Impulse Read Free Page B

Mr. Pithoe. He didn’t want to talk at first. Sullen and blank-faced. It took me ten minutes just to get five words out of him. Tomorrow I’ll try my little-sister approach. That might make him respond better. I sure hope so. I can’t count on more than two visits to him.”
    “I still don’t like you dealing with the dregs of humanity.”
    She poured herself some coffee. It brought patience. “We’re both reporters. We deal with all kinds of dregs, including the newsroom coffee. You deal with politicians—can you get more dicey than that?”
    “At least they can all read and write.”
    “Which makes them all the more dangerous.”
    “What did the man say?”
    Aha, he wanted all the dirt, the hypocrite. “I’m keeping it under wraps right now. I have to, even with you. It’s the way Al wants it.”
    Rafaella could tell that Gene was put off by her tonight. She wanted to laugh. He’d winced when she said “damn” earlier. She also realized at that moment that she usually tended to censor herself when she was with him. She looked at him now, saw the expression of dissatisfaction that marred his mouth. She was beginning to think she’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t an intellectual, just a bore and a chauvinist.
    Thank goodness she hadn’t gone to bed with him. He probably would have been mortified in the morning and accused her of having compromised him. Thatmade her smile, and she thought of the message taped on the wall in the
Trib
’s women’s room: BE THE VIRGIN OF THE MONTH. STAY HEALTHY .
    She was still smiling as she said, “You’re right, Gene. Tomorrow’s an early day.” She rose and walked to the front closet, hoping he’d follow. He did. She helped him on with his fur-lined Burberry and stepped back. He looked at her for a moment, then said good night and left.
    No good-night kiss for her. This was probably the end of the line with Gene Mallory. No big loss when you got right down to it, for either of them.
    Rafaella methodically locked the door, slid home the dead bolt, and fastened the two chain locks. It was very likely unnecessary having all this paraphernalia in Brammerton, Massachusetts, but she was a single woman living alone. She walked into her living room, furnished with an eclectic collection of Nouveau Goodwill, as her mother fondly referred to her trappings, and went to the large bay window. It was quiet outside; snow covered the street and glistened under the streetlamps.
    It was always quiet here in Brammerton. A small town some twenty miles southeast of Boston, near Braintree, Brammerton used to be wildly blue collar. Now it was next to nothing, the paper mill having closed its doors in the late eighties and moved elsewhere. There weren’t even companionable drunks out singing at the tops of their lungs on Saturday nights. It wasn’t a bit like Boston. There wasn’t a single university within Brammerton’s city limits, nor had there ever been one. It was a town filling up with retired people and social-security checks.
    Rafaella shut off all the lights and went to bed. It was her favorite thinking time, those fifteen or so minutes before falling asleep. If she had a problem, she’d set it up before she went to sleep, fully expecting asolution to appear the following morning. Solutions frequently did appear.
    She didn’t spare any more time for Gene Mallory.
    All her thoughts focused on Freddy Pithoe and what he hadn’t said to her that morning. It could be that Al’s nose was right again, because now her gut was twisting in that weird way when things weren’t actually as they were thought to be. She’d carefully read the police report and the three shrinks’ reports. She’d also forced herself to go through the coroner’s report and the crime-lab pictures taken of the three dead family members. She thought of those now. Of the information in them, and more important, of the information not in them.
    And again and again she found herself coming back to one