Pursuit
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. PursuitBy Thomas PerryBlackstone AudiobooksCopyright © 2006Thomas PerryAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780786149582Chapter OneDaniel Millikan looked down at the thirteenth corpse. This one was at the backof the restaurant kitchen, dressed in a white uniform with a ridiculous paperhat on his head that was supposed to keep his hair out of the food, and a longapron that had been filthy even before the blood had gushed down to soak it red.Millikan corrected himself. This was the first corpse, and the one a few feetfrom it was second. The others, logically, came later.He bent to let the light catch the tile floor just right so he could tell ifthere had been any wet footprints in the kitchen, but there had not. There werenone in the dining room either: the killer had been here, done his work, andlocked the door behind him before the rain had begun. Time in the restaurant hadbeen stopped at—he would guess—around nine-thirty. The light, mistyspring rain had not reached Louisville and begun to gleam on the streetpavements until late at night, after Daniel Millikan had finished his speech atthe conference and retired to his hotel downtown. He had still been awake andnoticed it when the rivulets began to run down the window of his room. He hadbeen frustrated because he needed to catch the plane back to California at seventomorrow morning, but he had been too agitated and restless to sleep.He never felt tense while lecturing his own students at the college in LosAngeles, but the audience tonight had been people he thought of as grown-ups.They were serious men and women of his own generation who had heard of himand—at least some of them—read his books. They had come to take alook at the expert . . . or, more accurately, at the alleged expert. They hadlistened to his lecture on the interpretation of homicide evidence with a politeattentiveness that he could only call professional. In the faces of thegrown-ups there was always a reserve, something they held back or maybe evendisguised, possibly because they had worked homicides and, unlike Millikan,expected to do it again.He had considered pouring one of the little bottles of scotch from the barcabinet into a glass, diluting it with tap water, and swallowing enough to helphim sleep. He was glad that the two cops had arrived in the lobby and rung hisroom before he had done it, instead of after. Lieutenant Cowan’s voice onthe telephone had been courteous but confident: after delivering that particularlecture, Millikan could hardly say he would not dress and go with the police tolook at a homicide scene. Right now, he was glad that his brain was functioningquickly and efficiently, but he knew that when he got back to the hotel, he wasgoing to want that drink.Millikan studied the angle of the body, judged the steps from the back door: tento twelve. It was easy to see where the boning knife had come from. The row ofblack-handled kitchen knives in the gleaming stainless steel rack had only onegap. The killer had slipped in the back door and silently cut thedishwasher’s throat with the knife he had found. That was a disquietingsign. This killer had been right about too many things: that there would be aweapon where he could reach it; that it would be at least as good and as sharpas anything he could buy and carry; that it would not be of any use to thepolice, because tracing it led only to the rack on the wall; that he would bequiet enough to take twelve paces unheard and formidable enough to fall on ahealthy, strong man in a brightly lighted room and kill him without so much asknocking over a pan or letting him cry out. Millikan judged the distance fromthe back door to the body again—a good thirty feet. Maybe this killer wasinvisible.Millikan looked in the other direction, toward the swinging door to the diningroom. After the dishwasher was dead, the killer had dropped the knife into thesoapy water in the sink. Then one of the waiters had com