Rumor of Evil by Gary Braver EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Gary Braver
- Language: English
- Genre:Witch & Wizard Thrillers
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2.2 MB
- Price: Free
THE DEAD WOMAN was suspended by the neck from a rope tied to a low
branch of a aming sugar maple in her backyard. Her head was upright to
the slant of her body, which angled forward from bent knees, and the toes of
her boots just grazed the ground as if she were in the middle of a balletic
leap. Her neck looked hyper-stretched against the polyvinyl noose; and not
only was her skin void of the ush of life, but over the hours it had turned
blue-gray. Her eyes were slits of red jelly, and her tongue protruded through
her teeth like a slug. She was dressed in sage-green jeans, a black sweater
over a white shirt, argyle socks, and a new-looking pair of New Balance
shoes. A scent of perfume lingered as he studied the ligature.
Detective Kirk Lucian had seen too many ugly scenes in his twenty-one
years as a Cambridge homicide detective. At times he wondered why he
didn’t apply for a teaching job in the police academy or at some school with
a criminal justice department as his wife, Olivia, had urged. Murders were
always unsettling because they were mostly about some disturbed creep
exacting revenge. But suicides bothered him more because they were about
despair and hopelessness of victims who could no longer endure the one life
they had been given. And the forever message: Look how I’ve suffered.
But there was something obscene about hangings, especially this one
since Kirk could not stop looking at the woman’s distended neck, as if her
head would rip off from her torso at any moment.
The woman’s house was a yellow Victorian with white trim and black
shutters, with a mansard roof and slate tiles—like so many of the august and
pricey homes on side streets off Brattle, within a mile of Harvard Square.
Evidence of autumn was everywhere as cold winds had scattered leaves
luxuriously across the lawn. And although the house needed a new paint
job, new shutters and chimney work, the backyard, walled in by trees, was
meticulously groomed, with an expanse of still-lush yard grass around a
brick patio lined with potted yellow chrysanthemums, purple asters, rose
bushes, all still in bloom on this bright November day. Puffs of clouds
oated across a delft blue sky and birds chirped through the air. A large
calico cat snuffled at something in the grass. But for the clutch of uniformed
officers, ME techs, and Cambridge PD personnel, the hanging woman
looked so grossly out of place that the scene could have been a detail from
Hieronymus Bosch.
But something else about the scene pecked at Kirk’s mind.
“It looks like she’s been dead for two to three hours,” said Dr. Chad
Davidson, Chief Medical Examiner, who was studying the ligatures of the
dead woman’s neck through a magnifying glass. Behind him was an assistant
taking photographs.
Kirk nodded. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Sylvie Cox Thornton, age thirty-six,” said Mandy Wing,
Kirk’s partner of two weeks. “Her ex resides in Belmont with their son,
Aaron, age eighteen, freshman at Dartmouth. She lost another son, Devon,
three years ago to cancer.”
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