The Hundredth Man by J. A. Kerley Read Free Book Online Page A

nervous undercurrent, not unexpected when cops come a-calling. Her apartment was clean, with inexpensive but matched furniture, and beneath the cigarette smoke smelled of lemon air freshener and a recent shower. There was a cat-box somewhere.
    She said, “This is about Jerrold, isn’t it?”
    Harry nodded and Terri Losidor picked up a throw pillow and clutched it to her breast. Harry started with easy questions to let her get used to answering. She was thirty-three and worked as an accountant at a local trucking firm. She’d lived at Bayou Verde Apartments for three years. Children weren’t allowed but pets were cool. They used too much chlorine in the pool. This all came out in a nasal twang I knew the drivers made fun of.
    Harry shifted to Nelson. While he slow-walked her through memories, I sat quietly and used a year’s worth of detective experience to identify cat hairs on the couch. Long and white.
    “How well did you know Mr. Nelson?” Harry said. “I’m talking about his past, his friends, his family, his hobbies, and so forth.”
    “Those things weren’t important to Jerrold and me, Detective Nautilus. It was just us and the things we’d do. I didn’t need to know anything else.”
    “Didn’t need to know or Jerrold didn’t tell you?” Harry loosened his tie, spun a crick from his neck, relaxed. He works in reverse of many cops by leaning forward to toss mush balls and lying back to throw heat and curves.
    Losidor looked away. “I asked a couple of times. He said they weren’t things he liked to talk about; it was painful.”
    “So if you didn’t know his friends you probably didn’t know any enemies.”
    “Jerrold didn’t have enemies. He was so so friendly. Always laughing and telling jokes.” A sad smile. “One of my friends told me, she said, “Terri, that Jerrold makes my mouth hurt with all his smiling.” No one could be angry at Jerrold, Detective Nautilus.”
    Harry locked his fingers behind his head and reclined further. “In May you were angry enough to threaten him with jail. Something about eleven thousand dollars moving from your pocket to his.”
    Losidor closed her eyes, sighed, opened them again. “See, he told me he had a one-time chance to get in on a business it would take just fourteen thousand dollars to make at least seventy in a year. All I had was eleven but Jerry said it would still work.”
    “What sort of business?”
    There was a clang from the back of the apartment, like something falling on the floor. Terri jumped.
    Harry sat up, wary. “Are we alone here?”
    “Oh, yes. Just us,” Losidor said, reaching for a cigarette. “That’s Mr. Puff, my kitty. He’s clumsy, always knocking things off the sills and shelves. Crazy cat.”
    Harry and I listened for a moment. Nothing. Harry settled back into the couch.
    “What sort of business did Jerrold say your money was going for?”
    “Something to do with computers and how they’re hooked together. He explained one office might have one kind of computer and another office had another and the computers couldn’t understand each other. He had a friend who’d invented a better way to make them talk. It made sense, since at my office the computers are always messing up like that.”
    “You ever get to meet his friend? Or hear his name?”
    “I just trusted Jerry, you know.”
    Harry spent one year with Bunco, and this was a familiar conversation. “Once you gave him the money Jerrold stopped coming by as much, didn’t he?”
    “I don’t know he got busy with things … ” Her eyes dropped to the carpet. “Yes.”
    “Then the business went sour.”
    Terri sighed. “He said some other company came out with the same thing first. Intel. I asked the guy who fixes the computers at our office about it. He’d never heard about Intel having anything like that; it wasn’t what they did. That’s when I filed.” Terri sniffled and plucked a pink wad of tissue from her pocket to dab her eyes.
    “But a week