4 - Stranger Room: Ike Schwartz Mystery 4 Read Online Free PDF

bundle. The same guy had a lip ring and a nose stud. At that moment Henry thought he knew where his future lay. He might be too weird for the police and too stubborn to give up his singular appearance, but the ET’s—they understood this new world of self-expression. He decided he would resubmit his application for the police academy and this time he would actually do the work. Then he’d study up and be an ET.
    “Great work, there,” he said to the short guy, and pointed to a particularly garish orange and green beach scene on the guy’s upper arm. “Say, I remember your face but can’t place the name.”
    “Bob DeGraaf,” the guy said, “I was two years behind you in school.”
    “Now I got you. You used to pole vault.”
    “That’s me.”
    Henry stuck out his hand. “Henry Sutherlin, Bob. So, how’d you get into the ET business?”
    “Funny about that. I liked science and the idea came to me I could be a healthcare provider of some sort. Since my old man was a corpsman in the marines, I took some pre-nursing courses down at the Community College. I did pretty good in biology and chemistry, but I pulled a C in A and P, and that slammed that door shut. I liked the science stuff, so I read about openings in this line and did the academy, took the ET course, and here I am.”
    “A and P? Like the grocery store, A and P?”
    “Anatomy and Physiology. It’s a course you have to pass with a B to get into the Nursing track.”
    “Oh. What’s it about?”
    “It’s how your body is put together and how it works.”
    “Hey, DeGraaf,” the big guy yelled, “we don’t have all day.”
    “I have to get back to work, Henry. I can send you something if you want.”
    “Super. Send me whatever you have. You know where I live?”
    “I can get your address from your brother, Billy.”
    “Great tats, by the way.”
    “Thanks. Back at you.”
    The coroner arrived, wrote his notes, and released the dead man to the morgue. Henry watched the men bag the victim’s clothes, luggage, and books. They didn’t miss anything, Henry thought.
    Afternoon sun glinted off the silver of the painted tin roof on the B&B across the street. He retreated to the shade in the back yard where the partially assembled “slave quarters” stood and wandered over to the stack of logs and lumber waiting to be incorporated into the structures. Lydell had stacked a few weathered, rough-cut pine doors as well. Henry pushed at them with his toe and one fell forward. He managed to stop its fall and its lock, its screws long since released from their tight set in the dried out pine, fell out and landed at his feet. He reset the door and stared at the lock.
    “Okay,” he said, “Let’s say I’m the ET on this case, so what do I look for here?” He scrutinized the lock and mentally took a picture of it in situ . He picked it up and studied it for any indication it had been tampered with. He knew it would have been dusted for prints first, but…He replaced it on the door, reset the screws in their holes, lifted the door, and watched as the lock fell away again. He smiled and then frowned, and shook his head. Just for a minute, he thought he had it…But then he’d remembered he had to hit the door twice before it gave way…still. He tossed the lock on the ground and strolled toward the street. He’d have to mull it over some more.
    Wouldn’t it be a hoot, he thought, if he figured out how the door thing worked before Ike or the Black Stork did? Yeah, he sure would mull it over, there had to be an answer.
    ***
    “Henry, Billy,” Dorothy Sutherlin bellowed, “you wash up and get in here for your lunch. Land sakes, I been fixing this meal for hours and you boys just a shilly-shallying around is enough to send me to the institute.”
    Henry and his brother Billy were the only boys at home, but their mother called to them as though the other five were still in the house—at the top of her lungs. She had done so for over three decades.