Read The Price of Innocence for Free Online Page A

men in the most resplendent uniforms present.
    ‘Are you getting anywhere on the investigation?’
    ‘No. You been OK? No nightmares, anything like that?’
    She shook her head. ‘Why would I be traumatized? It was over before I knew enough to feel afraid, and whoever did it obviously had no interest in me.’ Her car had been parked right behind Davis’. The shooter needed only to come inside the unlocked house to find her, alone and unarmed. But he hadn’t. He had come to kill Marty Davis only.
    Leaving the body for her to explain, the day after she’d nearly been blown to bits. Theresa allowed herself a moment of self-pity. Suddenly she had been surrounded by bodies. So much death.
    Then she remembered that she worked in a morgue and spent every day surrounded by bodies, and that absurdity forced out a strangled chuckle. To cover it she asked if Frank had located any family.
    ‘None. Only a mother, now deceased, who bought these cemetery plots. She must have figured her boy for the eternal bachelor type. No siblings, no kids, no exes, not even a current girlfriend. He left all his belongings to some woman who’s still in the area but hasn’t contacted us yet. Of course he filled out the beneficiary form shortly after he began working for the department so she may have completely forgotten about him by now.’
    ‘That’s pretty sad.’
    ‘I’ll find out this afternoon when I go talk to her. Let’s hope the bigwigs are brief, or we’re all going to be soaked to the skin before this is over. I should go stand with the rest of the unit. You want to—’
    ‘I’ll stay here.’ She still felt awkward, out of place.
    ‘Probably a good idea. There’s press here, you know they’ll be on you like flies on honey if they recognize you.’
    ‘I’ve got it. Say it’s an open investigation and nothing else, not even the tiniest detail.’
    ‘There’s so little to go on as it is.’
    Thanks to me
, she almost said aloud, but instead just summoned up a smile as he squeezed her elbow, then threaded his way between two women in their thirties standing in front of Theresa. They were not in uniform. One sniffled, raising a damp tissue to her nose.
    The melancholy settled on Theresa’s shoulders once more. People weren’t supposed to die on her watch. They were supposed to
be
dead already, before they got to her watch.
    The mist abruptly stopped dripping on to her scalp, and a glance upward told her why. A tall blond man had stepped up beside her; by holding his black umbrella slightly off center he gave her some protection and still kept himself dry. She glanced up with a quick, grateful smile, which he returned. Then he returned his attention to the people closest to the grave, who were obviously preparing to speak.
    The girl in the trench coat sniffled again. This earned her, instead of sympathy, a derisive glance from her companion. ‘Come on. You didn’t even know him.’
    ‘I did too. I must have dispatched him to twenty calls a week, for the past four years.’
    ‘He was just a voice on the radio.’
    ‘They’re all voices on the radio, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get to know them. I can tell when they’re excited or they’re bored or they’re having a bad day. Can’t you?’
    ‘Yeah. And he was always having a bad day.’
    Trench Coat sniffled again. ‘That’s not true. He would never get snippy with me, no matter how busy things got. You’re just mad because he broke Devin’s nose. That was three years ago.’
    ‘Well, why did he have to brawl with his own friends? Why couldn’t he be like any other self-respecting cop and beat up suspects when he needs to unwind?’ She chuckled at her own joke. At least Theresa hoped it was a joke.
    ‘He was too professional,’ Trench Coat insisted, but weakly.
    ‘Hah. He did a traffic stop on Sunday for a busted brake light, and after I ran the plate he let the guy go. You know why?’
    ‘Shhh.’ The chaplain had cleared his throat and begun,