While Galileo Preys

Free While Galileo Preys by Joshua Corin Page B

Book: While Galileo Preys by Joshua Corin Read Free Book Online
Authors: Joshua Corin
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Thrillers
smoked her fifteenth Marlboro of the day.
    Spending Valentine’s Day outside of her hometown blew.
    Her informant showed up an hour late, but he was a cop, so his tardiness was not entirely unexpected. As soon as his metallic gold Crown Victoria whipped into view, she flicked the nub of her cigarette into outer space and took out her notebook. The guy didn’t like to be tape-recorded. Few snitches did.
    He parked across the painted lines. He didn’t leave his car. He motioned for her to join him inside.
    With a sigh, Lilly hopped off her VW and wandered to the passenger side of his Crown Vic. So this was how it was going to be.
    The cop’s name was Ray Milton. He’d served on the Amarillo Police Department for eleven years. He worked in Property/Evidence and had known two of the slain firefighters personally. He bummed a Marlboro off her an hour before the memorial service.
    Five minutes into the conversation, he was bitching about how the feds had stolen the case. Ten minutes into their conversation, they’d agreed to a quid pro quo: Ray would supply her with the leverage she needed to infiltrate the task force (namely, the bit about the shoe boxes). In return, once on the inside, she would funnel back to him updates on the case’s status. If the Amarillo P.D. was going to be benched, it at least was going to get to watch the game.
    And so, upon learning from a very gabby receptionist in city hall about Esme Stuart’s impending arrival (11:45 a.m. tomorrow morning), Lilly phoned Ray. She zipped her VW to the meeting spot she designated, the abandoned parking garage, and so, here they were, at 11:45 p.m., in Ray’s twenty-year-old metallic gold Crown Victoria.
    Which smelled like cinnamon.
    This confused Lilly to no end. She’d expected the familiar tang of slow sweet death she inhaled every time she lit up, but no. Cinnamon. Then she noticed the red cardboard leaf dangling from Ray’s rearview mirror. Ah. Cinnamon. The man probably had kids and didn’t want to reek up the car pool on the way to Little League. Had he mentioned kids? After the memorial service, Lilly had done a background check on her informant just to verify his details, badge number, etc. One could never be too careful. But the data she’d accumulated had made no mention of kids. Whatever.
    “So what’s your big news?” he asked.
    His brown eyes bulged with eagerness.
    Down boy, she mused.
    “Yeah, I see you hustled right over here,” she replied. Waiting an hour in the middle of February in a nowhere-to-go-nothing-to-do city had been less than fun. “If you got here any faster, we could’ve had breakfast.”
    “Sorry. Had an errand to run. Didn’t expect you to call so soon.”
    “What can I say, Ray? I missed your sweet Texas charm.”
    He scowled, charmingly.
    She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Jeez. So here’s the scoop—your pals at the FBI have got a ringer flying in from New York.”
    “A ringer?”
    “Her name’s Esmeralda Stuart. And you should’ve seen Special Agent Piper when he told his crew the news. It was like he was talking about the Second Coming. Apparently she’s some kind of savant. I don’t know.”
    Lilly was lying. She did know. As soon as Tom Piper had made the announcement, she’d beelined for her Hello Kitty laptop and gleaned as much information on Esme Stuart as was available. But Ray Milton didn’t need to know that. Ray Milton needed to know what she decided he needed to know. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and baby, that boy won’t need you no more.
    Ray studied his steering wheel for a moment. Then: “When is she arriving?”
    “Tomorrow morning.”
    “Thank you.” He smiled at her. His teeth were eggshell white. He must spray them or something—no smoker has teeth like that. “Maybe the FBI knows what they’re doing after all.”
    “Nobody knows what they’re doing, Ray. That’s what makes it all so much fun.”
    She saluted the middle-aged cop

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