John Lescroart by The Hearing

of his feet.
    Knotted muscle curled on itself, squeezing every nerve around it in a concentrated orb of agony.
    But localized, at least. One place. One muscle per spasm. His mom would come in and rub it, knead it out, talk to him. It would pass, though the memory—the ache—would linger for days.
    But it wasn’t like this, now, when it was everywhere all at once. Never ending. Unbearable.
    Somebody, please, come and kill me.
    Did he say it? He didn’t know. It was his only thought, but there really wasn’t any thought as such, any words. There wasn’t even consciousness outside of the pain. It consumed his entire being. Only the pain. He hadn’t had any god in three days.
    His body was draped in the jail’s orange jumpsuit. It twitched, making small noises, on the floor of the cell used for the psychologically impaired.
    The guard opened the cell door and held it while two other guards lifted the body onto a gurney and began pushing it down the hallway to the elevator that led to the jail’s rear entrance.
    Cole Burgess was sure he was getting his wish now. Dying. Any second it would end. It would have to.
    Lights were exploding in his brain, every flash accompanied by another blinding stab, more intolerable agony beyond where he would have said—if any communication were possible, which it wasn’t—that no more could be borne. No one could take this much torture and survive.
    Kill me! Kill me! god god god god god
    Â 
    Davies returned without any sign of Cole Burgess. “Mr. Hardy.”
    â€œWhere’s my goddamned client?”
    The lieutenant remained tolerant. “Your client is fine. We had a computer problem and lost him for a few minutes, that’s all.”
    â€œWhere is he? I want to see him.”
    The smile didn’t change. “You can see him, but he’s not here to see. He’s at County. I can’t guarantee he’s conscious right now, but you’re sure welcome as all hell to go and find out for yourself. You want, I could call over and tell them to expect you.”

4
    F rannie Hardy had pulled her long red hair back into a ponytail and it hung halfway down her back. Barefoot, she wore a pair of old jeans and an oversized green pullover sweater. She was standing in the front doorway, waving good-bye to her children as they ran out to their car pool. Hardy came up behind her, put a hand on her shoulder, called out. “Have a good day, guys. See you tonight.”
    They turned together and walked through the family room back to the kitchen, where Hardy took his seat in front of his coffee. Frannie silently moved some dishes to the sink, wiped a surface or two with a dishcloth. Finally, some psychic energy shifted and Frannie came over and sat down with him. She smiled wearily, reached a hand over and put it on her husband’s. “Hi.”
    A reflexive sigh, Hardy’s own weariness breaking through. “Wow.”
    His wife nodded. “I know. She is trying, you know.”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œIt’s not some scam to get our attention. She really does worry.”
    He nodded, never doubting it for a moment. This morning, once again, his daughter had been afraid to go to school, and they’d done their parental tag team, trying to calm her myriad fears, for nearly an hour while their son Vincent grabbed his English muffin and disappeared into his bedroom so he wouldn’t have to deal with it.
    The Beck’s fears.
    The constant flow of news and information, even herschool curriculum, kept the Beck hyperkinetically aware of and sensitive to every disaster that happened on the planet—a plane crash in Calcutta, a hostage crisis in the Balkans, famine and genocide in Rwanda, church burnings in the South. All the world’s problems brought home to her own little plate every day.
    This was the backdrop of everyday life, the white noise of her daily existence.
    Hardy had trouble believing that the