Free Silent Kills by C.E. Lawrence

wacky ideas, like meeting on Poe Rock. It kept him just a little off balance. With Susan Beaumont, he was off balance most of the time—as well as on guard. If Susan did something apparently impulsive, it was for a calculated effect; any appearance of spontaneity was actually the result of careful planning. But Kathy was just the opposite. She had a free, untamed side that was refreshing and invigorating. And when they first met, a bit of invigoration was just what he needed.
    And so at precisely seven o’clock he climbed up the mound of glittering schist and granite to stand next to Kathy, who awaited him with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. The air was mild, but the wind came in gusts, blowing Kathy’s black curls around her head as she bent to pour them champagne.
    “What’s this in honor of?” Lee asked.
    “Nothing. It’s a celebration of absolutely nothing,” she proclaimed, handing him a glass of the sparkling liquid. The bubbles danced and popped as he held it up to the fading light.
    “I know—plastic isn’t too elegant, but glass is too risky. I couldn’t take the chance of breaking one out here,” Kathy said, filling her own goblet.
    “I agree,” he said. “People come out here with their dogs and children all the time. Bringing glass would be irresponsible.”
    She offered him cheese and crackers, and they perched on the hard, smooth stone, still warm from the afternoon sun, contemplating the mighty Hudson flowing beneath them, deep and straight and true.
    On the path below, a small boy scooted along the sidewalk on his Razor, hell-bent for leather, his round face scrunched and intense. A dirty little terrier raced after him, barking maniacally and nipping at the wheels.
    “You know, Edgar Allan Poe is very steampunk,” Kathy said, her mouth full of cheese and crackers. She sprayed a fine mist of crumbs as she spoke.
    “Really?”
    “Sure. Look at ‘The Pit and The Pendulum.’ A man is trapped in a dungeon by the Inquisition, with an infernal machine dangling over him, about to cut him to ribbons. It’s deliciously gothic, isn’t it? Scary and kind of perversely sexy.”
    “Where does the punk element come in?”
    “Well, you’ve got the mad scientist run amok. And the Inquisitors believe their captive is a renegade. Actually, the Inquisition itself was a renegade movement. I mean, in most cultures you don’t strap a guy to a table and suspend a swinging blade over him.”
    Lee shuddered. That story had always given him the willies, more than any other Poe story. What a horrifying premise—being trapped with nothing to do except await your inevitable own demise. Poe’s tortured imagination must have wound down a dark road to come up with that one.
    He looked at the softly fading sun in the park, lacy fingers of light stretching across grass that was only now beginning to brown. Kathy snuggled against him and ran the tips of her fingers lightly over the back of his hand, and once again he felt the primal pull of her body. They were still in that phase of their love affair where attraction is like rainwater, clear and fierce and all-encompassing. Sometimes his desire to touch her was so strong that he had to restrain himself in public. At times like this he was given to musing what a thin membrane separated him from his quarry. Somehow, this man’s desires had molded him into someone who took comfort from other people’s trials and sufferings.
    “So how is it going?” Kathy said. “The investigation, I mean.”
    He considered not telling her about the press leak, then decided it couldn’t do any harm; she might even have some ideas about it.
    “Wow,” she said when he finished. “Do you think it was Krieger?”
    “I don’t see what she would have to gain from it.”
    “Especially if she’s as ambitious as everyone says she is. Who else knew about it?”
    “Well, the people in the toxicology lab, and the pathologist who did the PM .” He thought about the elegant