Seven Ways to Die by William Diehl Read Free Book Online

labeled in white. And C’s prints partly obscure the prints of Subject A made yesterday afternoon and the entry prints made by Subject B late yesterday. These prints also were made after Wilma Kearney left yesterday and the entry prints made by Subject B but not the exit prints made by Subject B.
    “Conclusion: Wilma Kearney vacuumed this area about three p.m., Thursday, the 25th. Sometime after that, Subject B entered the apartment and went into the library. Then they were followed by Subject C, whom we will assume for the moment was Raymond Handley, who went toward the bedroom. Subject B then left the library and exited the apartment before Mrs. Kearney arrived this morning. Subject C, we are assuming, is still in the apartment.”
    Cody marked the various sets of footprints with different colored Post-its and Bergman took pictures of them.
    “Okay,” Cody said to Bergman, “let’s get to the main event.”
    They entered the apartment and switched on the lights. As they entered the small foyer leading into the library Bergman fell back two or three steps, looking like he had been slapped in the face. “Oh my God!” he gasped.  
    Cody’s expression never changed. He squatted down Indian-style, resting one arm across his knees.
    “Hello, Raymond,” he said quietly, reaching for his cell phone. “I have a feeling we’re going to get to know you real well.”
     

4
     
    As was his custom, Max Wolfsheim sat in his favorite easy chair sipping his morning cup of coffee. The New York Times was spread out on the ottoman in front of him and he leaned forward, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, his pudgy fingers scanning each page as he speed-read every article. Heavy-set and bald, he was huddled in an old bathrobe, his feet stuffed into a pair of fleece-lined slippers, waiting for the place to heat up.
    It was a comfortable though sparsely furnished room. The furniture was old and worn. A large Peruvian rug covered the hardwood floors. A waist high bookcase ran the length of one wall, stuffed haphazardly with books and magazines. Except for a 42-inch flat-screen TV in one corner, it was the kind of room one might expect of an old bachelor: small, utile, and unimpressive.
    Except for the wall behind him. A wall that changed the character of the room.
    Instead of paintings or artwork, the wall was decorated with framed objects, all different sizes, carefully mounted, each with a small label in the right hand corner describing the object and a date. All were morbid trophies Max Wolfsheim had gathered in his forty years as an internationally known forensic pathologist. They helped abolish the nightmares that sometimes accompanied the most heinous of the crimes he had investigated. He rarely looked at them but each was peculiarly personal. Like panaceas for a bad disease, each was a reminder that there are human beings among us who are capable of the most malevolent acts against humanity:
    A clod of soil from the unearthed grave of a nun in Central America who had been buried alive. May 12, 1992.
    The gas mask he had worn while investigating a sabotage gas leak in Bhopal, India, which had unleashed a deadly cloud of methyl isocyonate gas that killed more than 4,000 people as they slept. December 2, 1984.
    Part of a note written by a madman who had started a club called “Cannibals Anonymous,” had killed more than a dozen youngsters, sodomized and dismembered them, pickled their flesh, and later had eaten them. 1984-1992.
    A hat abandoned in the chaotic aftermath of a gas attack in a Tokyo subway that killed a dozen and left thousands to suffer permanent flashbacks. March 20, 1995.
    One of eighteen Barbie dolls with their heads twisted backwards and left in the arms of the victims of a predator who called himself “Freaky Freddie.” 1982-1996.
    These were just a few of the displays that had earned a place on Max Wolfsheim’s wall of shame, having pierced his calm, normally impenetrable, exterior and struck a