Seven Ways to Die by William Diehl Read Free Book Online Page A

blow to his heart.
    In the center of the display was a framed motto printed on rice paper by a calligrapher:
     
A cop needs a good pathologist to do his job, just as a pathologist needs a good cop to complete his.
 
Max Wolfsheim
     
    It was the only place his name appeared. There were no references to the work he had done on these cases, no scrapbooks filled with articles about him, not a single photograph of him anywhere in the apartment. The furniture, such as it was, faced away from the wall.
    The adjoining room, his bedroom, was as modest: a bed, a night table and reading lamp, and a desk in one corner with a laptop computer and a 120 gigabyte external hard drive on which was stored all the research materials and photos he had gathered through the years.
    At 8:20 Max’s phone rang. He looked up and scowled, then went back to his reading. On the fourth ring the answering machine clicked on. It was Cody’s voice.
    “Answer the phone, Old Man. I need you.”
    He reached over to an end table and snatched up the phone.
    “This better be good, Kid,” he growled. “I got a nine-thirty lecture at NYU.”
     “Reschedule.”
    Cody was still squatting as he described the scene:
    Raymond Handley was seated in an antique chair which was in the center of the room. There was a table next to the chair with an old-fashioned glass half full of an amber-colored liquid. Cody judged him to be between five-nine and six-feet, his body well-toned. He had once been handsome. Now his body was gray and his head was leaning slightly forward and cocked to one side. His eyes were slits, staring sightlessly at some fixed point on the floor.
    He was stark naked.
    There was a deep, open gash running from under his right jaw to just under his left ear and a towel tied around his neck hanging loosely under the wound. There was also a small rubber handball stuffed in his mouth, tightly tied in place with a white cloth.
    Each of his hands was handcuffed at the wrists to separate arms of the chair. And each of his legs was cuffed to separate legs of the chair.
    “And here’s the kicker,” Cody said.
    “There’s a kicker?” Wolfsheim said with surprise.
    “Except for a couple of spots on the towel under his chin, there’s no blood.”
    “No blood?”
    A few moments of silence.
    “Okay, Kid, we’re in business.”
    “I just saved myself a grand,” Cody said with a laugh.
    “And cost me one,” Wolfsheim answered and hung up.
    From the bedroom door, Bergman said, “Cap? I think you ought to take a look at this before you go.”
    Cody walked carefully on an angle to the bedroom door, putting one foot in front of the other beside Bergman’s tracks. The room was painted pale blue and everything in the room was expensive, from the teak frame and headboard of the king sized bed, to the matching end tables beside it, to the large dresser and armoire. The doors to the closet were mirrored and one was half open. Handley’s clothes were meticulously lined up. Suits, then sports jackets, slacks, and shirts, each an inch apart. A shirt, underwear, and socks were in a laundry basket in one corner of the closet.
    There was a wooden valet near the bed with a cashmere jacket, dark gray slacks, and a red tie hanging on it. His alligator wallet, Rolex watch, some coins, keys, and a gold chain with a St. Christopher pendant on it were lined up in the tray. A pair of expensive black shoes were under it, also neatly placed side by side.
    “Well, Wilma did say he was neat,” Cody commented.
    “That’s an understatement. I checked the wallet. Hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives, ones, all in descending order. Nine hundred and twenty-eight bucks.”
    “We could retire on what one of those suits goes for,” Cody said.
    “Here’s what’s really interesting. There’s a used bath towel on the bathroom floor.”
    “So he took a shower when he got in last night.”
    “Uh huh.”
    “A very patient killer,” Cody said.
    “And not greedy. Passed