A Dance at the Slaughterhouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

yesterday," I said. "Lyman Warriner."
    "The brother. I figured he'd call you. You gonna do something for him?"
    "If I can," I said. I had palmed a hundred-dollar bill and I tucked it between his fingers. "I appreciate the referral."
    We were alone in the office, so he felt free to unfold the bill and look at it. "It's a good one," I assured him. "I was there when they printed it."
    "Now I feel better," he said. "No, what I was just thinking is I shouldn't even take this from you. You want to know why? Because it's not just a case of throwing a couple of bucks your way and keeping the citizen happy. I'm glad you took the guy on. I'd love to see you do him some good."
    "You think Thurman did his wife?"
    "Do I think? I fucking know it."
    "How?"
    He considered the question. "I don't know," he said. "Cop instinct. How's that?"
    "It sounds good to me. Between your cop instinct and Lyman's feminine intuition, I figure Thurman's lucky to be walking around free."
    "Have you met the guy, Matt?"
    "No."
    "See if you don't read him the same way I did. He's one phony son of a bitch, I swear to God. I caught that case, I was the first person in there after the blues who responded to the 911 call. I saw him then, when he was still in shock and bleeding from a head wound and with his face red and raw from where he'd worked the tape off of his mouth. I saw him I don't know how many times over the next couple of weeks. Matt, he never rang true. I just did not buy that he was sorry she was dead."
    "That wouldn't necessarily mean he killed her."
    "That's a point. I've known killers who were sorry their victim was dead and I suppose it works the other way around. And I'm not setting myself up as Joseph Durkin the Human Polygraph. I can't always tell when somebody's lying. But with him it's easy. If his lips are moving, he's feeding you a line of shit."
    "All by himself?"
    He shook his head. "I don't see how. The woman was raped fore and aft with signs of forced entry. Semen deposited vaginally was definitely not from the husband. Different blood type."
    "And in back?"
    "No semen deposited anally. Maybe the guy in back was practicing safe sex."
    "Rape in the modern age," I said.
    "Well, it's all those leaflets the Surgeon General mailed out, raising the level of public consciousness and all. Anyway, from the looks of it you got your two burglars just the way the husband told it."
    "Any other physical evidence besides semen?"
    "Short and curlies. Seem to be two types, one that's definitely not the husband's, the other that's a possible. The thing is, you can't tell too much from pubic hair. You can tell both samples are from male Caucasians but that's about all you can get. Plus it doesn't prove anything if some of the hairs are Thurman's, because they were married, for Christ's sake, and it's not unheard of to carry your husband's pubic hair around in your bush for a day or two."
    I thought for a moment. I said, "In order for Thurman to have done it solo-"
    "Couldn't happen."
    "Sure it could. All he needed was some foreign semen and pubic hair."
    "How would he come by that? Blow a sailor and spit in a Glad bag?"
    I thought fleetingly of Lyman Warriner's perception of Thurman as a closet case. "I suppose that's as good a way as any," I said. "I'm just running through what's remotely possible and what isn't. One way or another he obtained specimens of foreign semen and hair. He went to the party with his wife, came home-"
    "Climbed three flights of stairs and told her to wait a minute while he forced entry to the Gottschalk apartment. 'Look, honey, I learned this neat way to open doors without the key.' "
    "The door was forced?"
    "Jimmied."
    "That could have been done after."
    "After what?"
    "After he'd killed her and before he called 911. Say he had a key to the Gottschalk place."
    "That's not what the Gottschalks say."
    "He could have had one without them knowing about it."
    "They had a couple of locks on the door."
    "He could have had a couple of