A Necessary Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

that seemed invisible from where Pakula stood. He had never worked with her before, but he knew Terese Medina by reputation. If the killer left something behind, Medina would find it. He wished he could trade Pete Kasab for Medina.
    "The guy said he may have bumped into the killer," Kasab continued, reading it as if it were just another of his scribbles.
    "He said what?" Pakula stopped him in midflip of his pages.
    "The guy thinks he may have bumped into the perp on his way out of the bathroom."
    Pakula winced at his use of the term "perp." Was this kid for real? "This guy have a name?"
    "The guy he bumped into?'
    "No." Pakula shook his head, biting down on the word idiot before it escaped his lips. "The witness. The guy who found the body."
    "Oh, sure." And the pages started flipping again. "It's Scott... " Kasab squinted, trying to read his own notes. "Linquist. I've got his work phone, home phone, cell phone and home address." He tapped the page, smiling, eager to please.
    "Happen to have a description?"
    "Of Linquist?"
    "No, damn it. Of the supposed killer."
    Kasab's face looked crushed, and he flipped more pages as he mumbled, "Of course I do."
    Now Pakula felt like the asshole. It was a little like stepping on a puppy. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to get rid of the exhaustion and his impatience. Overdosing on caffeine only made him cranky.
    "Linquist said he looked young, was shorter than him. I figured Linquist at about five-ten. He said he had on jeans and a baseball cap. Said the kid bumped into him, you know, in a hurry, on his way out of the bathroom just as Linquist came in. In fact, Linquist said he saw the body and the blood, turned around and raced back out to get help and the kid was nowhere in sight."
    "How young a kid?" Pakula doubted this was the killer. Probably a kid in shock, not knowing what to do or not wanting to get involved. Maybe even afraid he'd get blamed for it.
    "He couldn't say," Kasab said, but he continued to check his notes. "Oh, here it is. He said he never got a look at the kid's face."
    "Then how'd he know he was a kid?"
    Kasab looked up at him as if checking to see if the question was a test. "I guess by his demeanor or maybe his stature."
    Great, Pakula thought. Now the rookie was guessing. Brilliant police work. Pakula wanted to groan, but instead turned and glanced back at Terese Medina who had meticulously made her way to the corpse. Pakula watched Medina pick at the back of the stiff's polo shirt with her forceps. Maybe they'd get lucky and there'd be some interesting transfer debris. Now, that would be brilliant police work. Just then Medina held up something at the end of her forceps.
    "This is weird," she said, turning it around for a more thorough inspection. To Pakula it looked like a piece of white fuzz, no bigger than a dime.
    "What is it?" Pakula came closer while she slipped it into a plastic bag and was picking another off the monsignor's polo shirt.
    "I could be really off base," she said, holding it up to her nose this time, "but it looks like crumbs."
    "Crumbs?"
    "Yeah, bread crumbs."
    Before Pakula could respond, his cell phone started tinkling, the sound of a million tiny little bells. He should never have let his daughter Angie __ the techno nerd __ program the damn thing. He had no idea how to change the tone and instead he resorted to ripping the phone off of his hip, breaking his record at two rings.
    "Pakula." All he got was static. "Hold on." He turned his back and walked down the hallway, hoping for a stronger signal. "Yeah, go ahead."
    "Pakula, it's Carmichael."
    "Where the hell are you, Carmichael? I could use your butt down here at the airport."
    "I'm still at the station."
    "I've a got a sliced-up priest on the bathroom floor with idiots walking around him to take a piss and maybe even eat a sandwich over his dead body."
    "What?"
    "Never mind."
    "Well, that all sounds like a lot of fun, but I thought you might be interested in the phone call I