Fallen Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

have been made by blood. If they were, they’d fallen in
a remarkably regular pattern.
    Boy, what I didn’t know about the art
of criminal investigation could fill a book! Actually, it probably
did. Maybe more than one. Perhaps I should visit the Los Angeles
Public Library again soon, and this time my visit would be work-related.
    But my insufficient knowledge of criminal
investigation was neither here nor there. As I’ve already
mentioned, as I climbed those stairs, I listened hard, trying to
detect any movement in the upstairs part of the house. I’d already
ascertained there was no one in the downstairs. No one alive, at
any rate.
    Silence as deep as that ought to be outlawed,
because it’s terribly nerve-wracking. To be fair, I suppose my
nerves would have been wracked even more drastically if a criminal
had hurtled out of a room and hollered at me or, worse, grabbed me.
Still and all, I had the creeps and the willies and the
heebie-jeebies as I reached the top of the stairs and looked both
ways down the hall where the stairway ended.
    Nothing.
    I glanced down the staircase. Mrs. Chalmers
was still there. Oh, goody.
    So I headed down the hallway to my right,
determined to snoop until I’d found my boss. Or not found him. I
hoped for the former result.
    I suppose it’s considered good
housekeeping to shut all the doors in a house when no one’s in the
rooms behind them, but it’s really, really intimidating to open one
closed door after another in a house where you suspect a murder has
recently been committed. I say recently because of the relative warmth of Mrs.
Chalmers’ body when I checked various parts of her for a pulse. Of
course, the September heat might account for some of that warmth,
but I still didn’t believe she’d been dead for too awfully long.
The notion made me shudder, and I did a bit more
nerve-steeling.
    My gasp when I opened the last door at the
end of that infinitely long corridor might have awakened the dead,
although I later learned that Mrs. Chalmers hadn’t stirred in spite
of it.
    “Ernie !” I
regret to say I squealed the name.
    Ernie, who looked as if he might be dead,
too, didn’t stir. Sprawled across a big bed covered with a crimson
brocade throw, he lay on his stomach with his head turned to one
side—the side toward me—only his eyes were closed. Oh, good Lord,
he couldn’t be dead! Could he? Not Ernie!
    My hand pressed to my thundering heart and
with, I’m sorry to report, tears in my eyes, I hesitatingly
approached the bed. As I did, I noticed something rather odd about
Ernie that I hadn’t at first taken in: he was bound and gagged. I’d
read books in which people had been bound and gagged, but I’d never
seen anyone who had been. He also seemed to be out cold. I peered
closely at him, praying he still breathed. When one of those eyes
of his opened, I darned near screamed again.
    “Grmph!” said Ernie.
    “What?” said I.
    “Grmph !” he
repeated, with more emphasis this time.
    I decided it might be a good idea to get the
gag out of Ernie’s mouth before I attempted further communication
with him. So I did. Doing so wasn’t easy. Whoever had tied the knot
had been quite thorough. I didn’t have a knife with me, so I had to
work the knot free with my fingers, and by the time I finally
succeeded, two of my fingernails had broken and Ernie’s temper
wasn’t at its best.
    “God damned son of a bitch!” were the first
words out of his mouth. Then he clutched his head and groaned.
    While rather shocked at his language, I
decided I’d better not call him to task for it. I could tell he was
in a foul mood. Anyhow, I supposed he deserved to swear a little,
given the circumstances.
    Rather, I did my level best to untie the
bonds holding his wrists together. “Darn it, these are too tight.”
I was surprised, in fact, that his hands hadn’t swollen and turned
blue from lack of circulation.
    “Use the pocket knife in my back pocket,” he
suggested in a surly