The Body Looks Familiar by Richard Wormser Read Free Book Online

cold, and you’re looking for another.”
    “Ah, she’s cold enough now,” Jim Latson said. “You son-of-a-bitch.” He picked up his martini pitcher and his empty glass, and strolled toward the red-headed girl’s table.

 
Chapter 8
     
    BALLISTICS CAME IN FIRST. Dave Corday hardly had his mail in front of him when police headquarters called: Ballistics had the murder gun, had fired slugs out of it, and it matched.
    Corday had trouble keeping his voice steady. This was it. This was the payoff. There was no way Jim Latson could get out of this one; the slugs would lead right to his registered gun. He said, “Where’d you find the gun?”
    The lab officer over at headquarters said, “Routine. We asked all city workers to keep an eye open. A sewer inspector found it under a manhole on Fifth Street. No fingerprints, of course.”
    “Serial number?”
    “For what it’s worth. It’s a Skoda, they’re reasonably rare, but a lot of G.I.’s smuggled them home as souvenirs. It’s never been registered in this country, that we can find out. Of course, some states don’t have registration, and some are slow reporting to Washington.”
    Corday leaned forward till the edge of his desk cut into his belly. “But it’s never been registered in this state?”
    The ballistics man was probably thinking that the D.A. was a little slow this morning. He said, “That’s right, sir.”
    Dave Corday said, “How about fingerprints from the apartment? I know, don’t tell me; they’ve gone to the FBI for a quick check. How about a long distance call to them? This office will pay for it.”
    An unmistakable political tone came into the ballistics man’s voice. “I’m pretty sure Chief Latson phoned them this morning.”
    It was barely nine o’clock. Jim Latson must be sweating to be on deck that early. Corday grinned, but not with too much gusto, and said, “Switch me to him.”
    The phone clicked noisily, and Dave Corday held it away from his ear. When Jim Latson’s voice came on, saying, “Deputy Chief Latson,” he was oily. “Jim, it’s fine about the gun, isn’t it?”
    “Fine?” Latson asked.
    “Yep,” Dave Corday said. “It’s a Skoda. That’s a Czecho-Slovakian make, and our man is a Czech; it’s all closing in. Your man said you’d called the FBI lab about the fingerprints. Do they make them?”
    “I’m sorry as hell,” Jim Latson said. “Dave, old boy, I don’t know how to tell you—we botched that. Not that we can’t straighten it out, but it makes the report a little long; they’re sending it on by collect day-letter. What happened was a whole batch of our personnel prints got in with the ones from the DeLisle flat; but I can tell you this…”
    He went on. But Corday wasn’t listening. A cinch. A lead pipe cinch. Latson had fired the gun—probably one he’d palmed from an arrest, or maybe even one he’d had since the war—at the range, so it would look used.
    Then all he had to do was get it down a manhole.
    Dave Corday felt his legally trained mind take hold of the facts, start aligning them. It was a process he always enjoyed; as a boy, he had not been a very clear thinker; he had been inclined to daydream, and to leave out—as gaps in his daydream—all the difficult process of thought and reality.
    So he knew that logical thinking was a thing he had bought, and bought hard, at law school.
    The gun was not registered and the fingerprints were so confused that they would do no good; not only Latson’s were on the FBI report, but those of a half dozen other police officers who could not possibly be tied into the case.
    Those were the facts; the lawyer’s mind deduced from them that the first fact, the gun fact or set of facts, was luck: Latson luck. Many a police officer keeps several guns: souvenirs of dangerous arrests, gifts from other peace officers, souvenirs of shooting matches. Latson had been wearing one of these, a light pistol, a Skoda, and he had probably been wearing it