Lieberman's Choice Read Free

definitely on the way down the stairs. He could hear the wooden steps creaking. Escape was no longer possible.
    â€œBernie Shepard lives here too. Looks like about an hour ago he came home, found his wife in bed with Andy Beeton, and blew them both to hell and back.”
    Lieberman said nothing.
    He did not believe in prophetic dreams. He didn’t disbelieve either. He would wait till he had gathered more evidence, and if the evidence did not come, he could live with the mystery. Less than an hour ago he had dreamed of Frankie Kraylaw, a man who had threatened to kill his wife. Perhaps he had dreamed it at the same moment Bernie Shepard had …
    â€œAbe, you there?”
    â€œI’m here, Bill. Kearney know?”
    â€œNo, you’re the first to hear the pleasant tidings. Congratulations.”
    â€œI’ll tell Nestor to find Kearney,” said Lieberman. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” He hung up.
    Lieberman knew them all, Shepard, his wife, Olivia, and Andy Beeton. Beeton, a detective out of Edgewater, he knew the least, but he vaguely remembered that Beeton was married and had a big wife. There was nothing else he could think of at the moment, pro or con, about Beeton. Bernie Shepard, however, was a story, a bull of a man about ten years younger than Abe, a man with a temper, a man no one really wanted to work with, but a man who everyone agreed was an honest, good cop. Bernie was the kind who volunteered for cleanups, who had a bad word to say about SWAT teams, who trusted no one, and got along with only one partner, Alan Kearney, who six weeks ago had become captain at the Clark Street Station and Lieberman’s boss.
    Shepard had married Olivia about ten years earlier. The story he heard was that Kearney had met her when she had been assaulted less than an hour after she got off the Greyhound from Muscatine, Iowa. He had helped her to find work, had introduced her to Bernie Shepard. Lieberman remembered her from Kearney’s promotion party a few months ago. She had long hair and large eyes, and was shy. Lieberman remembered that, but her face wouldn’t come to him. Instead of Olivia Shepard’s face, he saw Jeanine Kraylaw, the young, frightened wife of Frankie Kraylaw about whom Lieberman had just dreamed.
    Lieberman put down the phone and looked at Lisa as she opened the kitchen door and came in.
    Lisa was wearing her pink robe with a frilly collar. Her dark hair was tied back. She looked pretty. She looked young and she looked miserable. From the day of her birth, the Liebermans’ only child had been, in her father’s opinion, “serious.” She had been a beautiful child who took in everything and seldom laughed aloud. She had been a wonder student. She had gone to Mather High School and then to the University of Chicago, where she had met a serious young assistant professor of classics with a love of Greek tragedy. They had two children and lived, although Lieberman was not aware of it till a month go, discontentedly ever after.
    â€œI’m hungry, but I don’t want to eat anything,” she said, moving past him to the refrigerator. “I get depressed and eat. I eat and I get fat and I hate myself. I’ll look like Aunt Rose. I can’t afford to look like Aunt Rose and hate myself right now. I can be a little displeased with myself, but not hate. I heard the phone ring.”
    â€œYeah, I’ve got to make a call and go,” he said, watching her eye the contents of the refrigerator critically.
    â€œA murder?” Lisa asked, reaching for a see-through bag of bagels Lieberman had brought home from Maish’s.
    â€œYes,” he said, dialing the station. “There’s some cream cheese with chives at the back, on the second shelf.”
    Nestor Briggs answered the phone. Nestor always answered the phone at the Clark Street Station at night. Nestor liked to work nights and double shifts. Nestor did not like to go