Avenging Angel Read Free

said nothing about that because they weren’t really talking about Polly or her dinner. This was something more important—it was about Max, his partner. And the reason for that fight and the coolness that resulted. It was the first time since the Tony-O thing that Axton had said a word about getting together outside a patrol car.
    But if it took Axton almost a year to get over blaming him for something he knew was damn well right, then maybe Wager wasn’t too eager to kiss and make up.
    “That’s a long way off,” he said again.
    “I hope you can make it.” Axton’s eyes were back studying the light traffic of the freeway. “I mean that.”
    And, just maybe, Wager had his own pride, which Axton had stepped on. “I’ll check with Jo.”
    The rest of the ride was in the silence that had become habitual and almost without strain during the past months: two people arbitrarily yoked together to put in their time. Neither one had been willing to go to Chief Doyle to ask for a change of partner because that would have been acting like a prima donna. Golding might have done it, but not Wager or Axton. Homicide was a small division, and there wasn’t room to coddle personalities. Especially if neither man could tell the division chief the real reason for such a request. But if Axton felt guilty because his partner had abetted a homicide, that was his problem. Wager felt no guilt at all. He was, as he’d heard people call him, a tough little spic bastard, and he was proud of it. What the hell, you didn’t have to like your partner; all you had to do was work with him. Wager could tell himself that, and he could almost believe it.
    When he reached his shadowy apartment, the little light on Wager’s telephone-answering machine glowed red for Message Received. Reading the instruction booklet once more, he carefully pressed the Rewind button and waited as the tape whirred dryly. The machine was new, a toy really, and though he wouldn’t be shy about admitting he owned one, neither did Wager tell the world about it. For one thing, he was still suspicious of the home-gadget industry and the fact that Golding had bought one and praised it for three weeks straight. For another, it was nobody’s business what Wager did with his money. And he’d bought the machine for good reason: there were occasions when people wanted to talk to him without having to go through a police switchboard. Usually those voices came on the tape with a hurried “Wager, it’s me. I got something for you. Get in touch with me quick, will you?”
    But this wasn’t an informant. The Play button brought the slightly nasal voice of a policewoman in Missing Persons, responding to the note he had left there before he went home for the day.
    “Detective Wager, we have no report of a missing person matching that John Doe description you gave us. We should have a report from the national listing sometime tomorrow.”
    The tape clicked and then ran long enough to tell him that was the only message. He pressed Rewind and Off and dialed the police laboratory. A recording of Baird’s voice told him what he already knew: the laboratory was closed and would be open tomorrow morning at eight. Please call back. Click.
    Wager hung up and gazed through the glass doors to his balcony at the scarlet feathers of cloud hanging beyond the ragged lines of mountains. At this altitude, the summer light lasted well into evening, and there were times, like now, when the sun touched wisps of cloud lingering a hundred miles away across the Rockies. If he were in those mountains, say camped beside one of those small lakes that looked as if they clung to the earth’s tilted flanks, this would be the time for those last few casts. The mosquitoes and night insects would be out, the still water circled here and there with rising trout and the quick touch of dipping insects. Just the time for half a dozen quiet casts; time to try for that last savage strike and the intense play of