14bis Plum Spooky Read Online Free PDF Page B

suspects?”
    “Only Munch at this point. Personally, I can‘t see Munch breaking Scanlon‘s neck. Munch is a lightweight, and his background shows no martial arts training. I know he smashed a coffee mug into Scanlon‘s face, but I think if he wanted to kill Scanlon, he would have shot him.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Yeah, but you don‘t want to know.”
    “The handprints on his neck? Connie heard about it over the radio.”
    “The ME has no idea how the burn was inflicted. He thinks it‘s probably torture.”
    “Speaking of torture, we‘re supposed to go to my parents‘ house for dinner to night.”
    “I have to beg off. My brother Anthony got kicked out of the house again, and he‘s moved in with me for a couple days. He‘s all bummed, so I said I‘d go bowling with him.”
    “You‘re kidding!”
    “Last time he got kicked out of the house, he went on a six-day drinking binge and got arrested for attempting to bribe a female traffic cop, Shaneeka Brown. Anthony said he was just trying to get a ride home. Shaneeka said the barn door was open and the horse was out to pasture, looking to get ridden.”
    With the exception of Joe, the Morelli men were a sad lot of drunken bar-brawlers who cheated and lied and gambled away every cent they made. They were also drop-dead gorgeous and charming and managed to marry women who stuck with them.
    “Anyway, I promised my mom I‘d keep a lid on Anthony until his wife decides to take him back,” Morelli said.
    “Why did she kick him out?”
    “I think it had something to do with the horse.”
    “Maybe you need to take him to a vet.”
    “I‘ll add that to the short list of fun shit to do. Gotta go.”
    “The dead guy‘s name is Eugene Scanlon,” I said to Connie. “Munch‘s supervisor. The one he took out with the coffee mug. Let‘s run a profile on him. Maybe it‘ll lead me to Munch.”
    Connie punched Scanlon into her computer, and twenty minutes later, I had seven pages of information.
    “I can go deeper,” Connie said, “but it‘ll take a day or two.”
    “This is a start,” I told her. “Thanks.”
    I drove back to my apartment and blew out a sigh at the sight of Diesel‘s bike still in my lot. It wasn‘t that I didn‘t like Diesel. It was that he always created large problems. And honestly, I had no idea who he was or if he was crazy. He made Ranger look normal by comparison. And Ranger wasn‘t nearly normal.
    I skipped the elevator and trudged up the stairs in penance for eating doughnuts. I paused for a moment outside my door and listened. The tele vision was on inside. This generated a second sigh on my part. I plugged my key into the door and walked in on Diesel and Carl sitting side by side on the couch watching a war movie. Men were dying all over the screen, arms and legs exploded off bodies, blood and guts everywhere.
    “That‘s disgusting,” I said to Diesel. “What on earth are you watching? I don‘t get the allure of war movies.”
    “It‘s a guy thing,” Diesel said.
    “Apparently, it‘s also a monkey thing.”
    Diesel remoted the tele vision off. “Yeah. Guys and monkeys have a lot in common.”
    “You were right about the branded handprint. The victim‘s name is Eugene Scanlon, and he was Munch‘s boss. He was found in his own car.” I handed Diesel the seven pages Connie had printed out for me. “Here‘s some background on Scanlon.”
    Diesel read through the pages and returned them to me. “Fifty-six years old. Single. Living alone. No arrest history. Some credit problems. Originally from Baltimore. Graduated from BU and got his doctorate at Stanford. Nothing in there about his research.”
    “Connie‘s still digging.”
    “I‘d like to look at his apartment, but for the next couple hours it‘ll be crawling with police. We‘ll go in to night.”
    “ You will go in to night.”
    “ We will go in to night.”
    “You can‘t make me.”
    “Of course I can.”
    “You don‘t scare me. I know