False Negative (Hard Case Crime) Read Online Free PDF Page A

nothing but to tell her he’d stop by her restaurant for the shirt. But not right away. After he had it where would he come up with an excuse to call again?
    He blew dust off the shoebox where he kept his novel, and read the last chapter. The characters were strangers. He’d forgotten why he had them do the odd things they did. His notes on the plot made no sense. He couldn’t figure out what he’d had in mind, or how to get back on track. He opened a can of beer, and lit a cigarette. More terrifying than a blank page was having nothing to write.
    He went to the corner for a Press . The man behind the counter was standing over him when he remembered to put a nickel on the counter. It was a peculiar feeling having to pay for a paper, his paper. He couldn’t say he liked it.
    The paper looked the same. He’d considered himself the glue that held the Press together, and was disappointed in a way that it hadn’t fallen apart immediately without him. On the split page was a byline he didn’t recognize. R. Peter van Pelt was working the murder in Little Egg Harbor. Van Pelt favored theinverted triangle style of newswriting taught in college—the most important facts at the top of the story followed by everything else in declining order of importance, and to hell with the human angle. Lieutenant Day was quoted as saying that his investigators were making progress. One thing van Pelt hadn’t learned in college was not to take the police at their word.
    The victim remained nameless. Attempts to identify her through fingerprints and dental records had gone nowhere. A police artist’s sketch showed a woman of indeterminate age with a dirty face and stringy hair. She was sleepy-eyed, as if she’d been shaken awake and caught on paper before she could get herself together. There was little of the girl on the beach, of the prettiness remaining in death. Jordan blamed the police artist. Police artist struck him as an oxymoron. It was a funny notion that he could have built into a feature illustrated with a rogues gallery of unfortunates and wanted men. Too bad he hadn’t thought of it sooner. McAvoy would have squirmed at poking fun at the cops. Readers would have loved it.
    The dead woman’s clothes, according to Lieutenant Day, were available in hundreds of modestly priced stores throughout the state. No description accompanied the story. Another thing they didn’t teach in journalism school was a reporter’s responsibility in keeping the police on their toes. Day was a cheapskate with the facts. Jordan would have reminded him that the Press had thousands of sharp-eyed readers, any one of whom might remember the clothing and the girl wearing it. He’d cultivated other sources in the state police and coroner’s office who loved to talk. His man at the morgue could be bribed for a look inside an evidence locker or refrigerator unit. Jordan figured that McAvoy was already eating his heart out over letting him go.
    Dr. Melvin had ruled that the victim died of strangulation. Several articles of clothing had been “introduced” into her throat. Her undergarments were “disturbed” by her killer, and she had been “ravished.” Jordan would have used raped. McAvoypreferred attacked, but would go with criminally assaulted. Jordan re-read the article to see what he’d missed. Trying to learn what had happened on the beach at Little Egg Harbor, he couldn’t get beyond van Pelt’s sorry treatment of the language.
    There was boilerplate from the police asserting that they were working with the coroner’s office to have the victim identified. Vague mention of promising leads were a tip-off that the investigation was marking time. Jordan had been cultivating an assistant DA who would tell him what was really going on. What he’d do, he’d call him, and—What he would do was try to forget about the case. The murder wasn’t his. Nothing was.
    From the day he’d gone to work on the Press , Jordan’s life had stopped being