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

Elliot reached over and took the phone from the manager, folded it, and stuck it in his pocket. “We need your attention,” he said.
    Dombrowski frowned. Again he asked, “Who rents the apartment?”
    The manager shrugged. “It’s been rented for months.”
    “Let me get this straight,” Dombrowski said. “You let somebody move in here but you didn’t get his name?”
    “Hey, he had cash. Paid more than the room was worth. Most of my clients ain’t the kind you’d want to do background checks on anyway. Besides, this ain’t him.”
    “You’re telling me this isn’t the same person who rented the room?”
    “Yeah, that’s it, that’s what I’m saying.”
    Dombrowski shook his head. “Would you recognize who did if you saw him again?”
    “What, you got a lineup or something?”
    “I was thinking more along the lines of photos at this point. Maybe you could come down and take a look, see if anything jogs your memory.”
    “I don’t know. I guess I could do that. I’m kinda busy, though. Anyway, what good would it do?”
     “There’s a good chance that whoever rented the place is involved somehow,” Dombrowski said. “At the very least, maybe they know something about what happened here.” He turned to Elliot. “What do you think, kid?”
    There were no bloodstains on the victim’s clothing, no visible wounds had been inflicted. His left hand rested in his lap, while his right arm hung limply over the chair arm, the hand nearly touching the floor. The sleeve of his dress shirt was rolled up past his elbow. Beneath it on the carpet was a syringe. Elliot suspected the fruition of his premonition of bad things to come was upon him. This wasn’t exactly what it appeared to be, plain and simple so they could wrap things up and go home and forget about it. It wouldn’t go down that way. He knew that just as surely as he knew Detective Dombrowski was standing beside him. Elliot hadn’t been a detective for long, and many of his daily experiences were new to him, but there was nothing unfamiliar about the sinking sensation in his gut. He’d had this feeling before, this unequivocal sense of not-right . “I don’t know,” he said. “Why are there no other needle marks on him?”
    Dombrowski shrugged. “Maybe it was his first time.”
    “Maybe,” Elliot said, “but he doesn’t have that look about him, like he would do something like this.”
    Dombrowski gestured for Elliot to follow him across the apartment to the kitchen table, where an empty carton of milk and a box of cereal rested. Some sort of symbol had been carved into the wood of the tabletop. “What does the room tell you?” he asked.
    It seemed as if Dombrowski had caught on to his apprehension about the case and was pressing him for answers. He wanted to say it looked straightforward, short and sweet, to the point, but what he said was; “It looks a little too generic to me.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Like a stage play, all set up for the audience to suspend their disbelief.”
    Dombrowski shook his head. “Sometimes you worry me, kid. Have a look around, see what else you can find.”
    Elliot nodded, but there wasn’t much to see. It was a one-room apartment, not counting the bathroom. He walked to the only window, which was along the outer wall, and ran his fingers across the pane, a thick piece of frosted glass reinforced with chicken wire. The lock was engaged, and several coats of undisturbed paint showed that the window hadn’t been opened in a while. He found nothing in the closet, and the bathroom yielded only an old razor and a pack of blades.
    Elliot went back to the kitchen table to have a better look at the curious design that had been carved into the wood. He brushed aside the spilled cereal, revealing what looked like the head of a goat carved into a star with a couple circles around it. “What about this?”
    Dombrowski shrugged. “What’s your assessment?”
    Elliot took a final look around the room.