The Boyfriend Read Online Free PDF Page B

pretending to be a customer, looked around, and found all of her jewelry and cash? It didn’t seem likely at all. Jack Till put on a black sport coat, slipped a .380 pistol into the pocket, and went outside to his car.
    Patrolman Gene Trinicum drove up to the front of his one-story ranch-style house in Simi Valley at four-thirty a.m. He was tired and felt a little bit sick to his stomach from the stale coffee he’d had to keep drinking for hours to stay awake. He’d also had to wrestle with a drunk to get him into the car at two-thirty, and he still felt bone-tired from having all that adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream and the muscle strain from lifting the guy and overpowering his arms while his partner handcuffed him.
    He opened his garage door with the remote and drove in, then closed it behind him and got out of the car. He hadn’t seen the man standing beside the door, and even as he jumped backward in surprise, he wondered how this could be happening.
    “Hold it,” said Till. “Don’t move.”
    “You’ve made a big mistake. I’m a police officer.”
    Till said, “Stay calm. I haven’t done anything to you yet, Gene. I came here so I could talk to you alone without getting you fired.”
    “Who are you?”
    “My name is Jack Till. I was a homicide detective three when you were in elementary school.”
    Trinicum looked at him, and for the first time made out in the dim light that Till had a gun in his hand.
    Till said, “All I want from you is an honest answer to a couple of questions, and then I’ll go away.”
    “Ask.”
    “Do you remember a homicide from a month ago where a young working girl got shot in an apartment in Encino? Her name was Catherine Hamilton.”
    “Yes.”
    “You and your partner were the first to respond to the scene. Right?”
    “Right.”
    “Any paramedics or anybody get there first?”
    “No. Some friend of hers got worried, and called nine-one-one. It was a girl’s voice on the recording, but she wouldn’t identify herself. Probably another hooker. So we went, the manager let us into her apartment, and there she was.”
    “Here’s where we get to the tricky part. I’m asking because I need to know about the guy who killed her—how he does things, what he’s got. If you tell me the truth in confidence, it will never get reported. How much money was in her apartment when you got there?”
    “It’s in the report from the detectives who did the search. I think they said three or four hundred. It’s not my case, so I don’t have the exact number.”
    Till said quietly, “I really want to go away now and leave you alone. So tell me what I need and let me.”
    “What?”
    “You know and I know. The detectives on the case might suspect, but they’ll leave you alone unless…”
    “Unless?”
    “To make it clear, I was a really good homicide detective, and people remember me. There are guys with stars on their collars who owe me their lives. If I ask them to, they’ll toss your house, freeze your bank accounts, examine every deposit and expenditure you’ve made, and dig up your yard until they find it. And then I’ll count it myself. Or you can give me an honest number right now. When you got there, how much cash was in that apartment?”
    “How do I know you’re not wearing a wire?”
    Till moved so quickly that Trinicum was on his back with Tills forearm across his throat before he could tell that anything was coming.
    Till said, “You know I’m not wearing a wire because if I am I just made a recording of myself dropping you on a concrete floor and getting ready to crush your trachea. Good enough?” He let up a bit on the pressure on Trinicum’s throat.
    Trinicum nodded, and Till rose and let him sit up. “There was just under thirteen thousand. My partner and I split it.”
    “Where was it hidden?”
    “In the freezer, in a fake frozen food package. Some civilians might miss it, but we see the latest-model hiding containers every time we