Kind of Blue Read Online Free PDF Page A

the melon.”
    I stood up and paced beside the sofa. “A street-wise cop like Relovich would have been on his feet, making for a door if this was some junkie ripping him off. And no junkie would be sitting on a chair chatting. He’d be jumpy, too nervous to sit.”
    “Those Harbor detectives had their heads up their asses,” Duffy said.
    “No. They’ve just been working the same kinds of murders too long. Too many drive-bys. Too many street corner drug shootings. Some of ’em have never worked an indoor crime scene.”
    “Any neighbors hear the shot?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “Did they do a good canvas?”
    “The lieutenant said they talked to everybody on both sides of the street.”
    I sat on my heels a few feet in front of the sofa and studied a few tiny ovals of dried blood.
    “Did the lieutenant say Relovich was found on the sofa or the floor?”
    “Floor,” Duffy said.
    “But that’s not where he died.” I stood and turned toward Duffy. “Relovich is on the couch,” I said pointing. “The force of the slug propels him backward. So how does he end up on the floor? It’s contrary to the laws of physics.”
    “Somebody moved him.”
    “Right,” I said. “But why?”
    “I don’t know,” Duffy said.
    “Neither do I,” I said. “Let’s ninhydrin the wall behind the sofa. Asshole might have touched the wall for balance before he moved the body.”
    I spent another hour in the living room, carefully examining the floor, the walls, and each piece of furniture. In the kitchen, I studied the contents of the refrigerator, which contained only a brown banana, a loaf of bread, a jar of mustard, a half gallon of milk, and a bottle of steaksauce. Typical bachelor cop who eats most of his meals out. Like me, I thought.
    I checked the drains in the kitchen sink, the bathroom, and the shower for blood. I dumped out the bathroom wastebasket, sifting through an empty soapbox, rusted razor blade, a balled up Kleenex, two cigarette butts, a few wads of toilet paper, and a section of dental floss. I dropped them into different Baggies and zipped them shut.
    “Let’s test it all for DNA and fingerprints,” I said. “Remember that case in Venice where I emptied the trash in that enormous garbage can, bagged it up, and sent it all off to the lab?”
    “Yeah,” Duffy said. “There was so much crap to test, they had a fit.”
    “The prints on an aspirin bottle led me to a hooker.”
    “As I recall, she didn’t kill the john.”
    “That’s right. Her pimp did.” I handed the Baggies to Duffy and said, “Why don’t you send these out for testing on Monday morning. Lean on someone to expedite it.”
    After I scoured the house but didn’t find an answering machine, I tossed Relovich’s bedroom, examining every piece of clothing in the drawers, peering beneath the bed, running my hand under the mattress, sifting through the closet. Then I walked outside, and while Duffy followed, circled the back of the house and the yard, a ragged square of grass bordered by a six-foot pine fence. I edged my way through a thick hedge and studied the back window, which had a jagged hole punched in the center.
    I returned to the front porch and pointed to the scarred wooden railings and said, “I’m going to call SID and have them come back tomorrow and dust the railings. This should have been done.”
    I pulled out my cell phone. “I’m going to get a bloodhound out here.”
    Duffy fixed me with a skeptical look. “We’re in the twenty-first century, Ash.”
    I had always been frustrated by the LAPD’s inflexibility and suspicion of unorthodox methods. The canine unit always gave me a hard time when I wanted to use one of their dogs for tracking an urban homicide suspect, but I knew a dog handler who volunteered his services for a few Southern California police departments. He was more cooperative. Fortunately, I still had his number programmed in my phone. I called hiscell, chatted with him for a few minutes, and