Suspects Read Online Free PDF Page B

Small, who delivered the address book about a half hour later. It was tagged as evidence, and Moody had to sign a receipt for it.
    Small looked more like a professor than a cop. He was an authority on fingerprinting, who kept up with all the latest technology in that area. The department even once found the money to send him to a national convention of fellow specialists in the craft.
    â€œDaisy go on ahead?” Moody asked.
    â€œShe wanted to get started with the prints,” Small said. He had a perpetual squint under bushy dark eyebrows.
    â€œShe’s doing good?”
    Small nodded noncommittally. “There’s a lot to learn about prints.”
    â€œBut she’s doing okay? She’s pretty young.”
    â€œSure,” Small said and left.
    He was probably worried she might be promoted over him, what with the department’s new policy, instigated by a pushy female city councillor, of giving preference to women wherever feasible. Moody was opposed to the policy on general principles, but when it came to particulars of which he was aware, as in this case, he saw some justification for it. Daisy after all was extremely bright and very pretty, whereas Small was without personality and seemed to have no existence beyond fingerprints. And Moody had known Daisy since she was born.
    Small on the way out passed LeBeau coming in. LeBeau was carrying a plastic bag.
    He said to Moody, “Don’t tell me he’s classified and identified all those prints already. That’s guy’s a wonder.”
    â€œHe just dropped off the address book that Daisy found,” Moody said. “She’s the one working on the prints.”
    LeBeau handed over the plastic bag. It was pleasantly warm to the touch, and when Moody opened the flap his nostrils were greeted with a delicious aroma. The sandwich thank God was not fried egg but roast meat, exuding gravy into the bread.
    â€œHere,” Moody said, gesturing with his elbow, “take this book away, willyuh, before I drop something on it.”
    â€œRoast pork,” LeBeau said. “If you had come along, you would have gotten mashed potatoes and red cabbage too. I won’t mention dessert or it would bring tears to your eyes.”
    Moody had noticed that married men always cared more about food than single guys: it had in fact been true of himself when he was married, even though his second wife could hardly boil water and in fact rarely visited the kitchen except to get cans of soft drinks and packaged junk snacks.
    â€œâ€˜Glenn-Air’ looks like it might be his place of business,” Moody said, trying to hold the sandwich through the plastic bag. “I called it but didn’t get an answer.”
    LeBeau frowned. “But you just got the address book.”
    â€œYou don’t miss anything, do you? Daisy called me from the house.”
    LeBeau was looking through the book. “Most of them are first names only.”
    Moody had already eaten half the sandwich. Carrying the other half, he went to the water cooler. At the moment, only he and LeBeau were on the floor, but other homicide detectives were at work elsewhere in the city, especially the team handling the case of the high-school girl whose raped, mutilated, and murdered body had been found three days earlier in a public park. Moody wished he had reminded Dennis that the coffee machine was out of order: he had to wash the sandwich down with water.
    When he returned to his desk, he and LeBeau divided up the phone numbers, Dennis taking A through L. It was Moody therefore who got the painful job of calling the number listed for “Mom.” The most he could hope for was that the number was that of Lawrence Howland’s mother. But it was one of the established truths of homicide work that the kinder alternative was rarely the operative one.
    Had the number been local, he would have gone to the residence personally. That was departmental policy, but he