No Place to Die Read Online Free PDF

father’s funeral for another few days. So until Bob gets back you can use Doyle as well.”
    I pretended to think about it for a moment, then said, “I don’t know, Lieutenant. Are you sure that’s necessary? Why don’t we see what McClinton, Pierce, Chickris, and I can do with this thing over the next few days? Then you could evaluate the situation, determine whether you think we need any additional help, and decide at that point who might be the best addition to the team based on where we are.”
    The lieutenant shook his head. “Look, Sean. I know you have your issues with Doyle, and I’m not suggesting that I don’t understand where you’re coming from. But you need to set all that bullshit aside. Whether either of us likes it or not, Doyle is still assigned to this unit. Beyond that, you know damned good and well that you’re going to need all the manpower you canget on this thing. Certainly you can find some way to use him productively at least for the next few days. In the meantime, you need to get on it.”
    The lieutenant gave me a copy of the ballistics report, and twenty minutes later, Maggie and I were holed up in the squad’s conference room with Elaine Pierce and Greg Chickris, the team that had caught the case of Alma Fletcher.
    Chickris was the youngster of the unit. Tall and rail thin, he was a former college golfer who, in spite of the demands of the job and a young family, still somehow maintained a three handicap. Pierce was divorced, in her midforties with two teenage kids—a stocky bottle blonde who’d come into the Homicide Unit about six months after me. Her aggressive nature complemented her partner’s more laid-back personality, and the two of them had a very good record of clearing cases. I asked Elaine to bring Maggie and me up to speed on their case.
    She flipped open the folder in front of her and without looking at it said, “The vic is Alma Fletcher, sixty-four, a retired third-grade teacher, married to Robert Fletcher, also sixty-four. He works for a small insurance agency in Glendale. He found his wife in the living room when he got home from work about six o’clock on Friday evening. She’d been shot twice—one in the head and one in the heart. Either one would have gotten the job done.
    “The ME puts the time of death at about ten thirty that morning. The husband has a concrete alibi—he got to work at eight, and people put him there all day until he left at five. The two had been married for thirty-nine years, and all their friends say that the marriage was rock solid. We found no evidence of any discord, no financial problems, nothing to suggest that the husband might have had any reason to hire the job done.He’s clearly devastated, and we’ve ruled him out as a possible suspect.
    “The victim was not sexually assaulted, and nothing was taken from the home. Neither the husband nor any of the woman’s friends could think of anyone who might have been even slightly angry with her, and so we haven’t been able to come up with anything that might even remotely resemble a motive. None of the neighbors saw anything unusual the morning of the killing—no strangers in the area, nobody selling magazines door-to-door, or any such thing.”
    “Did the techs give you anything?” Maggie asked.
    “Nada,” Greg sighed. “At least not yet. They found no prints that didn’t seem to belong there, but they did get some hair and fibers, and if we come up with a suspect maybe we can match them up to him. Of course it’s also possible that the guy’s had a prior conviction, in which case we may already have his DNA.”
    “We should get so lucky,” Pierce and I said, almost in unison.
    Arizona had begun collecting DNA samples from convicted sex offenders in 1993. Gradually, the list of those required to give samples had been expanded, and since January 2004, everyone convicted of a felony in the state had been required to submit a sample. Thus, DNA collected at a crime scene