Tengu by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

around the cluster of police cars, with the policeman
walking in front of him, one hand custodially resting on the front fender. Then
Jerry slowly turned into his sloping driveway, which ran alongside the
wrought-iron fence of Sherry Cantor’s garden next door, nosed the car right up
to the low wall at the top of the gradient, and put on the handbrake. He
climbed out. His shirt was wrinkled and sweaty at the back.
    The detective
in the Hawaiian shirt came up the driveway after him, taking off his Ray-Bans.
“Do you mind if we go inside?” he asked. “It would give us more privacy.’’
    “Sure,” said
Jerry. He led the way up the crazy-paving steps to the front door of his
pale-green bungalow. He couldn’t help glancing toward Sherry Cantor’s house as
he took out his key and opened the door. There were four or five men in
short-sleeved shirts and sunglasses poking around in the garden like golfers who
had lost their balls.
    “Miss Cantor’s
okay, I hope?” he asked the detective.
    The detective
said: “Let’s just get inside, please.”
    Jerry walked
through to the living room. It was gloomy and stuffy because the patterned
drapes were drawn, and the air conditioning had been off all morning to save
energy. Saving energy was one of the things that Jerry believed in, mainly
because it saved him money, too. His service pension didn’t stretch too far
these days.
    Jerry Sennett
was fifty-nine, and on the last day of November he would turn sixty. But he had
one of those lean, gentle, Gary Cooper faces that had improved with middle age.
His eyes had an experienced, slightly sorrowful look about them, which always
impressed the younger women he met at neighborhood parties. His hair was
peppery and cut short. He stooped a little, and sometimes his movements seemed
hesitant, but that was only because he was tall and rangy, and prone to
knocking highball glasses off tables if he didn’t make a deliberate effort to
coordinate his movements.
    His living room
reflected his character. There were two frayed armchairs, a sofa with a wine
stain on one cushion, a big old television set. On the walls were three prints
of Connecticut in the summer. A 1950’s style liquor cabinet, all veneer and
pink-tinted mirrors, stood in the far corner.
    He asked, “Do
you want a drink? I have 7-Up here if you’re not allowed alcohol on duty.”
    “Thanks,” said
the detective.
    Jerry opened
the cabinet and poured himself a Chivas Regal, and a
7-Up for the detective. “By the way,” he said, coming across with the drinks,
“did I ask to see your badge?”
    “Do you want
to?”
    “Why not?” The detective took his badge out of his shin
pocket and held it out. Jerry peered at it nearsightedly, and then nodded.
“They tell you to check out the freezer repairman, so I guess it’s doubly
important to check out detectives.’’
    The detective
gave a humorless smile. His name was Arthur, and he’d been working under
Sergeant Skrolnik long enough to have lost his sense of fun. He said, “Do you
mind if we sit down?”
    “Go ahead,”
Jerry told him, and sat down himself , crossing his
long legs. He was wearing sandals, and there was a large Band-Aid on the end of
his big toe.
    “I have to tell
you that Ms. Cantor has been the victim of a homicide,” said Detective Arthur.
“It happened this morning, around eight o’clock.”
    Jerry stared at
him. “Sherry Cantor’s Jeacft”
    Detective
Arthur nodded. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly sorry.
    Jerry let out a
long breath. “That’s terrible. My God, that’s absolutely terrible. What
happened?
    It wasn’t a
shooting, was it? I didn’t have any idea.”
    “Someone broke
into her bungalow and attacked her. I guess you’ll hear it on the news in any
case. She was kind of mauled.”
    “Mauled? What does
that mean?”
    Detective
Arthur doodled with his pencil on the corner of his notebook. “Whoever it was,
they must have been pretty crazy. She was just about