Chain of Evidence Read Online Free PDF Page A

victim. Rookies cared. Family members cared. Eleven-year veterans could not afford such indulgence.
    The rain fell harder and a light breeze picked up and moved some of the hot dry air, and the night opened like a curtain. The rain washed the red blood off his hand and the aluminum preventer and screw that he held there. Rivulets of blood dripped to the sidewalk, diluted and pink.
    “It’s like God’s answer to the heat,” she said, her face still trained toward the heavens, her blouse wet and translucent.
    “Yeah,” Dartelli said. “I know what you mean.” He wanted to talk to the redhead. He wanted to talk to Stapleton’s girlfriend—if she could be found—regardless of her hair color. He wanted this thing closed up tight, his secret protected, but he feared it wouldn’t be. The faceless head seemed to be looking up at him. “What?” he asked the face suddenly, sharply. Angry.
    The rain fell more strongly. The coroners approached with the body bag. They wanted the body. Now. They wanted out of the rain.
    “Joe,” Richardson said, her voice revealing her concern over his outburst, “let’s get out of the rain.”
    Dartelli couldn’t take his eyes off the face. It wanted something from him.
    “Joe …,” she said, stepping closer, noticeably upset.
    Dartelli stood and walked past her, off into the rain toward the Volvo with its flashing lights. Another clap of thunder tumbled from the sky, shaking the windows of a nearby building as it landed. He didn’t feel like talking to anybody. Not even her.
    He regretted his own past actions, and he wished to God that he had a second chance; he prayed to God that David Stapleton was a fluke coincidence. People do jump out of windows, his reasonable voice argued.
    But in his heart, he knew better.

CHAPTER 2
    Teddy Bragg looked like a candidate for bypass surgery. Dartelli worried about him. His skin was the color of watery cottage cheese and he lacked the nervous energy that had given him the longtime nickname Buzz. His eyes were bloodshot and his breath bad, and he had buttoned his shirt incorrectly, making him into an old man, but Dartelli didn’t have the heart to point out the buttoning error because Teddy Bragg took such things extremely personally, and when his mood went sour, everyone around him suffered.
    “I got a total staff of two, don’t forget,” he said, apologizing first, which troubled Dart. “And I gotta run this by Kowalski—I’m perfectly aware of that—but you’re the one who asked about the apartment, so you’re the one I called.”
    The lab ceiling was water-stained acoustic tile, the floor, paint-stained cement. Too much stuff had been taped and removed from the walls, leaving dark holes in the cream-colored paint. What remained of the evidentiary lab communicated by an open door with the pantry-size area in which a behemoth photo developer churned out crime scene photographs and mug shots, lending an inescapable toxic odor to both areas that gave Dartelli a quick headache, and Teddy Bragg his rheumy eyes.
    “I can wait if I have to, Buzz, it’s only a suicide.” Lies. One begot the next.
    “That wasn’t your attitude on Monday.”
    “It’s Thursday. I have other fish to fry.” Dartelli tried this out on the man, despite the churning in his stomach and the tightness in his chest. For four days he had slept poorly, haunted by the image of Stapleton’s crushed face, and the suspicion that the past had surfaced like Ahab’s whale. He wanted whatever Bragg had, wanted it badly, but felt more like his alcoholic mother when she tried to hide her bottle. No one must know, he reminded himself.
    “I gave it to Sam,” he said, meaning Samantha Richardson, the other half of Bragg’s department. Richardson handled all of the photography and most of the evidence collection, while Bragg dealt with the scientific analysis that wasn’t shipped out to the State Police, administration, and most of the court testimony. “I sent her with