Four to Score (Stephanie Plum 4)

“What about Helen?”

“Dead.”

My breath caught in my chest. “That's terrible!”

“She was found in an alley four blocks from the Seven-?Eleven. I don't know much except it looks like there was a struggle.”

“How was she killed?”

“Won't know for sure until they do the autopsy, but there were bruises on her neck.”

“Someone choked her to death?”

“That's what it sounds like.” Morelli paused. “There's something else. And this is not public information. I'm telling you this so you'll be careful. Someone chopped her finger off.”

Nausea rolled through my stomach, and I tried to pull in some oxygen. There was a monster out there . . . someone with a sick, twisted mind. And I'd unleashed him on Helen Badijian by involving her in my case.

“I hate this job,” I said to Morelli. “I hate the bad people, and the ugly crimes, and the human suffering they cause. And I hate the fear. In the beginning, I was too stupid to be afraid. Now it seems like I'm always afraid. And if all that isn't bad enough, I've killed Helen Badijian.”

“You didn't kill Helen Badijian,” Morelli said. “You can't hold yourself responsible for that.”

“How do you get through it? How do you go to work every day, dealing with all the bottom feeders?”

“Most people are good. I keep that in front of me so I don't lose perspective. It's like having a basket of peaches. Somewhere in the middle of the basket is a rotten peach. You find it and remove it. And you think to yourself, Well, that's just the way it is with peaches . . . good thing I was around to stop the rot from spreading.”

“What about the fear?”

“Concentrate on doing the job, not on the fear.”

Easy to say, hard to do, I thought. “I assume you came to Kuntz's house looking for me?”

“I called to give you the news,” Morelli said, “and you weren't home. I asked myself if you'd be dumb enough to go after Kuntz, and the answer was yes.”

“You think Kuntz killed Helen?”

“Hard to say. He's clean. Has no record. The fact that he knew you were seeing Helen might have no bearing on this at all. There could be someone out there working entirely independently, turning up the same leads you're turning up.”

“Whoever they are, they're ahead of me now. They got to Helen.”

“Helen might not have known much.”

That was possible. Maybe all she had were the matches.

Morelli locked eyes with me. “You aren't going back after Kuntz, are you?”

“Not tonight.”

* * * * *

SALLY CALLED while I was waiting for my morning coffee to finish dripping.

“The code was fun, but the message is boring,” Sally said. “ 'The next clue is in a box marked with a big red X.' ”

“That's it? No directions to find the box?”

“Just what I read. You want the paper? It's sort of a mess. Sugar tidied the kitchen this morning and accidentally tossed the clue in the trash masher. I was lucky to find it.”

“Is he still mad?”