The Helper Read Online Free PDF

morning, stayed for about an hour, then left. He didn’t get back till after two-thirty. He’s sitting in one of the
RMPs outside, you wanna talk to him. He’s pretty shaken up, though.’
    Doyle listens in silence. He has a million questions he wants to put to Mr Brownlow, but this isn’t his case. Cesario made that clear. The other squad detectives know their job.
They’ll get round to interviewing Brownlow, and they’ll do it just as thoroughly as he would.
    He drifts away again, itching to get more involved. Soon enough he’ll be given a task. The door-to-door, probably. Maybe later poring over the store’s paperwork for customer details
so he can call them up. All necessary work. But tedious background stuff mostly. Not where it’s really at.
    He goes back for another look at the girl. The Medical Examiner, a Chinese guy called Norman Chin, is working on her now. Checking out her wounds. Speaking his findings quietly into a voice
recorder.
    What’s she telling you, Norm? he wonders. Those cuts whispering secrets to you? They giving you any clues about the psycho who did this? Tell me, Norm, because I want this son of a
bitch.
    He realizes then that he is already starting to make the case his own. Bad idea, but he can’t help it. This girl needs him. She is staring at him and pleading for his help, and he is going
to find it oh so hard to take a back seat on this investigation.
    He moves away again, trying to shake the girl’s empty stare from his mind. He sees the door ahead of him. Starts heading toward it, thinking about the cool spring air outside.
    ‘Got something for you,’ Chin says.
    Doyle is not being addressed directly, but he stops in his tracks. He has to hear this. He turns slowly, sees the backs of all the cops leaning in to hear what profound wisdom Chin is about to
impart.
    ‘First of all, the cuts here, they look pretty random, right? A frenzied attack, cuts here, there and everywhere, right?’
    He pauses until he elicits a couple of nods from his audience.
    ‘Wrong! Not random. At least not at first. See the wounds on this arm?’
    Intrigued, Doyle pushes through the group for a better look. Norman Chin is staring wide-eyed at the surrounding cops. Actually, he cannot do anything but stare wide-eyed, given the intense
magnifying effect of the spectacles he has to wear. On a sunny day, he could laser a hole through steel with those babies, Doyle thinks.
    The glasses, together with the black toilet-brush hair, lend Chin the look of a mad scientist – someone who could quite happily experiment with trying to bring corpses like this back to
life. But what all the cops here know is that Chin is one of the best in his field. You got a DOA on your hands, then you want Chin involved.
    Chin points to the girl’s left forearm with his pencil, and waits for more nods. He’s in his element here.
    ‘Defense wounds?’ some brave cop ventures.
    ‘Not defense wounds. These first few cuts are too regular, too parallel. Not like the other cuts. See?’ He indicates other areas of sliced flesh. ‘See how they’ve been
done in wide angular sweeps? They’re not as deep as the first ones, neither. Besides, this is her left arm. Most of the defense wounds are on the other arm, being as she’s
right-handed.’
    He pauses and surveys his class. Waits for the question which doesn’t come. The seasoned detectives here know Chin’s routine only too well.
    ‘Ask me how I know,’ Chin says. ‘About her being right-handed. Go on, ask me.’
    Clearly a glutton for punishment, the same cop plays along.
    ‘Okay, so how do you know she’s right-handed?’
    Chin points again with his pencil. ‘Ink on the fingers. Plus, I sent someone out to ask the bookstore owner.’
    He gets a laugh, and revels in it. The cop who posed the question gets jostled playfully by his colleagues.
    ‘Next question,’ says Chin.
    The cops go quiet. Nobody wants to run the risk of asking a dumb-ass question, or even