Strip Search by William Bernhardt Read Free Book Online Page B

poor chump with the job of turning everything off and locking up. Except this time, he didn’t lock up fast enough. Or the killer was too determined to be deterred by a locked door.
    “Granger,” I said, doing my best to feign politeness, “find out who was the manager of the late-night shift yesterday, okay?”
    “We’re methodically reviewing all the employee records—”
    “Forget that. Just find out who last night’s late-shift manager was. Then call his home.”
    “Oh yeah? Why?”
    “Because I have a hunch he won’t answer.”
    I left Charlie Chan wondering what I knew that he didn’t and approached my best friend on the force, Amelia Escavez. Over the past few months—after my childhood friend Lisa moved to Los Angeles—we had become very close. We palled around at the office and off-hours, too. She helped me get through some rough times and I loved her dearly.
    Amelia was standing by the patty grill, her trusty field kit close at hand. She was an impressions examiner. Over the years, I’d seen her taking impressions of tire tracks, footprints, fingerprints, even teeth marks. But this was the first time I’d seen her plying her trade with a greasy grill.
    “Trying out a new oven cleaner, Amelia?”
    She glanced up for barely a moment, then returned her attention to her work. She’d coated the surface of the grill with a white substance and was now hardening it with a handheld hair dryer. “Yup. Figured I could sell it to Dow and finally make some real money.”
    “New car, new house, speedboat on Lake Mead?”
    “I’d be content if I could just get a date.”
    Girl talk. The older we get, it never really changes. I used to be so obsessed with work that I almost never socialized with anyone else in the PD—well, not counting David, obviously. But after Lisa took off, I made a real effort to get to know some of my colleagues, especially Amelia. Turned out we were very compatible; we were both smart, funny, and utterly sans a love life. Although staring at her slim figure and perfect height (meaning she didn’t tower over and intimidate three-fourths of the male population like yours truly), I couldn’t imagine that date-getting was really that much of a problem for her. My theory was, for whatever reason, she just wasn’t trying. “Don’t tell me the perp left a tire track on the grill.”
    “Oh, it’s ever so much stranger than that. Someone—we’re assuming the killer—left a message in the grease.”
    “What message? Stop me before I kill again?”
    “No.”
    “His name and address?”
    “You wish.” She glanced at her watch. “Two more minutes and I’ll show and tell.”
    “What’s that weird goo you’ve poured all over everything? It doesn’t look like dental-stone casting or any of your usual fixatives.”
    “My own special recipe. Not an easy thing, lifting an impression off cooking grease.”
    “I would imagine not.”
    “We took pictures, of course, but there’s always a chance that an impression will reveal something not apparent to the naked eye. A fingerprint, a swirl pattern. A minute hair or fiber. You never know. Problem was, all my normal casting agents would’ve dissolved the grease.”
    “So what did you come up with?”
    “Hard to describe. Kind of a combination of plaster of Paris and cotton candy.”
    “You’re joking, right?”
    She winked. “Great scientists never reveal their secrets.” The buzzer on her wristwatch sounded. “It’s soup.”
    With anyone else, I would’ve had my doubts, but Amelia knew her stuff. Carefully, Amelia put a gloved hand on each corner and lifted the cast. To her evident delight, it all held together in one perfect piece. Her secret recipe had worked. With an elegant flip, she showed me what was on the other side, what had been fingerpainted into the grease.
    It was reversed, of course, but I could still read it. As it turned out, it wasn’t a message at all, at least not in the conventional sense. There were no