Jitterbug by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online Page A

tweed vest that made Zagreb itch on sight, with a row of stubby yellow pencils poking out of one of the pockets and a red bow tie, the kind you tied, with yellow polka dots.
    “County pulled Edouard out of retirement,” said Inspector Brandon, in his trademark Panama hat and gray double-breasted. “He owns a mortuary, which his son runs. He worked in the old morgue when it moved into the basement of the County Building in 1905.”
    “Busy first week. Omnibus ran into a horse trolley.” The old man laughed without making a sound. His chest bellowed and he opened his mouth to display a horseshoe of gold molars.
    Zagreb made a noise that seemed appropriate and the three went into one of the three autopsy rooms, bypassing both the viewing room with its comforting furnishings, chosen to lessen survivors’ shock, and the long, low-ceilinged cold storage room where unclaimed corpses awaited identification behind refrigerator doors. The medium-size room where they ended up gleamed with white porcelain and ceramic tile and contained a fixture that was more sink than table, white enamel with a dull zinc lining, a faucet at one end, and a drainpipe running into the floor. The metal shade of a hydraulically operated lamp hung suspended above the naked male carcass stretched out inside. The dead man was about sixty and balding, the gray skin of his face shiny where the bones seemed to be wearing through. His eyes were half-open and sunken into their sockets. His fingers and toes were long and bony, barnacled with callus, and his circumcised penis lay to one side of his deflated scrotum. His torso from collarbone to pelvis was an open, empty cavity in which Zagreb could see the inside of his ribs. A pile of entrails lay atop a rolling steel cart parked next to the table. It was a sight that never failed to remind the lieutenant of his annual hunting trip north to Grayling and the process of dressing out a slain deer. The fishy smell of stale blood and butchered meat, washed down with carbolic, was a presence in the room, very nearly alive.
    Edouard’s bright eyes were on Zagreb as they entered the room. The lieutenant’s reaction to the corpse, or rather his lack of it, seemed to disappoint the specialist, who promptly lost interest. He hung back at the door, hauled out a thick pocket watch with a nicked steel case, and held it in the pink palm of his hand throughout the visit as if he were timing it.
    “Simeon Yegerov.” Brandon read from a spiral pad he took from an inside pocket. “We’re still waiting for a positive, but that was the name on the papers in his wallet. He owned Empire Cleaners on Twelfth. We found him six blocks away, dead maybe ten minutes. Probably on his way home.”
    “Any cash in the wallet?” Zagreb lit a Chesterfield. His throat was raw from smoking but he wanted to take the edge off the carnal stench.
    The inspector turned a page. “Thirty-three dollars. It wasn’t robbery.”
    “Ration stamps?”
    “Third of a book, in the upper right-hand inside pocket of his coat. Butter and eggs mostly.”
    “So why am I here?”
    Brandon turned to Edouard, whose glass blue eyes brightened. “Single laceration, proceeding upward from first penetration at a thirty-degree oblique for sixty-six centimeters, right to left, beginning at the ilium and ending at the clavicle. Complete severance of the external iliac, inferior epigastric, sternal, musculophrenic, and superior epigastric arteries. Death by desanguination in less than two minutes. First time I ever conducted an autopsy without touching a postmortem knife.” He made his noiseless laugh.
    “Shit.” Zagreb blew out smoke with the expletive.
    “There’s more,” the inspector said. “Owners of businesses carry keys. No keys were found on the body. First uniform on the scene went to the dry-cleaning shop and found the door unlocked, the key still in the hole with the ring hanging from it. No sign the place was tossed, but maybe the killer knew where