Second Watch Read Online Free PDF

the time, the idea of my ever having bad knees myself was inconceivable, but if Watty’s failing joints gave me a chance to work with Larry Powell, one of Homicide’s hotshots, who was I to complain? After all, that was where I hoped I’d be going eventually—to Homicide. When it came time to make the move, having someone like Powell in my corner wouldn’t hurt a bit.
    So I trotted down the hillside after him, determined to make myself useful. Minutes earlier the circling flock of crows had been the only visible scavengers at the scene. That had changed. The crows were now duking it out with an equally noisy flock of seagulls, but the flies had turned up as well. Somewhere in the fly world, the dinner bell had rung, and the troops had arrived en masse for the promised feast. A black cloud of them had appeared from out of nowhere. They swarmed around the barrel and its spilled contents.
    With his evil-smelling stogie gripped between his teeth, Doc Baker waded into the mess to do his preliminary assessment. Once Powell and I came to a standstill behind him, I reached for my half-smoked cigarette. Seeing it, Powell gave a warning shake of his head.
    “No smoking,” he said.
    “What about Doc Baker’s cigar?” I asked, regretting the words as soon as I said them.
    “Doc Baker’s not my problem,” Detective Powell said pointedly. “You are.”
    He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small camera along with several rolls of film, and handed them over. “You’re in charge of photos,” he added. “Now make yourself useful.”
    I did as I was told and went about snapping one picture after another.
    Eventually the M.E.’s beefy helpers turned up with their gurney. By then it was clear that the only thing in the barrel besides the body was the rest of the grease. The victim was naked. There was no clothing and no identification, so the investigation’s first problem was going to be identifying who she was. As the M.E.’s assistants wrestled the dead woman into a body bag for transport, Powell motioned to me.
    “Let’s work our way up the hill.”
    Spotting the track was easy enough, even if climbing the hill to follow it was not. The rolling barrel had left a clear path as it careened down the hill. In the process it had torn through thickets of blackberries and left a trail of flattened ferns and broken sprigs of grass along with slick patches of slimy spilled grease. Gravity had worked for the barrel on the steep hillside, but it worked against us. So did the thick tangles of blackberries. If you’ve ever hiked through blackberry brambles, you know climbing uphill through them isn’t exactly a stroll in the park.
    The sun was almost gone by the time we finally made it to the spot where Donnie and Frankie had found the barrel hung up on a bramble and pried off the lid. The lid was still there, and so was the stick the two boys claimed they had used to unleash what turned out to be their own private nightmare.
    “Poor kids,” Detective Powell muttered. “They had no idea what they were letting themselves in for.”
    By then enough time had passed that it was going on full dark. I was using the flash to take a few more photos when Mac came roaring down the hill with Detective Watkins limping along behind him.
    “Are you about done?” Mac asked. “I’m parked up there,” he added, pointing toward the top of the bluff.
    “Did you see anything important?” Powell asked.
    Mac shook his head. “There’s a vacant house up there. It looks like the barrel started down the hill right at the end of the driveway.”
    “Any vehicle tracks?” Powell wanted to know.
    Mac shook his head. “No such luck,” he answered. “Asphalt.”
    I looked to Detective Powell for direction. “You two don’t have to stick around here,” he said. “I’ve called for lights and generators that should be here soon. In the meantime, I’d like you two to go back up and start canvassing the street. See if anyone noticed any