Parker Field Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, that, based on forensic evidence gained over the last few days, it has been determined that the assailant fired one shot from a rifle from a window on the ninth floor of a dwelling at 612 West Franklin Street.”
    Home sweet home.
    I lean out the bedroom window and have my first Camel of the day, making sure that none of the smoke stays inside. Kate, my landlady and last ex, would approve.
    I hear voices above me. When I look up, there’s the fat, sweaty face of Gillespie peering out a window three floors up. He looks down, sees me, and ducks his head back inside.
    I swallow two aspirin with the coffee Custalow’s already made for me. The night, as nights often do, turned out to be longer than expected. Three hours after I’d expected to be sleeping the sleep of the just, I was just getting in. Four of us went back to Sarah’s place after Penny Lane kicked us out at closing time. Chip Grooms from photo and Becky Whitehouse, who covers prep sports, were there. They and Sarah might be seventy-five years old, combined.
    When I left, they were still going strong. Sarah walked me to the door.
    “Should you be driving?” she asked me, standing close enough that I could smell her perfume. “Maybe you ought to stay over. You don’t need another DUI.”
    I was tempted to agree. I have been known to be very agreeable, especially with younger female employees.
    I asked her for a rain check. She’s barely older than Andi, my big brain whispered, but most of my big brain’s victories are short-lived. And Sarah and I do have a bit of history, God forgive me.
    I TAKE the utility stairs up to the ninth floor. I have forgotten whose unit it is until I open the door onto the foyer the two units in this tower share and come face to face with a piece of art that looks like somebody did projectile vomiting on the canvas.
    Finlay Rand.
    He’s one of two art-and-antiques dealers living here. Most of what I know about Rand comes from Clara Westbrook, who makes it a point to know everybody and everything connected to the Prestwould.
    “I like Finlay,” she told me once, after a couple of Scotches. “He doesn’t bother anybody, and that’s about all I ask of my neighbors.”
    Rand is a confirmed bachelor, it seems, and Feldman, my nosy neighbor, conjectures that he might be a tad light in the loafers, but Clara said she knows for a fact that he has had overnight guests of the female persuasion.
    “Besides,” she added, “what’s wrong with it if he does like men?”
    Indeed, I said, and we toasted tolerance.
    C RIME TAPE is across the open door to Rand’s apartment. I duck under it and am halfway down the hallway when one of the cops, who looks like he’s about nineteen, intercepts me.
    “It’s OK,” I tell him. “I live here.”
    “You’re …” he looks at his notes. “You’re Finlay Rand?”
    No, I explain to him, as I walk him the rest of the way to the living room—which has the best view of Monroe Park—I live in the building, not this particular unit.
    “You shouldn’t be here,” he says, grabbing my arm.
    A voice booms out behind me.
    “He of all people shouldn’t be here.”
    I turn to see my favorite flatfoot coming out of the kitchen.
    “This jerk’s a reporter,” Gillespie tells his young associate. “What the hell did you let him in for? You think this is an open house?”
    I tell Gillespie to get the stick out of his ass, that I’m off duty, just trying to find out what happened. I remind him that Les is practically family.
    “How did they figure it was the ninth floor?” I ask Gillespie.
    “The angle. These guys can figure out that shit. Math majors.” He says it with the same tone he’d have used to say “pedophiles.”
    A lieutenant comes up. He’s Gillespie’s boss even though he looks like he’s barely half his age, and he finds out I live in the building. He asks me if I know anything about Finlay Rand. I tell him that he’s an antiques dealer.
    “Do you know if he knew the