Shadow of Power Read Online Free PDF

when you first felt the wetness in the carpet?” I ask.
    “I don’t know. It was just a small table. It was off to the right as you entered the living room, a few feet. Maybe a couple of steps.”
    “Go on.”
    “I could sort of see the shadow of the table through the tablecloth.”
    “Do you remember whether the carpet was wet all the way to the table as you walked?”
    “I don’t remember,” he says. “No. No, it musta been, because of what I saw later.”
    “Go on,” I tell him.
    “So I spread the tablecloth, put the tray down, and turned around. That’s when I saw him, on the floor. His head was down. His butt was sorta crunched up against the chair. All that blood. I remember I looked down, and I was standing in it. And his head, I panicked. I started to run for the door. Musta got maybe two steps onto the tile when I went down. That’s what I remember. That’s how I got the blood on my pants. I figure that’s probably when I musta done it,” he says. “Touched the hammer, I mean.”
    The cops had found a single partial print on the murder weapon,one finger that seems to match the little finger, the pinkie, of Arnsberg’s right hand.
    “That’s the only way it could have happened,” says Arnsberg.
    “Not according to the cops,” says Harry.
    “Well, they’re wrong. All I remember is I got the hell outta there fast as I could. You would, too, you walked in on somethin’ like that.”
    “Have you ever seen this item?” Harry slides a photograph across the table. It’s a picture of one of those cheap clear-plastic raincoats, the kind you can fold up and slip into a pocket or a purse. Some of them come with their own tiny little bag for storage. This one doesn’t, but it is covered in the rust hue of dried blood.
    Arnsberg shakes his head. “No. Never seen it before.”
    “The police found it in a Dumpster behind the hotel, near one of the parking lots. But you’ve never seen it before?”
    “No.”
    The cops have confirmed that the blood on the raincoat belonged to Scarborough. They have scoured it inside out and subjected it in a chamber to the vapor of hot superglue, looking for any sign of fingerprints. They’ve found none.
    “After you found the body, why didn’t you tell somebody?” asks Harry.
    This was the clincher as far as the police were concerned, the fact that Arnsberg ran rather than reporting what he’d found. Though he didn’t run far. It took them just one day to track him down at his apartment before they could question him. By then they had enough to book him.
    “I don’t know. I panicked. You’d panic, too, if you had some dead guy’s blood on your pants, all over the bottom of your shoes.”
    “And that’s the only reason you ran? The blood on your clothes?” Harry pushes him.
    “Yeah. No. I don’t know. I guess I knew what people would think.”
    “And what was that?” says Harry.
    “Just what you’re thinking now. That I did it. That I might have a reason to kill him.”
    “Because of the artwork there on your arm?” Harry points with his pen at the tattoo.
    “Yeah, I suppose.”
    “Or was it because of some of the friends you’re keeping these days?”
    He looks at Harry, the devil with all the questions. “That, too.”
    “Let’s talk about some of your friends,” I say. “Did any of them discuss with you the fact that Terry Scarborough was staying at the hotel where you worked? That you might actually see him, have access to him?”
    “I…don’t remember.”
    “Come on,” says Harry. “It’s a simple question. Did you talk to any of your buddies about Scarborough being in the hotel?”
    “I might have.”
    This is an angle the cops are working overtime trying to nail down, the question of whether there was a conspiracy to kill Scarborough.
    “You knew that some of your friends were seen protesting out in front of the hotel?” I ask. “The cops have them on videotape.”
    “Yeah. I knew they were there. I didn’t know about