking to the responding
officers, the usual, when she walked up to me in the kitchen and threw up all
over my shoes. Then she just knelt down and started to cry. I couldn’t get her
to stop. I’ve never seen anything like it before, not from a cop, you know? I
finally got her outside into the back yard here and tried to get her to calm
down. Nothing I said made any difference. She looked at me and said, ‘I can’t
do this anymore, Jim,’ and I said, ‘Sure you can, A.P. You’re a tough
sonofabitch.’ It was the wrong thing to say, I guess. She shut down on me.”
    “I see.” Hank chewed on his lower
lip. Peralta was known as a competent, fearless, serious-minded detective.
Married for four years, she and her husband, the principal of a high school in
Springhill, had no children. They lived in an apartment near the university.
Peralta had been talking about buying a small house closer to her husband’s
school.
    He patted Horvath on the arm and
went back into the yard. Peralta was sitting on the ground a few feet away from
the