Blood Ties by Nicholas Guild Read Free Book Online Page B

“Apartments that close to the Wharf go for a nice nickel. I imagine you want to run a check on him.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t hurt.”
    But a search of the department database came up empty. Stephen Tregear, it seemed, had never been arrested or questioned by the police, had never been mentioned in any filed report, had never even received a parking ticket. He seemed to be a model citizen.
    Which should have ended it—it ended it for Sam.
    â€œSo file his name,” he said, “and we’ll see if he turns up again sometime.”
    â€œLet’s dig around a little.”
    â€œWhy?” Sam held up his hands, as if to prove he had washed them. “You have nothing on this guy except you don’t like the way he looked at the camera. For the rest, he’s Mr. Clean.”
    â€œHe’s too clean.”
    â€œJust so you know, Ellie, there actually are people out there who go through their whole lives without so much as incurring a library fine. He isn’t any guiltier because we don’t have a folder on him.”
    â€œI think we should run him, give him the full treatment. We’ll find something.”
    â€œEllie—sweetheart—give it a rest. What have you got in mind? The Bureau? His service records? A search like that costs money, and what are we going to tell the lieutenant when he asks us why?”
    â€œHe won’t ask if we come up with something.”
    â€œAnd if we don’t? Forget it. The answer is no.”
    Sam was right. He was usually right. His was the received wisdom of the department and Ellen went back to her paperwork without even a grumble of rebellion.
    By eleven o’clock a preliminary report on the glass found in Sally Wilkes’ kitchen had made it upstairs to Sam’s desk. He handed it to Ellen almost as if disappointed.
    â€œI don’t suppose we could have asked for more,” he said. “They came up with good saliva residue, and Our Boy is definitely a secreter, so the next step is to see if the DNA in the saliva is a match with the semen.”
    â€œAnd no prints.”
    Sam raised one shoulder and smiled, as if to say, What did you think? “He’s arrogant, but he isn’t stupid.”
    â€œYou think he’s still playing with us.”
    â€œOh sure. He’d love for us to spend a couple of hundred hours of very expensive lab time trying to find a cross match. He knows we won’t find it, and he doesn’t expect we’ll catch him.”
    â€œNone of them ever expect that.”
    â€œAnd some of them are right.”
    Two or three times a year the department had to requisition a new swivel chair for Sam. He was a big man—he had played football in high school—and he was hard on the furniture. He didn’t so much sit down as throw himself into a chair, and he would lean back in it until, eventually, the bearings would wear out or a leg would come loose or some other catastrophe would befall it and it would have to be taken out with the trash. The lieutenant received regular complaints from Accounting, but he never mentioned them to Sam because he, like everyone else, had come to realize that such casualties were necessary. Chairs were the innocent victims that got caught in the cross fire of Sam’s career-long war against the bad guys.
    At that moment he had his feet up on the desk, and the chair was cradled under him at precisely the angle to put maximum stress on the back legs. It was a posture that suggested the darkest pessimism.
    â€œThis guy is beginning to spook you.”
    Sam didn’t take offense. At first he didn’t even seem to hear.
    â€œCould be,” he said finally. “I keep thinking about Sally Wilkes’ guts, spread out like that in the bathtub. He didn’t kill her there—as you pointed out, you can’t disembowel someone without making a hell of a mess, and the place was spotless. For another, we’re going to find