52 Steps to Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

floor was spotless, except for a goblet that lay on its side.
    “All I see is a little old lady lying on the bed and a glass on the floor. Those wraps covering her broken bones and bruises make her look like a mummy whose head has broken out of her cocoon.”
    I chuckled. “Well, I’m not sure I’d call her encasement a cocoon, my friend, but those are the same clues I see.”
    “I know I’m only a Dr. Watson to your Sherlock Holmes, but my guess is that you think she was poisoned, Cy.”
    “That I do, Lou.”
    Lou smiled, having correctly guessed my thoughts.
    “Because of the glass on the floor?”
    “Partly.”
    “Is the other partly that you see no poison anywhere and the old lady was in too much pain to get up and get it?”
    “That’s right, Lou. This old lady has taken a mighty tumble recently.  The presence of a bed pan tells me that the lady next door came over a few times a day and emptied it for her. Mrs. Nelson wasn’t going anywhere on her own.”
    “But what’s to keep the next-door neighbor from assisting her in suicide?”
    “Nothing, as long as the next-door neighbor put the glass on the floor, too, because this bed sits up too high for the glass to fall out of the old lady’s hand and not break. Plus, I’ll bet they won’t find a single fingerprint on the glass. No, she was murdered, Lou, and our murderer doesn’t mind us knowing that she was murdered. Otherwise, he or she would have done a better job of making it appear to be a suicide.”
    “Unless the murderer had to make a quick getaway because someone was entering the house.”
    “Come on, Lou. Even a murderer making a hasty retreat has enough time to grab a glass. Besides, it could serve as a weapon in case someone confronted the murderer on his or her way out of the house. He or she could have thrown it at someone to gain a few seconds, or broken it in order to cut someone. Now, let’s go outside and wait for Frank Harris and the SOC team to get here so we can see what else we can find out.”
    The two of us had investigated many murders over the years. So had Frank Harris, the medical examiner. During those many years, the three of us had seen a lot of each other and had become good friends in the process.
    No sooner had Lou and I walked outside until the SOC team pulled up. We wanted to stay out of their way. I noticed a swing and a metal chair with two arms and motioned for Lou to take his choice. He selected the swing. I should have picked first.
    Before I sat down, I looked at Lightning, my canary yellow Volkswagen. It’s one of the few things I own that I have purchased new within the last year. I call her Lightning because she glows like a lightning bug. My jealous friends in the department, all of whom wish they had guts enough to drive such a fine automobile, call her Tweetie. Only peer pressure makes them drive their gas-guzzling tanks, which are painted deathly black, tombstone gray, or camouflage green.
    If you haven’t already figured out that I’m not a typical cop, you soon will. I carry only the customary gun. I carry no communication devices on my person, whether I’m working or not. I don’t even own a pair of sunglasses, mirrored or otherwise. Neither do I require a method of transportation that goes one hundred sixty miles per hour and burns a gallon of gas for each mile it travels. Why do I need to hurry? Murderers never remain at the scene of the crime to make my job easier, and corpses never recover, even if I hurry.
    I looked up and scanned the houses that hovered above the street. No trees blocked my view except those at each end of the street. All the houses were made of brick, most of them a shade of red, and all of them had front porches that ran from the left side of the house to the left side of the garage which sat below on the same plain as the street. Many of the porches had swings, and a few of them had other furniture, as if to encourage visitors, if someone was in good enough condition