Beneath a Buried House (Detective Elliot Mystery Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

brick apartment building, and as he forced himself to continue, putting one foot in front of the other, he watched the man that had come from the building striding up the sidewalk. Suddenly, as if he’d become aware of Elliot’s attention, he stopped and turned back, pausing briefly, the wind whipping his greasy hair across his face, then he turned and walked away.
    Elliot glanced at Dombrowski. If he had noticed anything unusual about the man, he gave no indication. Elliot suspected he had other things on his mind. Then again, Dombrowski always walked with his head down, like he was searching the ground for lost coins.
    The Windhall Apartment building rose up from the Tulsa soil just off the exit ramp from the Broken Arrow expressway, a precarious location, the front door not more than five or six steps from the edge of 15th Street. Not a good place to be. It was a busy street.
    Salt had been scattered in front of the building. A front had moved in during the night and coated the city with a thick layer of snow and ice. Some of it was still coming down. “Let’s go,” Elliot said. He and Dombrowski made their way across the short walk. As they pushed through the door, a delivery truck crawled out of the alley.
    Elliot glanced around. No one guarded the entrance. Not many doormen made their living on this side of town. They stepped into a small lobby, which was nothing more than a wide place at the foot of a set of stairs. Some of the residents crowded around the uniformed officers there. Beyond that was a hallway with numbered doors, marking the first-floor apartments. The place smelled of rotting food and mildewed carpets.
     Dombrowski pushed through the crowd, but Elliot stayed behind, watching the entrance door closing behind him, the journey back to its original position slowed to a crawl by a somewhat noisy hydraulic assist. Someone could gain entrance that way without a key if he were attentive to such things.
    “Anything on that delivery truck that came out of the alley?” Dombrowski asked.
    Sergeant Conley stepped forward. “Just a couple of computer techs working on a problem up the street.”
    Elliot took off his hat then slid out of his overcoat and hung it over his arm. “Is the front door usually locked?”
    A short, stout man with a two- or three-day growth of beard came forward, a cell phone stuck to his ear. “Yeah, it’s locked. I had it undone ’cause I knew you guys would be coming in and out.”
    “And you are?” Elliot asked.
    He continued talking into the phone, as if what was happening here wasn’t near as important. “Bob Davis. I manage the place.”
    Elliot walked to apartment 3 and ducked under the yellow police tape stretched across the doorway. Dombrowski and the apartment manager followed.
    Elliot managed to hold his expression in check when the stench hit him. In the middle of the tiny living room, stretched out in a recliner, the victim appeared to be watching his favorite television program. Perhaps he had been.
    “What time did you find the body?” Dombrowski asked.
    Bob Davis rubbed his chin. “It was around eight, I think. Stella Martin was complaining about the television noise. I knocked on the door a couple times then used my key.”
    “Everything here just like you found it?”
    “Yes sir, except for the television. It was pretty loud. I took the liberty of turning it down a bit. I hope that’s all right?”
    Dombrowski gestured toward the body. Elliot immediately understood what he wanted him to do. Reluctantly he searched the victim’s clothing, finding a wallet with two hundred-dollar bills inside, but nothing else; no identification.
    “Any idea who he is?” Dombrowski asked.
    Bob Davis shook his head, cell phone still to his ear.
    “So who rents the apartment?”
    Another shake of the head, still talking into the phone.
    “Sir,” Elliot said. “We’re trying to conduct an investigation.”
    The man nodded, but kept talking. Without another word,