Novel - Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer Read Free Book Online Page B

Eventually, a relevant list opened on a fresh page. There were over a hundred open cases with a Sharkey tag attached to them. This was incredible. Sergeant Hourihan had shown me closed case files before, and nobody had come near to a hundred tags. Even Dublin’s notorious General was only associated with fifty unsolved cases.
    I scanned the file headings briefly. Nearly all of the offenses were grand or petty larceny. It looked as though the Sharkeys were responsible for an ongoing crime wave in Lock that had lasted over ten years. Well, if I had anything to say about it, their crime wave was about to break.
    My fingers hovered over apple+p. If I printed these three hundred–plus pages, I was setting off on a road that might be difficult to exit. Was my badge really worth that much to me?
    Yes , I decided. It was .
    I pressed the keys.

MAKING AN IMPRESSION—
ON MY FOREHEAD
    I REMEMBER MY FIRST CASE. I was three years old, closed in a playpen in downtown Lock. One of the day care workers, Monique, took off her engagement ring while she was sterilizing bottles. She put the bottles in the microwave, and when she went back to the countertop, the ring was gone. It wasn’t the kind of ring you could mislay, a big hunk of zircon. Someone had taken it. Monique was hysterical, tearing the place apart. It took three women to stop her from ripping out the plumbing.
    I remember sitting on a beanbag, chewing on an animal cracker, thinking it over. I knew who had taken the ring. A toddler called Mary Ann who loved shiny things. I hadn’t actually seen her take it, and I knew enough about playground law to know that you didn’t shoot your mouth off without proof. I decided to get proof because Mary Ann had swiped one of my chocolate fingers the week before. She was a repeat offender and she had to be stopped.
    I waddled over to the crime scene and had a good poke around. When I had everything I needed, I brought my case to the sobbing caregiver.
    “Mary Ann took the ring,” I told them.
    Monique tried to be professional through her hysteria. “Now, Fletcher, we’ve talked about this. No making up stories.”
    “Mary Ann took the ring,” I insisted, scowling through the cracker crumbs around my lips.
    Mary Ann picked up a building block and hefted it at my head. It made solid contact, felling me like a tree trunk. Once the bleeding had stopped, I made a second attempt to break the case.
    “Mary Ann took the ring,” I said again. “Come see.”
    I dragged Monique over to the sink.
    “Look,” I said, pointing to a red smear on the stainless steel, near where the ring had been. “Jam. Mary Ann had jam.”
    Monique’s expression changed from patient to interested.
    “That’s true, I suppose, but other people had jam.”
    I had more evidence. “Look. On the floor. Marks.”
    Monique checked the floor. Wet tracks led across the tiles and onto the Disney rug. Four tracks. A walker.
    “Mary Ann has wheels,” I said.
    It was the clincher. Only Mary Ann had jam and a walker. She was quickly stripped and searched. They found the ring stuffed down her diaper along with three marbles, a plastic dinosaur, and two sets of car keys. I know now that Mary Ann was suffering from what detectives called Magpie Syndrome.
    I thought that my cleverness would make me popular. I was wrong. No one wants a friend who can find out their secrets. Somehow I realized even at three years old that if I wanted friends, I would have to stop finding things out. I didn’t stop, and Mary Ann has hated me now for almost a decade. If she wants to do anything about it after all this time, she’ll just have to join the club.
    I was up half the night sifting through the police incident reports. After a while I began to see a pattern. Basically the Sharkeys were on the police’s hot list, and were automatic suspects for any unsolved cases. Just because they were tagged, did not necessarily mean that the Sharkeys were guilty, or even the prime suspects. But