Cry Baby by David Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

your name, and I’ll go fetch you that Seven-Up. Whaddya say?’
    What he says is nothing, and Doyle’s frustration level climbs ever higher.
    ‘I gotta call you something,’ he says. ‘If you won’t give me your real name, I’ll have to give you a nickname of some kind. Is that okay with you?’
    The man’s not interested. Doesn’t appear to be listening. Doesn’t appear to be in this room, mentally.
    ‘How about Rainman?’
    This from Schneider, languishing at his desk across the squadroom. He is a large, square-framed man with an equally square head topped by close-cropped steel-gray hair. Schneider looks like the type of cop who would crush a suspect first and ask questions later. He takes no prisoners with Doyle either, and makes no secret of the fact. The animosity has been present ever since Doyle joined the Eighth squad, and Doyle long ago abandoned any hope of extinguishing it.
    Schneider presses on: ‘You should take him to Atlantic City. Get him counting cards in the casinos. What with his proficiency with numbers and your luck in getting away with things, you’d clean ’em out.’
    This is nothing new to Doyle, Schneider not being one to waste an opportunity to cast a shadow on his past. It is Doyle’s hope that, even if Schneider never tires of it, others will, and someone will eventually tell him to shut the fuck up. All Doyle needs to do in the meantime is to keep his nose clean – something that, unfortunately, doesn’t always come naturally to him.
    He does now what he has found works best with Schneider, which is to ignore his jibes. Doyle’s suspect, on the other hand, has already formed an opinion and is less reticent in keeping it under wraps. He leans conspiratorially toward Doyle.
    ‘I don’t like him. He’s mean. And he looks like Spongebob Squarepants.’
    Doyle can’t prevent himself from laughing out loud, and as he does so he looks over at Schneider, who seems to sense that he is the butt of a joke and is muttering angrily to himself.
    Doyle returns his attention to the stranger on the other side of his desk. He is starting to warm to this guy.
    Which is probably not the best attitude to have toward someone who may have just disemboweled his own mother.

12.06 AM
     
    She wasn’t expecting to meet anyone in the hallway at this time of night. She certainly wasn’t expecting someone to be right in front of her apartment door. As if he’d been about to knock.
    Or as if he’d been listening.
    She wonders how long he’s been standing there. How much he’s heard.
    ‘Who the hell is that?’
    The voice sounds so loud in her ear that it makes her wonder if her visitor can hear it too. She reaches a hand to her hair to make sure that it’s hiding the earpiece.
    ‘Mr Wiseman!’ she exclaims in surprise, but also answering the question.
    Mr Wiseman is in his sixties. Short, slim and slightly stooped over. As if in apology for the absence of hair on his head, his eyebrows have bloomed to form a shelf of thick, lustrous gray. He lives in the adjoining apartment, apparently with his son Leonard, although she has never seen or heard the latter. According to the elder Mr Wiseman – and here she’s a little fuzzy on the detail because she never listens to his stories properly –  his son was hit by a car about twenty years ago and broke his spine. Wheelchair-bound ever since, he refuses to leave the apartment, relying on his father to do everything for him.
    When Erin moved here just a month or so ago, Mr Wiseman was the first to knock on her door and say hello. Since then she has chatted to him several times in the hallway. Mostly mundane stuff, but in spite of his own family burdens he has always seemed peculiarly concerned for her welfare.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s just that… I heard noises.’
    His voice is gentle and filled with concern, which does not go unnoticed as it carries over the microphone.
    ‘Great. A do-gooder. Tell the