Free Dead Last by James W. Hall Page A

around his waist.
    “I know you punched the ticket for at least half a dozen people over the years. Always for some righteous cause, of course, or in self-defense. Maybe the people you took down were bad guys, maybe they weren’t, but any way you look at it, you’ve got serious blood on your hands.”
    Thorn stepped back to the counter and looked around at the bare room.
    “I also know that for the last twenty years, you’ve been a party to one disaster after another. People around you die on a regular basis.
    “I know you had a steady stream of women in and out of your bedroom. And hardly any of those ladies came to a good end. All in all, you’ve put together an impressive list of fuck-ups.”
    She stared coolly into his eyes the way Sugarman did when speaking some hard truth. It was a cop thing, that disengagement, a necessary discipline in police work—the way they insulated themselves from all the crazed morons they had to deal with, ones who’d lost contact with reason and moral clarity. Cops tended to go far off in the other direction, becoming coldly rational, neutral, rulebook bound. At least on the outside.
    “I also know you tie some kind of fishing lures that you sell to a bunch of fussy fishermen. The cash that brings in just gets you by. And I know you don’t have a social security card or a driver’s license or any kind of legal ID. You graduated from high school but dropped out of college like you dropped out of pretty much everything. Don’t socialize, keep to yourself, a hermit, push everybody away except your private eye buddy Sugarman and an occasional lucky lady. Or at least they think they’re lucky at first. Until they’re dead because of you.”
    “That’s enough,” Thorn said.
    “I also know the only reason you legally married Rusty Stabler was ’cause she was dying of stage-four pancreatic cancer and you thought it would make her happy to be married. And it did. It made her damn happy. So mark up one success. You made Rusty Stabler happy for a month. Thank god for that.”
    Thorn was silent. Peering at her, trying to see past that mask of tats.
    “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Thorn, but now that I have a firsthand look, I believe I’m beginning to get the real picture. Here you are, all tragic and tender and starry-eyed, with your sandy hair and your square jaw and blue Romeo eyes. Which helps explain all those good-hearted, innocent women falling onto your mattress.
    “But we both know there’s another guy inside, a wild-eyed screwup with a taste for risk and ruination. Just so happens, I spent years studying your type. Mind you, it wasn’t because I particularly wanted to.
    “My own daddy played your game. A charmer who came across as decent and moral, as upright as any man you ever met. Everything dark and twisted he did always started out with noble intentions.
    “A lot of upstanding ladies fell for his act. But it was all a fraud. ’Cause inside that man, in his heart of hearts, he wasn’t looking for a woman to love and nurture, he was scouting the next calamity. Women thought he was courting them, but what he was really courting was disaster. Any of that sound familiar?”
    “I’m honored,” Thorn said. “You came all this way to deliver that rousing speech.”
    “No, sir. I came all this way because a woman got murdered. A good, honest woman who was more mother to me than my flesh-and-blood mom. She happened to be Rusty’s aunt. She and Rusty exchanged e-mail, lots of messages back and forth over the years. Rusty described her life with you, what was going on in her heart. And Michaela Stabler shared some of that with me. So that’s why I’m here. A woman was cruelly murdered in my peaceful, law-abiding town. And you, Mr. Thorn, are smack in the middle of it.”
    Thorn held her eye for several moments, then broke away from her biting gaze and padded into the living room. Only two couches were left. All the small stuff, the chairs, end tables, and