Night and Day by Ken White Read Free Book Online Page B

matter. I wasn’t in a hurry and they didn’t seem to be
either.
    They looked like they heading for the girlfriend’s apartment. That’s where I’d take him.
    After a quick breakfast at Hanritty’s, I’d stopped by the office and made a call to Jimmy
Mutz at Downtown station. Jimmy was watch commander on the Downtown District day shift
and an old friend from the pre-war police department. MaryAnn Klinger’s body had been
delivered on schedule the afternoon before. They’d put it in a cooler and would be ready when
Browne & Poole sent the hearse to take it to the funeral home.
    Before that, I’d have to talk to Mrs. Klinger
    I jotted down some notes on the Klinger case for Joshua, stuck them inside the case file, and
put it on his desk. Cynthia wasn’t in yet, so I left a note for her to call Mrs. Klinger and have her
meet me at the office at two. That would give me most of the morning and the early afternoon to
track down Jedron Marsch.
    It hadn’t taken long. My first stop was Jedron’s apartment on Hennessy. It was empty. He
wasn’t there. And he hadn’t been for quite a while.
    When nobody answered my knock, I’d let myself in. From the layer of dust on the bare
wooden floors, I guessed that Jedron hadn’t lived there for a couple of months, maybe more. A
phone sat on the seat of a wooden chair against one wall. A trail of footprints led to the phone
and back to the door. It was a well-worn path.
    Jedron was clever. A lot more clever than the average employee skimming the
cash register. He kept the apartment, and when he called work, he called from the apartment. As
far as they knew at Carpenter’s, he lived on Hennessy. But Jedron lived on Fourth. With the
girlfriend.
    At least that’s the way I figured it. I was on my way to the girlfriend’s place when I ran into
the two of them outside the coffee bar.
    He was easy to spot. Couple of inches over six feet, skinny, wearing a dark green turtleneck
sweater. No sign of the pendant that his employer would have issued him, but it might have been
under the roll of the turtleneck. Or more likely he’d cut it off and thrown it away.
    I didn’t have to look at the picture in my pocket to confirm his identity. He had the kind of
friendly, open face you instantly like, with a big, happy grin that almost made you smile yourself.
He was flashing that grin at the girl on his arm.
    I moved away from them and leaned against a light post, watching out of the corner of my
eye. I don’t like taking somebody down in a crowd if I can help it. If there’s a dust-up, you can
almost count on a couple of other people getting involved. When I was a cop, I could flash my
badge. I didn’t have a badge anymore, and waving my gun around only made it more likely that
somebody was going to get killed. Maybe me.
    When they started to move, I let them go past me, then slipped in behind them. We’d been
walking for almost half an hour, and we were a couple of blocks from the girlfriend’s apartment.
    I didn’t have much on the girlfriend. An address and a first name. Chelsea. She was cute,
mid-twenties like Jedron, maybe a couple of years younger, and just as skinny. I probably
weighed more than the two of them combined.
    They stopped suddenly in front of the window of a jewelry store. I could see his face
reflected in the glass. It looked like he was staring directly at me.
    I had two choices, and no time. Take him down right away, or walk by and pick them up at
the apartment. I walked by.
    As I did, I could almost feel his eyes on me. He might not have made me, but that would
change if I made a mistake. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t change my gait. I kept on walking till I
was a fifty feet beyond them, then stepped in front of a guy coming in the opposite direction and
said, “Excuse me.”
    For a second, I didn’t think he was going to stop, but he finally did. “Yeah?”
    “I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to Expedition Square,” I said.
    I didn’t