5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 by Frederick Ramsay Read Free Book Online

Inquisition was in another century. This is not Salem. I think you owe Chad an apology.”
    “Send him around. We’ll talk, certainly. In the meantime, think about this—how would you have reacted to Chad if he’d first been introduced to you wearing a swastika…perhaps had one tattooed on his neck?”
    Barbara Starkey stared at Blake for a split second, her mouth agape, closed it.
    “I hardly think that’s the same thing, do you?”
    “I think it is exactly the same thing, as a matter of fact.”
    Barbara Starkey marched off, her back stiff, head held high, a vision of moral rectitude. Lanny, who’d stayed to listen to Blake’s explanation, squinted at him, a frown on his face.
    “You meant all that, didn’t you?”
    “Every word.”
    “I don’t know…” Lanny looked doubtful.
    “Lanny, maybe this is a better example. Suppose you lived in a very tough section of town, gangs, crime, all that. Would you leave your front door unlocked and open at night? I guess you might never be bothered. Years could go by and nobody would attempt to hurt you. But would you risk it?”
    “No, I guess not. No, definitely not. So the kid may not have any investment in the thing around his neck but why take the chance.”
    “Exactly. And in the example I just gave you, would you advertise the door was unlocked?”
    Lanny squinted at the ceiling for a second as if trying to remember something. “It’s funny, you know,” he said.
    “Funny? How funny?”
    “Up at the school the kids talk, you know, brag about this and that and…”
    “And?”
    “I hear rumors that some of them are into that kind of stuff. The Goths, mostly but some other kids as well. You’re serious about this aren’t you?”
    “Serious as a heart attack.”
    “I need to think about it. Could you meet with the principal, if I set something up?”
    “Yes.”
    “Ram’s head. Why do I think I’ve heard that before?”

Chapter 9
    Good to his word, Charlie had the photographs delivered to Ike in the morning—Sunday morning at that. Ike spread them out on the kitchen table and studied them. The resolution was remarkable. In addition, Charlie had sent three blowups of random shoreline. In them, he could even see bits of driftwood on sandy beaches. He made a mental note to ask for a blowup of the area where Trent Fonts thought he’d seen the piece of tail assembly. It might be helpful, particularly if he also could get a tide chart for that day. Trent said it wasn’t there the next week so why, he wondered, hadn’t someone reported finding it? Given the fact that the missing plane was on the news for days, you’d think a piece of tail section, if that is what it was, would at least generate a call to the police if not the FAA. Strange.
    He shuffled through the images. He didn’t really know what he was looking for, but he hoped something would jump out at him. Nothing did. Just boats and ships—big ships, little ships. Ships sitting or moving—ships at anchor, cargo ships and container ships waiting south of the Bay Bridge for a pilot to come aboard and take them into port. Boats sailing, boats motoring—nothing out of the ordinary. He lined up the pictures of successive days side by side and compared them. Except for one small freighter that seemed to have repositioned itself in the night, the pictures for the morning of the fifth of July were not remarkably different that those for the fourth.
    He turned his attention to the shoreline of Eastern Bay. It was formed by the southern peninsula of Kent island on the east and the shoreline of Delmarva Peninsula to the west. As with most coastlines in this part of the country, it was characteristically erose. Inlets, rivers, creeks, and small harbors increased the total shoreline measurement by a thousand-fold or more. No wonder sailors and watermen loved this country. There must be thousands of fishing spots, hunting grounds in any one of those rivers, and they were not the only ones around. What he