Extenuating Circumstances Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, turning away.
    "Is that Lessing's car?" Finch asked.
    Trumaine nodded, his back to us.
    Finch glanced at me uneasily. "I have some items from the car I'd like you to look at."
    Trumaine waved his hand, as if he were calling time-out. After a few seconds he turned around again. "Okay," he said between his teeth. "But could we move away from the car? I don't want to get sick in front of all these people."
    I walked Trumaine back to the Terminal plaza. He didn't say anything as we walked. He was too busy talking to himself. He was saying, "Dog, dog, go away." He was saying, "This can't be real." He was saying whatever it took to keep him from breaking down. A soft man trying to be strong. When we got to the plaza, he asked me if he could go inside and get a drink of water. He walked straight through one of the revolving doors, his back bent, his face white and tormented, as if he'd taken a brutal, beating. Finch came up carrying a plastic bag with a bunch of credit cards and a wallet inside it.
    "They were in the car?" I asked, pointing to the contents of the bag.
    He nodded. "Weird robbery, huh? Leaving all this stuff behind?"
    "Does that mean you don't think it was a robbery?"
    "It means I think it's weird. Period."
    "Do you have any leads?"
    He eyed me coldly. "Stoner, you know better than to ask that."
    "It would help the family to know."
    Finch looked around him, as if he didn't want to be overheard. "Someone saw a kid driving the BMW on Sunday night."
    "Where?"
    "In Price Hill."
    "You know who the kid is?"
    "We're working on it," he said vaguely.
    "You don't have any idea where Lessing is, do you?"
    "We're working on that too."
    Len Trumaine came out of the Terminal, not looking much better than he had when he went in. There was a water stain on his shirt, above one of the fat paps on his chest. He fingered the wet spot nervously, as if it embarrassed him.
    Finch opened the plastic bag and held it out to Trumaine. "It's okay to touch the stuff," he said. "It's already been dusted for prints."
    Trumaine took a deep breath, reached in, and fished out a stained leather wallet. His lip curled back as he held it out in front of him. "It's Ira's, all right. Those are his initials on the inside there."
    He dropped the wallet back in the bag and rubbed his hand savagely against his pants leg.
    "Was Mr. Lessing in the habit of carrying large sums of money on him?" Finch said.
    "He always carried a few bills. Mostly he paid for things by check."
    "Do you know if he was carrying money with him on the night of the Fourth?"
    "You'd have to ask Janey."
    "Do you have any idea why he might have been over on this side of the river?"
    Len shook his head. "He told Janey he was going to the office on Sunday night."
    Finch gave him an irritated look. "I guess we'll have to talk to the wife, then."
    "She's going to need a few days to recover from this," Trumaine said quickly.
    Finch ignored him, signaling to a beat cop to bring one of the prowl cars around. "I guess that's it. I'll have an officer drive you home."
    Len gawked at him in disbelief. "But what about Ira! What happened to Ira?"
    "I think we have to assume that he was the victim of a robbery and an assault."
    Trumaine looked astonished. "That's all? I mean that's all you can tell me?"
    "For the time being," Finch said.
    "That's not good enough. Not by a long shot."
    "Take it easy, Len," I said to him.
    "Don't tell me to take it easy!" he shouted. "I want to know what happened. I want to know bow this could happen to a decent, respectable man."
    "Mr. Trumaine," Finch said, "I just can't answer that question."
    "Well, I'm going to get an answer," Trumaine said angrily.
    The police cruiser pulled up on the plaza.
    "C'mon, Stoner," Trumaine said, piling into the backseat of the cop car.
    Finch stared after him unhappily. "Try to explain to him how it works, will you?" he said to me.
    "I'll try."
 
 
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    So many cars were parked on Riverside Drive that there wasn't enough room for