Margaret Truman's Experiment in Murder Read Online Free PDF

color?”
    â€œNot too long.” He used his hand to indicate a cutoff at the back of his neck. “Normal color. Brown, maybe a little gray. I can’t be sure. I don’t pay attention to people who dump their cars here.”
    â€œWe’re taking the car,” one detective said while the other called for an MPD tow truck to be dispatched.
    â€œHey,” said the yard owner, “I laid out four bills for it.”
    â€œYou made a bad investment, pal. Where are the seats and radio?”
    The yard owner swore under his breath as he led one of the cops to an area where dozens of automobile seats were piled on top of each other beneath an overhang that kept them dry. He pointed to a pair, gray with red trim.
    â€œThe radio.”
    â€œYeah, the radio.” It was inside the shack that served as his office along with a pile of other radios and GPS units. He picked one up. “This one. I’m out four bills. You gonna reimburse me, right?”
    They ignored him as they took the radio from the shack. One stood with it by the seats while the other stationed himself next to the car. A half hour later, the Buick was on a flatbed along with the seats. The radio was tucked in an evidence bag and held by one of the detectives as they drove to MPD’s vehicle inspection facility, where technicians went over it inside and out for prints and telltale scraps of anything left behind that might help identify the owner.
    Later that afternoon, the vehicle’s VIN was matched to a white Buick Regal that had been reported stolen six months earlier in Southeast. The same two detectives who’d discovered the car were dispatched to interview the owner, an older woman with blue hair who walked with the aid of a walker. “The car belonged to my deceased husband, bless his soul,” she said. “He treated it like a baby, washed and waxed it every Saturday morning. I hope you caught the bastards who stole it.”
    The detectives smiled. They hadn’t expected such language from this little old lady.
    â€œWe’re working on it,” one said.
    â€œThe insurance company gave us a hard time after it was stolen. Those insurance people are whores. They take your money until something happens and then they don’t want to pay up when it’s time. Bastards!”
    As they drove away, one of the detectives said, “If some insurance agent gets whacked, we know who to go after.”

 
    CHAPTER
    7
    As police technicians combed the confiscated white Buick inch by inch, Dr. Nic Tatum was in his apartment in D.C.’s Capitol Hill district walking on the treadmill in the spare bedroom that he’d converted into a gym.
    You wouldn’t know from looking at him that Nicholas Tatum Ph.D. was one tough dude. Working out had been a sustaining part of his life since his teen years. As a skinny, nerdy kid with large glasses and lank, almost colorless hair, he was picked on by the usual cast of high school bullies, resulting in fights that had him retrieving the pieces of his broken spectacles, or returning home with a blood-spattered white handkerchief pressed against his nose. But his physical appearance wasn’t the only reason he was picked on. He was clearly one of the brightest students in the school. While other academically superior students were sometimes reluctant to answer questions in class for fear of ridicule by their less intelligent classmates, Tatum never hesitated to shoot up his hand and give the correct response. Because of this, he was adored and respected by his teachers—and scorned by certain other students.
    Like all teenage boys, Nic’s life was filled with dreams of being something that he wasn’t. He often imagined himself as invincible, a rough-and-tumble guy with bulging muscles, hair-trigger reflexes, and a granite chin, someone whom other male students avoided bumping into in the hallways. Of course his physical features changed, too,