Free A Reason to Kill by Michael Kerr

on her drawn face, and in the accusatory look in her sunken eyes. There was a new edge, a trace of steel in her voice. She wanted, needed someone to blame, to vent her wrath on. Tom sensed that he was going to be the sacrificial cow, like it or not.
    “A witness who was due to appear in court was being protected by officers in the bungalow next door to your house,” he said, having made the decision to give her all the information he could, barring names. “Someone found out where he was and sent a professional to kill him.”
    Penny sat up straight, hands now fisted, her whole body trembling. “You put innocent people in danger, and...and Jerry died.”
    “I can’t alter what happened, Penny. All we can do, with your help, is find the man who did it and put him away for life.”
    Penny blinked her eyes and swallowed hard. Her throat hurt with the effort it was taking not to break down. “Are Michael and I safe from him, now?” she asked.
    “You want the truth, Penny?”
    She nodded.
    “He attempted to kill you because you could describe him. I can’t tell you that he won’t try to finish the job. He’ll still regard you as a threat.”
    “So until he’s caught, my son and I are in danger?”
    “I doubt it, but we have to assume that you are. That’s why we moved you to a private clinic. And why there’s an armed officer outside the door, and others in the building.”
    “Weren’t the officers in the bungalow armed?”
    She was distraught, but not to a point that prevented her from rationalising the situation.
    “Yes,” Tom conceded. “So you can appreciate we need all the help you can give us. Anything you can tell me that might help us to track him down.”
    Penny licked her lips. Her mouth was dry as tinder. Tom got up and poured water from a jug on the locker next to the bed into a plastic tumbler and handed it to her. She took small, birdlike sips. Her hands shook, and water splashed out over the rim.
    “I’ll tell you everything I can,” she said.
    “Thanks, Penny,” Tom said, bending down to take a small recorder from his briefcase. “I need to tape it. I don’t do shorthand or try to commit statements to memory. And with your permission, I want another officer to be present. He’s the one that survived the shooting and got a glimpse of the man who did it.”
    “Okay,” she whispered. There was no resistance in her demeanour. She wanted to talk; to attempt to expunge some of the locked-in horror.
    It took Tom all of his willpower not to lean forward and hold Penny Page in his arms. He wished that he could absorb some of the deep and poignant distress and pain she was suffering. For a second, he saw her not as a mother and newly grieving widow, but as a little girl; an orphan, lost, frightened and dazed by the accumulation of events that had led to her present predicament.
    Tom went to the door, opened it a few inches and nodded to Matt, who was talking to an armed cop, Bo Silver, known as Boris the Spider from the Who’s old sixties hit, because he was quick, and a little creepy.
    Matt held Penny’s hand firmly for a few seconds as Tom introduced them. He didn’t offer his condolences, just exchanged looks that spoke volumes. Words could sound so lame and empty, even when well meant and sincerely voiced.
    Penny saw the mental and physical pain in the cop’s eyes. His set expression could not hide the underlying emotions emanating from him in unseen waves.
    “You were shot,” she stated, watching him as he carefully, awkwardly lowered himself into a sitting position.
    “Yeah, but I’m paid to take risks. You and your family shouldn’t have been in the firing line.”
    “He enjoyed it,” Penny said, when Tom had set the tape running. She told them everything, pausing several times to regain her composure. “He said he killed people for a living. But that wasn’t the truth. He does it because it gives him pleasure. He was...was feeding off our fear.”
    “Can you describe