Gray Matter Read Online Free PDF Page B

warming a chair.
    “I suppose this is the only one available,” Schultz said. He tried his winning smile on the attendant, the one he had practiced in the mirror and determined to be his least frightening. His telephone charm hadn’t worked on Casey, but Schultz was, despite the weight of experience to the contrary, an optimist when it came to his ability to be winsome.
    “Yup.”
    He made a show of fastening his seat belt and then turned over the ignition. He rolled down the driver’s window, which stuck halfway down. The attendant hovered at the window.
    “What?” Schultz said irritably.
    “I gotta warn ya—keep a good hand on the wheel. She’s been rolled and knocked out of whack. She tends to drift a little, even on the straightaways. You know, kind of walk sideways like a crab.”
    “A crab. Yeah, well, ain’t that fitting. Thanks for the warning.” As he pulled away, he unfastened his seat belt. He never wore one, even though that was probably against Department regulations.
    PJ was waiting on the steps when Schultz pulled up. There was something a little disconcerting about her, like a bowl of Jell-O that’s been dropped. You can scoop it all back into the bowl, but it will never look the same. Schultz, who thought he was good at reading people, saw vulnerability in her face that was quickly masked when she realized he was looking at her.
    So the bitch isn’t cast iron all the way through, he thought. Just three-quarters.
    On the drive, Schultz got the feeling the car was going to walk up on the sidewalk while he was steering straight ahead. He tried to relax about it; it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. He asked PJ why the crime scene sketch made by Clint wasn’t good enough for her purposes. It seemed that she wanted details that weren’t included, such as the style and colors of the furnishings, wallpaper, paintings, and even the accessories on the coffee table. When Clint drew up a scene, he measured accurately but recorded things generically, like “sofa” or “stove.” PJ said that the more realistic she could make her simulations, the more useful they would be. Schultz had an opinion about how useful anything done on the computer would be, but this seemed like an easy way to placate the woman.
    Burton’s apartment wasn’t far from Headquarters. It took less than ten minutes to get there. He had lived on the second floor over a coffee shop. There was an alley right next to the building that led to a couple of parking spaces in the rear, and stairs up to a private entrance. At the base of the stairs, Schultz let PJ go first with a wave of his hand. He wasn’t being chivalrous. He didn’t want PJ to notice the way he climbed the stairs. He had arthritis, something that he was trying to conceal. If the lieutenant knew something like that was slowing him down, he probably wouldn’t have offered Schultz the field assignment. If he wanted to get away from that desk, he couldn’t let anyone know about it. Some days were a lot worse than others, and, much to Schultz’s disgust, this was one of the bad days. The Ibuprofen he had taken earlier hadn’t done much good. His left knee didn’t have the normal range of motion, so he couldn’t bend it enough to alternate feet while climbing the stairs. He had to bend his right knee, put his right foot up onto the next stair, and then, clinging to the railing, pull his stiff left leg up. That meant he had to go up one step at a time with a little pause on each step, like a toddler just learning to negotiate stairs. He hurried as well as he could manage to keep close behind PJ so that she wouldn’t turn around at the top and have to wait for him.
    The alley and stairs were clean, and there was even a planter full of flowers right outside the apartment door. The flowers were beginning to wilt. Schultz’s wife Julia had always been interested in container gardening, and so Schultz knew that containers like that needed to be watered practically