Lethal People: A Donovan Creed Crime Novel Read Free

in front of me.
    “What are my choices?”
    “Thunderstorm, ice storm, cloudy, or sunny,” Lou Kelly said.
    My o ffi ce apartment was above ground, but windows could get you killed, so I didn’t have any. My o ffi ce walls were two feet thick and completely soundproof, so I couldn’t automatically rule out a thunderstorm. But it was early February, and I’d been outside yesterday. I drank some of my protein shake. Yesterday had been clear and sunny.
    “I’ll take cloudy,” I said.
    Lou frowned. “Why do I even bother?” He fished two fifties from his pocket and placed them beside the folder.
    “Nothing worse than a degenerate gambler,” I said.
    Lou pointed at the folder. “You might want to reserve judgment on that,” he said. He reached down and tapped the folder twice with his index finger for emphasis.
    Lou Kelly was my lieutenant, my ultimate go-to guy. We’d been together fifteen years, including our stint in Europe with the CIA. I took another swallow of my protein shake and stared at the manila folder.
    “Give me the gist,” I said.
    “Your daughter was right not to trust this guy,” Lou said.
    I nodded. I’d known the minute I answered the phone last week that something was wrong. Kimberly, generally a good judge of character, particularly when it came to her mother’s boyfriends, had felt the need to tell me about a curious incident. Kimberly had said, “Tonight Ken broke a glass in his hand. One minute he’s holding a drink, the next minute his hand’s full of blood!” She went on to explain that her mom (my ex-wife, Janet) had made a snide remark that should have elicited a withering response from her new fiancé. Instead, Chapman put his hands behind his back, stared o ff into space, and said nothing. When Janet whirled out of the room in anger, Chapman squeezed the glass so hard that it shattered in his hands. Kimberly had been in the loft watching the scene unfold. “There’s something wrong with this guy, Dad. He’s too …” she searched for a word. “I don’t know. Passive-aggressive? Bipolar? Something’s not right.”
    I agreed and told her I’d look into it.
    “Don’t tell Mom I said anything, okay?” Kimberly had said.
    In front of me, Lou Kelly cleared his throat. “You okay?”
    I clapped my hands together. “Wonderful!” I said. “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
    Lou studied me a moment. Then he said, “Ken and Kathleen Chapman have been divorced for two years. Ken is forty-two, lives in Charleston, West Virginia. Kathleen is thirty-six, lives in North Bergen, works in Manhattan.”
    I waved my hand in the general direction of his chatter. “The gist,” I reminded him.
    Lou Kelly frowned. “The gist is our boy Chapman has serious anger issues.”
    “How serious?”
    “He was an accomplished wife-beater.”
    “Was?” I said.
    “There is evidence to suggest he’s reformed.”
    “What type of evidence?” I asked. “Empirical or pharmacological?”
    Lou looked at me for what seemed a very long time. “How long you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?”
    I grinned and said, “A generous vocabulary is a sure sign of intellectual superiority.”
    “Must be a lot of room in your head now that you’ve let them out,” he deadpanned.
    “Let’s continue,” I said. “I’ve got a headache.”
    “And why wouldn’t you?” he said. Then he added, “According to the letter his shrink presented to the court, Chapman appears to have overcome his aggression.”
    “A chemical imbalance,” I suggested.
    “Words to that e ff ect,” Lou said.
    I gave Lou his money back and spent a couple minutes flipping through the police photos and domestic violence reports. The pictures of Kathleen Chapman would be considered obscenely brutal by any standard, but violence was my constant companion and I’d seen much worse. Still, I was surprised to find myself growing strangely sympathetic to her injuries. I kept going back to two of the