Dick Tracy Read Online Free Page A

used a tommy gun like a buzz saw,” Tracy said. He gestured. “Look at all the spent shells. They’re everywhere.”
    Shell casings were scattered about the vast cement floor like golden confetti.
    “ ’Cept for the crime-scene shutterbug and the M.E., we haven’t let any of the boys in,” Patton said, nodding toward the Chief, “ ’cause of your standing orders to diagram the crime scene, and mark the location of every scrap of evidence and every spent shell, ’fore anything’s touched or moved. But Tracy, these babies are gonna get ripe before we get that done.”
    “Then hold your breath,” Tracy advised. “And pick up every one of those shells with your tweezers, and put ’em in individual evidence envelopes, noting their location.”
    “We’re gonna run out of envelopes.”
    “Then send out for more.”
    Patton made a face, shrugged. “Dick, it’s obviously a Thompson submachine gun. Forty-five caliber slugs with the characteristic breech-face marks, firing-pin marks, and shell bulge.”
    “I agree. That’s a nice analysis, Pat.”
    Patton grinned. “So—all we need is one or two samples.”
    Tracy shook his head, no. “Pick up every slug.”
    Patton’s grin fell.
    “We’re going to check for prints and run ballistics, too,” Tracy said. He knelt over by the parked delivery trucks. “The victims seem to have returned fire, little good though it did ’em.” He pointed forcefully at Patton. “We want those individual weapons identified. And any prints sorted out.”
    Tracy walked over to the central area where it looked like it had snowed spent shells. Black tiremarks streaked the gray floor. “The car that broke through those garage doors left its own sort of fingerprints; have Casey get closeups of those skidmarks.”
    Patton nodded and hustled off to get evidence envelopes and tweezers from the squad car.
    The newest member of the Major Crimes squad, rumpled-faced, freckled Sam Catchem, was at the periphery, where lab technicians, various detectives, morgue attendants, and Casey, the crime-scene photographer, waited with the onlookers, behind the roped area by the ruptured doors. Tracy moved methodically around the room, lifting the sheets off corpses one by one and studying the victims.
    Pat Patton began gathering the spent shells and recording them in his field notes, while Chief Brandon moved away from the forensic team to join his ace detective. Brandon was a husky man with a rock jaw, a ski nose, and black-marble eyes. He moved through the garage like a tank.
    “Watch your step, Chief,” Catchem said wryly, as the Chief didn’t seem to notice Patton in his path, crouching over the slugs with his tweezers like a little kid searching for four-leaf clovers.
    Brandon nodded at Patton, and did indeed watch his step; it amused Tracy to see the big fullback of a man trying to dance daintily around the evidence.
    “Five dead men,” the Chief said grimly, “and we don’t even know who the hell they are.”
    Catchem approached lazily, a cigarette drooping from his full lips, hands in the pockets of his rust-color topcoat. “Whoever did it took their I.D.,” he said, “but didn’t take a dime.”
    “When you’re through with that cigarette, Sam,” Tracy said not unkindly, “don’t toss it in here . . . I don’t want the evidence compromised.”
    Tracy was studying a burly corpse whose red suit was matched by a bloody face; the most distinguishable remaining feature was a heavily ridged forehead.
    The Chief laughed humorlessly. “How in heaven’s name are we supposed to identify that? Are all these birds the same? Riddled with slugs and stripped of I.D.?”
    Tracy nodded. “Unless, when they’re stripped at the morgue, some laundry marks turn up.”
    “It’s going to be impossible to make ’em.”
    “This one’s street moniker is the Brow,” Tracy said casually. “East Coast boy. Red Hooks Gang graduate. List of aliases that would fill a phone book.”
    “How in . .