Armageddon Rag Read Online Free PDF Page B

Parker and wafer-thin. “You could have played at Woodstock with an amp like this,” Sandy said in astonishment. “This is concert-level stuff.”
    “It’s loud,” Parker agreed. “That’s a factor in the case.”
    Sandy rounded on him. “How so?”
    “I’ll get to that,” the deputy said. “First, let me go through this with you. C’mon.” They went back to the entryway. Parker opened another sliding wall panel to reveal more lights and switches. “Security system,” he said. “Lynch had alarms on alarms. Paranoid fellow. You’d think somebody was out to kill him. The alarms were never tripped. No one broke in. Death came walking right up to the front door.”
    “Meaning he knew the killer?”
    “So we think. Either that or it was the Fuller Brush man.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, we construct it this way. The killer or killers drove up open as you please, got out, came up the front steps. Lynch met them and let them in. The lock wasn’t forced or anything. They went into the living room. That’s where the argument began. We found evidence of a struggle, and we think Lynch was overcome quickly and dragged back to his office, unconscious or unresisting, maybe dead. But we don’t think so. The living-room carpet shows drag marks. You haven’t seen the office yet. Come with me.”
    Sandy followed him dutifully back through the living room. This time Parker pointed out the marks in the carpet before he took out the keys again and unlocked the office door.
    Jamie Lynch’s workspace was an interior room, three times as long as it was wide, with a slanting skylight overhead but no windows. The only furniture was a big horseshoe-shaped mahogany desk, a chair, and twenty black filing cabinets that looked very stark against the deep milk-white carpeting. One long wall was covered floor to ceiling with mirror tiles, inlaid with decorative swirls, to make the office seem larger than it was. All the other wall space was taken up by posters and photographs; glossies of Lynch clients famous and infamous, pictures of Jamie and various celebrities, concert posters, political handbills, album cover blow-ups, commercial posters. Sandy looked them over with a faint pang of nostalgia. There was Che and there was Joplin, cheek-to-jowl. Nixon was selling used cars next to the infamous pornographic American Taco poster that had gotten a concert canceled and almost caused a riot. The far north wall, behind the desk, was taken up entirely with old Fillmore posters. “Quite a collection,” Sandy commented.
    Parker sat on the edge of the desk. “This is where they killed him.”
    Sandy turned away from the posters. “On the desk?”
    The deputy nodded. “They had rope. They bound him to the desk top, spread-eagle, one loop around each limb.” He pointed. “See the bloodstains on the carpet.”
    There was a large ragged stain by one of the legs and a couple of smaller ones around it. Against the white carpet they were painfully obvious, now that Parker had pointed them out. “Not much blood,” Sandy said.
    “Ah,” said Parker, smiling. “Interesting point. There was a lot of blood, actually, but our killer was fastidious. He pulled down one of the posters and spread it across the desk under the victim, so the wood wasn’t ruined. You can see where it’s missing.” He nodded.
    Sandy turned and looked, and finally noticed the blank spot among the posters, high on the east wall, about ten feet from where they stood. He frowned, bothered, yet unable for the moment to say why. “Weird,” he said, turning back to Parker. “How was Lynch found?”
    “The music was too loud.”
    Sandy took out his notebook. “Music?”
    Parker nodded. “Maybe Lynch was playing a record when death arrived. Maybe whoever did this put one on to cover up the sound of Lynch screaming. Either way, there was this album playing. Over and over, endlessly. And it was playing loud. You said it yourself, this isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill