The Reveal: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (Book 6) Read Online Free PDF

my big
leather bag. The red-orange ribbon of sky along the horizon was beautiful.
Someday, some year, I would make the time to look at it.
    I carded my way through the rear entrance to the
building and headed to Dispatch to try to track down whoever called in about
Virginia Rinaldi’s house this morning.
    “Yes, Detective?” A small woman, an admin named
Patel, gave me the best smile she could muster at a few minutes past eight in
the morning.
    “Around 6:30 you got a call from a woman telling
you to check out a house on 411 Harkins. Truman responded. Was it you took that
call?”
    Patel hit a few keys on her computer, then
squinted at the screen and nodded. “Yes.”
    “Tell me about the call.”
    “Young woman, I’d say. Under thirty. She gave me
the address and asked us to check it out.”
    “She say why?”
    “I asked. She repeated, ‘Please check it out.’ I
asked again, you know, if everything was all right, if there was a problem. She
hung up. So I put out the call. Truman responded.”
    “All right,” I said. “I’m gonna ask the chief for
authorization to try to run down that call. You mind getting that number to
him?”
    She was good with that. I thanked her and headed
to the detectives’ bullpen to meet up with Ryan and brief Chief Murtaugh.
    I checked my watch: 8:05. The night-shift guys had
already cleared out by the time I got into the detectives’ bullpen. The place
was starting to come alive. The techs and the civilian staff were all settling
in at their desks. Computers and printers beeped. The smell of coffee drifted
in from the break room.
    Ryan was just hanging his coat on the rack in the
corner of the bullpen, a rectangular room maybe thirty feet across. I tossed
mine on the back of my chair and we walked down the hall, past the incident
rooms and some administrative offices toward the short hall that led to the
chief’s office. His secretary, Margaret, wasn’t at her desk. I stuck my head
around the corner to see if his office door was open. It was.
    Robert Murtaugh was seated at his desk, frowning
at his screen. He was a good-looking man in his late fifties, a full head of
hair going salty, tough-guy features. As always, he wore a white shirt, tie,
and jacket, even at his desk.
    “Morning, Chief.”
    He looked up. “Good morning, Karen.” He tilted his
head a little to see past me. “And Ryan.” He glanced at his watch. He’s usually
at his desk by six-thirty. That’s after forty-five minutes of lifting weights
in the gym downstairs. “Catch a case already?”
    I nodded. He gestured for me and Ryan to come in
and sit. Ryan and I took the two soft chairs up against the wall. The chief
came out from behind his desk and sat on the small sofa.
    “A professor, named Virginia Rinaldi.”
    He picked up a yellow pad from the little table
aside the couch and started to write down the little I could tell him: about
the party or the class there last night, about the college-age guy in the
photos and the young woman with the slutty outfits. About Harold telling us why
he thought it was homicide. About how the canvass turned up nothing. I ended
with the request to track down the number of the woman who called in early this
morning.
    “I’ll notify Billingham.” The chief sighed. “Tell
him we’re on top of it.” Charles Billingham was the president of Central
Montana State University. “When Harold officially calls it accident or
homicide, you get back to me, all right?”
    “You bet,” I said.
    “Need anything else now?”
    I looked at Ryan, who shook his head. We stood up.
“We’re good, Chief.”
    We made our way back to our desks in the bullpen.
Ryan logged onto the system to see what we could learn about Virginia Rinaldi.
I went to get a cup of coffee. I could tell it was going to be a good day:
Someone had tossed yesterday’s coffee. Today’s was already dripping into the
pot.
    I passed the hot mug back and forth between my
hands as I walked back to my desk. “She in