Payment in Kind Read Online Free PDF

successfully bringing cases both to court and conviction.
    That’s fine for them, but not for me. I’m glad those guys can analyze the hell out of threads found in carpets and traces of blood found on shoes, but I’d much rather be out on the streets talking to people—asking questions and getting answers—than being locked up in a lab someplace examining DNA fingerprints under a microscope.
    We were almost finished when Doris Walker reappeared at my elbow.
    “Here’s the number you asked for,” Doris said, handing me another slip of yellow paper. Post-its are evidently very popular at the school district office, and this one was larger than any I’d seen before. “Mrs. Chambers said she’s at home and will wait for a call back.”
    “Good,” I said. “Thank you.”
    “When I told him I was bringing this down to you, Dr. Savage asked if you could stop by his office and talk to him for a few minutes before you leave. If it’s not too much trouble, that is.”
    “Certainly,” I said. “No trouble at all. We’ll be glad to. We need to see him anyway.”
    Doris nodded and returned the way she had come.
    “Who was that?” Kramer asked, watching her walk away.
    “Doris Walker, the superintendent’s secretary. She came down a few minutes ago and told me that Alvin Chambers’ wife was on the phone wondering why he was so late coming home for breakfast. I told her to take a message about where we could reach the wife later and that we’d be in touch.”
    “Who’s this doctor who wants to talk to us?”
    “Dr. Savage. The superintendent of schools.”
    “Oh,” Kramer said.
    While the crime-scene team began work on the closet, we were taken upstairs and shown Marcia Louise Kelsey’s office. It wasn’t a plush executive-suite kind of place. The place was messy and cluttered, but there was no sign that it had been ransacked, and there was no indication that a struggle had taken place there. A pencil lay at an angle on a blue-lined tablet, looking as though the writer had stopped working for only a moment to do something else.
    Offices usually have a certain amount of personal junk in them—family photographs, children’s scrawled crayon Mother’s Day greetings, personalized cups. Marcia Kelsey’s office had a curiously impersonal air about it. Neither the cluttered desk nor the faded yellow walls held any artwork or family photographs, only a collection of framed diplomas. Several unfaded oblong spots showed where pictures might have been once, but they weren’t there any longer.
    A sagging brown couch stood against the far wall under a window, its cushions piled high with computer printouts and other work-in-progress-type debris. For the first time I felt like I was being given some valuable insight into the dead woman’s personality. I have a hard time relating to people who have to work in perfectly orderly offices.
    There was plenty of physical evidence that Marcia Kelsey had left the room with every intention of returning. An open briefcase lay on the floor behind the desk, along with a shoulder-strap purse, a pair of panty hose, two heavy orange and gray woolen socks, and a pair of much-used snow boots.
    Kramer pointed meaningfully at the panty hose. “If she started undressing here, how come they ended up in the closet downstairs? Why not clean all that crap off the couch and use that?”
    Why not indeed?
    When we finished with Marcia Kelsey’s office and sealed it with crime-scene tape, Kramer was anxious to hit the road. “We ought to do like Baker said and get cracking on the notifications right away.”
    “First we go see Dr. Savage. I told Doris Walker we would, and that’s what we’re going to do.” I started off down the hall, and Kramer followed reluctantly, complaining all the way.
    “I don’t know why we have to do this. Wait a minute, Beaumont. This Dr. Savage doesn’t happen to be one of your high-toned cronies from outside the department, does he?”
    Ever since I came