Investigation Read Online Free

Wise jabbed at the smaller child with the tip of his shoe. A few pieces of dried-up brownish substance slipped down along the kid’s head. Then Chris wiped his shoe along the length of the kid’s pajama leg, making sure his shine wasn’t ruined. Which is one of the things I never learned to do in four years of homicide work: to treat a dead human being as an object, an end product of someone’s rage or craziness or greed or jealousy or revenge or whatever the hell else. Which is one of the reasons why I have ulcers.
    Chris finished wiping his shoe on the dead kid’s body, then watched me with that tight close smile of his. “Want me to comb their hair too, Joe? Maybe I should travel with a cosmetic kit.”
    George Keeler looked up blankly when I approached my car. “What happened here, anyway? Boy, lots of cops, huh?”
    “George, would you come with me for a minute? George, there’s been an accident. It’s very bad. Both of your boys.”
    George Keeler stared at me for a split second, then yanked his arm free. He spun around wildly, then lunged to where they waited for him, just behind the bushes. George stood over them, stared down at them. He stretched his arms out in an empty, meaningless gesture, then dropped to his knees. He looked up at the circle of men who watched him. Who stood and watched him and weren’t doing a goddamn thing for his boys. He flung himself over the small bodies, protecting them from view, covering them, hiding them from the expressionless stares. He grabbed the smaller, Georgie, by the shoulders and tried to pull him into a sitting position; he began to shake the body; he began gasping and yelling.
    “Help them. There’s something wrong with them. My God, help them, don’t just stand there staring, there’s something the matter with my boys. Georgie! Terry! Help them, help them!”
    It took two other cops besides me to pull his child’s dead body from his grasp and to drag George Keeler to the ambulance.
    “Heart attack, heart attack,” the white-faced young intern muttered. He jumped into the ambulance and instructed a uniformed cop to help him with the oxygen mask.
    Captain Wise placed himself between the intern, who looked terrified, and George Keeler.
    “You goddamn fuckin’ fool, this man’s hyperventilating. You give him a whiff of oxygen and he’s dead. Asthma, dummy, he’s having an asthma attack.”
    The intern was stricken by the terrible possible consequences of his near-mistake. His face and mind seemed to go blank. Chris Wise turned him around and shoved him back toward the ambulance, and apparently the intern remembered what to do. He emerged to give George a shot of adrenalin.
    Within a few minutes, the loud wet sucking sounds eased and George was breathing easier. He suddenly pushed the intern back and reached out to me. I helped him up and the pressure of his hand was numbing.
    “We gotta tell Kitty,” George Keeler said. “Oh my God Almighty, we gotta tell my poor Kitty.”
    We practically burst into the apartment, a flying wedge of policemen, but Kitty Keeler didn’t seem to notice. She leaped from her chair, mouth opened, eyes wider and seeing only her husband. She reached out for George, her bracelets clanging and sliding up her slender arms. She grabbed at his sleeves, then at his shirt front.
    George Keeler turned away; looked over his shoulder; over her head; looked at the ceiling, the floor, the walls, anywhere, at anything but at his wife.
    “George,” she called to him. Finally she pounded his chest with a clenched fist. “What’s wrong, George? What’s the matter? My God, George, Georgie, talk to me!”
    He inhaled slowly and steadily to the fullest capacity of his lungs. Then, arms dangling at his sides, he looked directly at his wife and in a terrible voice he told her, “They’re dead, baby. They’re dead. Both boys. Both of them. They’re dead.”
    Kitty shook her head slowly from side to side and said, “Don’t say that. Don’t