Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand Read Free Page A

didn't say. But her killer tried to frame me by putting an ace of spades on the body."
    "Frame you? Why?"
    Brennan looked at her for the first time. "I don't know. But I'm going to find out."
    "The police-"
    "The police think I did it."
    "That's insane," Jennifer said. "We haven't been to the city for over a year."
    They'd been so busy that it hadn't seemed that long since Brennan had called off his vendetta against the Shadow Fist crime lord named Kien and left New York City with Jennifer. They'd spent some time traveling, some time resting and healing and learning to love one another, then settled down outside of Goshen, a small town just north of New York City. Jennifer had begun writing what she hoped would become the definitive biography of Robert Tomlin. Brennan, weary of dealing in death, wanting to build rather than destroy, had started a landscaping business. He found that he had a genuine talent for horticulture, and Jennifer was happy researching and writing her book. They'd been quite content with their quiet, peaceful, isolated existence.
    "Someone set me up," Brennan said in a low voice. "Who?"
    He looked at Jennifer. "Kien."
    She leaned back, considering it. "Why?"
    Brennan shrugged. "Maybe he found out that Chrysalis knew he was head of the Shadow Fists. Maybe he thought that he could get rid of her and me at the same time."
    "The police would never find you if we stay here."
    "Maybe," Brennan conceded. "But maybe they'll never find Chrysalis's real killer, either."
    "We're building something here," Jennifer said. "We can't just let it go."
    Let it go. It should be easy, Brennan told himself, to let the past go, to live for the present and the future. But he couldn't. Someone had murdered his ex-lover. He couldn't forget that. And then the murderer had framed him for it. He couldn't forgive that. .
    He stood up. "I'm not letting anything go. I can't." Jennifer just looked at him. After a moment he turned and went out to the back and unlocked the shed where he kept his bows and guns. He loaded the van and sat waiting in it for several minutes, wondering if Jennifer was going to join him.
    After a while he started the engine and drove away, alone.
    Noon
    Maseryk played the good cop, Kant played the bad cop, and both of them deserved rave reviews. Jay Ackroyd had seen the act before, though. Maseryk was lean and dark, with intense violet eyes. Kant was a hairless scaled joker with nictitating membranes and pointed teeth. As Jay ran through his story for the seventh time, he found himself wondering whether they swapped roles when the suspect was a joker. He took one look at Kant and decided not to ask.
    By lunchtime, even the two detectives had gotten tired of going round the mulberry bush. "If you're playing games with us, you're going to be real sorry," Kant said, showing his incisors.
    Jay gave him a who, me? look. "I'm sure Mr. Ackroyd's told us everything he knows, Harv," Maseryk said. "If you do happen to remember anything else that might be of use, you'll give us a call." Maseryk gave him his card, Kant told him not to leave town, and they walked him to the squad room to sign a copy of his statement.
    The precinct house was full of familiar faces. The doorman from the Crystal Palace was giving a statement to a uniformed cop while a waitress that Chrysalis has fired last month sobbed loudly in the corner. Other Palace employees waited on long wooden benches by the window. He recognized three waiters, a dishwasher, and the guy who played ragtime piano in the Green Room on Thursday nights. But the most important faces were the ones he didn't see.
    Lupo, the relief bartender, sat alone by an unoccupied desk. After he'd dealt with the paperwork, Jay drifted over. "Can you believe it?" the joker asked. "What's going to happen to us?" Lupo had deep-set red eyes and a wolfs face. He'd been shedding; there were hairs all over the shoulders of his denim shirt. Jay brushed them off. Lupo hardly seemed to notice. "I