Done for a Dime Read Online Free PDF

hightops, and socks. All stuffed in together, like laundry, and small. A woman’s. The girl had changed here, but no sign of staying.
    “He doesn’t live here. The son, I mean. His being here, it’s short-term. And the girlfriend.” Murchison set the bag back down, nodded toward the narrow bed. “She doesn’t sleep over.”
    Stluka considered it. “Maybe she’s a Thoroughbred, sleeps standing up.” He pointed across the hall. “Or she spends the night with Daddy.”
    “You think?”
    “I try not to make up my mind about people till they’ve had a chance to disappoint me.”
    The furniture in the larger bedroom across the hall was Sears-quality, decades old. No conspicuous sign of disturbance, just day-to-day carelessness. Worn slippers lay askew beneath the unmade bed. Drawers sat open, revealing nothing valuable or shameful, just old clothes, folded and clean. An old dusty TV sat atop the highboy.
    Stluka opened the closet. “Here’s where the guy’s money went.” He fingered the sleeve to a silk suit jacket. “Snazz ’n’ pizzazz. Show Man.” He dropped the sleeve, turned around. “Whereas this.” He gestured toward the room. “Dressed with flash, lived in trash.”
    It was something routinely said of junkies. “You think?”
    “No, we’d have seen more signs by now. Expression just leapt to mind.” Stluka looked around again, shivered with disgust. “This guy got laid, he did it somewhere else. Unless he was paying for it.”
    Murchison checked the closet after Stluka, noted he was right: the quality of the wardrobe outpaced everything else in the house by far. Not surprising, Murchison thought, remembering the clothes on the body and what Marcellyne Pathon had said. He was big. Somebody with the guts to call his band The Mighty Firefly had to have style—thus the nickname, one supposed. Strong.
    “ARF,” Stluka said behind him.
    Murchison turned, saw Stluka holding a prescription bottle, studying the label. “What the hell is ‘ARF’?”
    Murchison took the bottle from him. “Acute Renal Failure.” He checked the other bottles on top of the bed stand. They were the usual garden-variety post-op brew: antibiotics, painkillers, some Halcion for sleep. They rested atop a checklist titled “Nephrectomy: Expectations after Surgery. Convalescence . ”
    “Our victim only had one kidney.”
    “I think that’s the least of his worries right about now.”
    “Dates on these scrips, I’d say it came out about two months ago.”
    “You going somewhere with this?”
    “Holmes found a bottle in a bag beside the guy. He’s putting it away, with one kidney.”
    “Unless his doctor killed him for being a crappy patient, why do I care?”
    Murchison shrugged. “Thinking out loud.” He crouched down, opened the bed stand drawer. “Well, well, what have we here, Mr. Carlisle?” Among reading glasses and ear plugs and Kleenex packs sat a snub-nosed .38, black metal with a brown wood grip. Loose shells rattled around in the bottom of the drawer. Careless old fool, he thought. He lifted the weapon, showed it to Stluka, then put it to his nose, shook his head. “Thing hasn’t been fired in forever.”
    “Ah, piss.” Stluka pulled back the bedcovers, checked beneath the pillows, found a Walkman but no second gun. “Bag the damn thing anyway. Give it to ballistics, let them confirm the obvious. Remind us what geniuses they are.”
    Murchison pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, shook it open, dropped the gun inside and then the cartridges. “Victim felt a need to keep a gun by his bed.”
    “In this neighborhood, come on. Wouldn’t you?”
    Checking the drawer again, Murchison found a photograph inside. An old one. He took it out. The face didn’t register with the others he’d seen in the living room. A woman, in her mid-twenties or so. She had long hair drawn back with combs, setting off her eyes and smile. On the back he found an inscription: Dear Raymond—With the warmest of