Shattered Read Free Page B

Grove knew the meaning, he would find the perp. It was only a matter of time. Grove knew it. His colleagues knew it. Perhaps even the killer knew it.
    Maybe that was why Grove secretly craved the cameras. He was a celebrity now, his recent cases thrusting him onto the public radar screen.
    Grove was the man who had hunted down the demon-haunted Richard Ackerman in the famous Sun City case. He was the guy who caught a ritualistic killer in the eye of Hurricane Fiona. And of course, there were the private battles nobody knew about: the bouts of depression, the spiritual crises, and the push-pull of Grove’s African ancestry. Perhaps most important of all, though, was Grove’s fabled yet grudging relationship with the paranormal. After years of experiencing what can only be described as eerie intuition, he was tired of denying it. “You are who you are, Ulysses,” his shrink had kept repeating only months before Grove had taken the plunge into marriage and fatherhood. And now Grove had taken the advice to heart. He was through fighting his true nature. His métier. His calling.
    Let them watch.
    â€œOkay,” he finally said into the phone. “I’ll call you from the scene, let you know how it’s going.”
    â€œGood. Let’s put the lid on this one before this prick kills again.”
    Grove said good-bye, snapped the phone shut, and went looking for his travel clothes.
    Â 
    Maura rolled over and gazed through sleep-crusted eyes at her husband of exactly eleven months as he primped at the mirror. Even in her groggy, half-conscious state she had to smile. “You know, if I didn’t know better,” she murmured in a hoarse voice, still thick with sleep, “I’d say you were dressing up for some secret booty call.”
    He wheeled around with a start, dropping one of his cuff links on the carpet. “Oh…sorry…I woke you up, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”
    â€œIt’s okay, the milk fairy just dropped by again.” She gestured down at her swollen, heavy breasts, which felt like two inflatable life preservers lying on the mattress next to her. In the six months since she had given birth to Aaron she felt as though her narrow-hipped body had been taken over by aliens. She had gone from a B-cup to a double-D in a matter of weeks, which had delighted Ulysses to no end, but had given Maura about as much sexual pleasure as an anvil strapped to her ass. Now her nipples tingled sorely as she struggled into a sitting position against the headboard. “I like the polka-dot one better with that shirt,” she said with a quick nod toward the closet.
    â€œYou think?” He gave her a quick grin, turning toward his elaborate tie rack. He had at least fifty silk ties of every conceivable pattern and hue meticulously strung along the burnished chrome conveyor.
    â€œAnd I’d go with the Florsheims instead of the Bill Blass,” she added, rubbing her tender breasts, feeling like a water balloon about ready to pop. She watched with a wry sort of amusement as Grove fiddled with his motorized tie rack.
    Ulysses was a fussy dresser, immaculate and finicky about things such as silk shirts and French cuffs and Windsor knots and high-polished Italian loafers. It was something that Maura County had suspected about the man from time she had met him—after all, how could she not notice all the Armani socks and cashmere scarves—but now that they were married, she was witnessing the whole range of this quirky behavior on a daily basis. Even at the wedding last summer, Grove had agonized over the tiniest minutiae such as the color of the groomsmen’s ascots and the shape of the napkin holders. The Bureau guys had teased him unmercifully about it—joking that he should just come out of the closet and be done with it—but it made Maura love him more than ever. Somehow all the fastidiousness seemed to Maura like a defense mechanism—a way