Blood Innocents Read Online Free PDF

a quiet moment of shared decency and generosity, his mind turned to that.
    â€œMr. Reardon?” the secretary said, returning to the line.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œMr. Reardon wishes to know if you will have dinner with him tonight. He would like you to come to his apartment at around seven-thirty.”
    â€œAll right,” Reardon said.
    â€œMay I tell him you’ll be there?”
    Reardon found the formality of the secretary irritating. “Yes, you may.”
    â€œThank you, sir.”
    â€œYeah, right,” Reardon hastily said, glad to get off the phone.
    As soon as he hung up he went into Piccolini’s office. Piccolini sat hunched over his desk, staring glumly at an inch-thick stack of requisition forms. Through the window at Piccolini’s back Reardon could see a few flakes of falling snow. “I saw the deer,” Reardon said.
    â€œGet any leads?” Piccolini was smoking an enormous black cigar, and the entire room was filled with heavy blue smoke.
    â€œMaybe one.”
    Piccolini’s eyes brightened. “Yeah, what?”
    â€œThere was some writing on the shed.”
    â€œWhat kind of writing?”
    â€œA roman numeral two.”
    Piccolini squinted through a puff of smoke. “What does that mean?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Reardon said. “I’m having the lab check to see if it was written in deer’s blood.”
    â€œIs that all?”
    â€œOne of the deer died instantly,” Reardon added dryly.
    Piccolini leaned forward in his chair. “Reardon, I told you this is an important case. This may be the biggest thing in the city right now. Are you taking this thing seriously?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou retire in four years, Reardon.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo you have a great record with the department. The Lamprey case alone would get you into the detectives’ hall of fame.”
    Reardon shrugged. “The Lamprey case was luck.”
    â€œThe Lamprey case was memory,” Piccolini said, “remembering details from way back. That’s what a detective is all about.”
    Reardon did not know where this was supposed to be leading. Rehashing old cases had never appealed to him. It was like listening to middle-aged former quarterbacks blathering about past athletic glories. He looked out beyond Piccolini’s face and through the window behind him to the snow.
    â€œYou know you retire in a few years,” Piccolini said, “so go out on a big one. Don’t mess this up. It’s a big case. It’s not a homicide, but it’s a big case, like I keep telling you. So break it. Go out a champ.”
    â€œSave the locker room pep talk, Mario. I’m too old to get steam out of that stuff.”
    â€œMaybe so, but I’d hate for you to louse this up.”
    â€œIt won’t be loused up.”
    â€œGood.”
    Reardon went back to his desk and began typing up a brief account of his investigation so far. He described the condition of the deer, recorded the probable time of death, noted the probable characteristics of the death weapon or weapons. He noted that entry into the cage of the fallow deer would have been possible for anyone within the indent range of height and weight, that no human bloodstains had been located at or near the scene of the crime, and that, thus far, there were no witnesses.
    He had recorded such details hundred of times. He had described warehouses of weaponry: pistols of all calibers, shotguns of all gauges, blades of all lengths and widths and adornment, spikes, tire irons, bottles of all shapes and colors, acids, poisons, ropes, chains, wires, torches, bricks, baseball bats — every conceivable object that an agile, enraged and premeditating ape could use to kill another.
    He sat, thinking over the details of the case before him, but they did not seem to lead anywhere. Wallace Van Allen had donated two fallow deer and someone had killed them both, one