The Secrets of Harry Bright Read Online Free PDF Page B

rage.
    "I'll call you either way."
    "Call me," Victor Watson said, closing the door to the salon while the detective wove his way through the vases and urns and pots, vaguely realizing that all this designe r c rockery was probably worth ten times more than the play or pay deal he was just offered. Which made him feel like he had a mouse watersiding in his stomach. He hoped he could find a men's room pronto.

    Chapter 3

THE MUSIC MAN
    "GIVE US YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES,"
    Chief Paco Pedroza once said to a gathering of all th e h eads of law enforcement in the Coachella Valley. "We'l l t ake some a the third-round draft picks you can't use bu t d on't give us your whodunits! I got one detective, and fa r a s crime labs go, the only labs around Mineral Spring s c ause crime. I mean the speed labs operated by the outlaw bikers. So if your whodunits leech on into Mineral Springs, just be ready to handle them without too muc h h elp from my nine-person work force."
    Paco Pedroza never had any trouble with whodunits from Palm Springs or anywhere else until the disappearance of Jack Watson back in 1983. Victor Watson's residence was in the old Las Palmas section of Palm Springs, not far from homes formerly owned by Hollywood legends. Now the desert's best addresses are moving down the valley, but in the old days Las Palmas was the center of a posh bedroom community. The homes are large and old, concealed by walls and nearly impenetrable oleander. Most of the streets circle mazelike, and many a new cop in town has gotten lost chasing wily local kids around the Las Palmas neighborhoods.
    The residents of Las Palmas, particularly the older residents, seldom go shopping. Groceries and other essentials are brought in by delivery vans. In fact, after Jack Watson's disappearance, a delivery boy with a burglary record was questioned for three hours at the Palm Springs Police Department.
    On the second day of Jack Watson's disappearance, even before the victim's terrified parents flew into the Palm Springs airport from Los Angeles by private jet, the police had given the Las Palmas residence a pretty good going over. In the beginning they thought the young man might've been kidnapped from his bedroom while sleeping. The bed was unmade, the burglar alarm was not set and a sliding door in the guest bedroom wasn't entirely closed.
    Victor Watson's home was so well alarmed that he even had a dozen point-to-point infrareds on the outside. They cost $1,000 a pair and were mounted high up on the fence that enclosed the property. They were designed to detect climbers, but they were not wired into recording channels like the inside alarm. The outside infrared system would ring only at the residence, alerting the Watsons or neighbors or passing patrol cars. The reason they could not transmit by radio wave or telephone is that there were too many false alarms. Birds, animals, a falling leaf could trigger the system.
    The infrared had a transmitter and receiver on one end of an invisible beam that traveled a straight line, hitting a mirror and bouncing back, strildng the receiver precisely. It was remotely possible that someone with a e at deal of training and practice could interrupt th e w ith another mirror if it could be so finely and instantly adjusted that the beam came back precisely to the receiver. James Bond could do it, they decided, but probably no thug in Palm Springs.
    There were lots of false trails taken by the police and F . B. I . during those first days, while Victor Watson hovered over the scene, cordless phone in hand, experiencing for the first time the impotence of the crime victim. He received the telephone call at 6:00 P . M . of the second day.
    It was from a woman who said that Jack Watson was being held close by in the desert" and to await instructions. Of course close by in open desert could mean anywhere within five hundred square miles. Victor Watson thought he heard the sound of air brakes in the