Act of God by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online Page B

we’re usually out of there before the real impact hits them. No, the tough part is dealing with the survivors, over the months and even years after the killing.”
    I nodded. “You don’t think you’re going to close this one, do you?”
    “FBI says something like thirty percent of all homicides nationwide never get solved. Of the ones we do close, most of them are made on eyewitnesses, which we don’t have here. Hell, there isn’t so much as a physical description of the perp, and he didn’t take anything away, not even the poker, which doesn’t have but smudges on it, no readable latents or even partials. First twenty-four, forty-eight hours, you’ve got a good chance something new’ll turn up. But now we’re at what, three weeks tomorrow? Things get awful stale, that kind of time goes by and fresh bodies come in, barking at you for attention.”
    Cross shook her head. “No, that’s the hardest part, Cuddy. Getting the calls from the family when you know the case isn’t going anywhere, them asking us if we’ve checked things we already told them we checked, us telling them again. Some of the guys, they duck those calls, but I can’t. Nobody wants to talk to the survivors, but I’ve got to, you know?”
    Knowing her I knew. “Anything else you can give me?”
    Cross thought about it, taking another Munchkin to help her. “We ran checks on everybody. Swindell had a continued-without-a-finding on a receiving-stolen-property back fifteen years ago, not even a traffic ticket since. Nobody else showed anything, but I thought this Quill breathed a little easier when he realized we weren’t from INS.”
    “You think maybe he has an immigration problem?”
    “Cuddy, you didn’t know it, let me tell you. Half the brogues in this city have some kind of immigration problem, either in illegally or in legally and overstaying. Quill, though, I just had that feeling about him.”
    “I appreciate it, Cross.”
    “So how about your Darbra, what’s the line on her?”
    “I don’t know much. She went off on vacation, she came back, then disappeared.”
    “And her brother hires you to go fetch.”
    “At least go find. Any other tie-ins to Ms. Proft from your end?”
    “No, but she’s a flashy one.”
    “I haven’t seen a picture.”
    “Kind of blank face, a ‘so-what-did-I-do’ look on it. But big green eyes and legs to her chin and the kind of walk you can’t be taught.”
    Cross said it like she’d once tried to learn it.
    I stood up. “I find out something you should know, I’ll be in touch.”
    She reached for another cholesterol ball. “Have one.”
    “Thanks, but my body’s a temple.”
    Cross regarded the Munchkin like it was something precious. “My body used to be a temple. Now it’s a ruins.”
    I left her chewing.
    “What kind of day am I having, John? Let me tell you what kind. I’m having a Sol Wachtler day in a Woody Allen week, that’s what kind of day I’m having.”
    “Sorry to hear it, Mo.”
    “Huh, tell me about it.” Mo Katzen interrupted himself to set down his newspaper, whisk some tobacco ash from a dead stogie off the front of his vest, and lunge for a war memorial lighter on his desk. The lighter was the only functional thing on the desk, awash in the quasi-paperwork of baseball programs, playbills, sandwich wrappers, and God knows what else from fifty years of reporting, the last ten or so at the Boston Herald. “I tell you, John. I’m tired, dog tired.”
    Mo had been saying that since I’d met him, wearing the same outfit of the pants and vest to a three-piece suit without ever being seen in the jacket. His feet were up on a corner of his desk, the rickety manual typewriter still on the secretarial pull-tray, the old warhorse resisting computerization like it was the glue factory.
    “Mo—”
    “I mean, it’s not just the hearing aid, which I still got to wear, God knows why. Actually, I know why. It’s because I couldn’t hear you talking to me, I