Nantucket Sawbuck Read Online Free Page A

burglar would take some of this stuff, Chief.”
    I got up and walked over. “Tough to fence.”
    â€œStill. Looks tempting to me. And no one says these boys were especially bright. You know what I mean? Chief?”
    I was staring into the hutch. Something bothered me about the collection of silver pieces. They were laid out on four shelves: tankards, a tea service, bowls and spoons, little engraved boxes. The arrangement wasn’t quite symmetrical. It was as if someone had shifted things around and failed to put them back properly.
    â€œSomething wrong, Chief?”
    â€œI don’t know. Make sure all this stuff gets printed.” I turned away from the hutch. “Let’s see what else we’ve got here. I want to be ready when the state police show up. Any sign of Barnaby?”
    â€œNot yet. But we got the break-in site. In the basement. Come on. I’ll show you.”
    We went down the basement steps. All the lights were on. At the bottom there was a small landing, with a storage area to the left and a big garage on the right. There was a window on either side of the garage door. The one on the left had a broken pane in the top sash, in front of the lock. “One of them could have gotten in here, a thin one.” It was a small window. “Then run upstairs and opened the place up for the others?”
    I shook my head. “Where’s the broken glass?”
    â€œHe picked it up?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    I hit the garage door control and it started grumbling up on its metal tracks. I pulled a flashlight off my belt and ducked outside. The light hit the shards of broken glass on the brown mulch below the window.
    â€œI don’t get it,” Charlie said.
    â€œSure you do.”
    It took another moment, but finally Charlie nodded. He was a little sharper than Kyle Donnelly. “Oh. Yeah, okay. That’s why the alarm didn’t go off.”
    â€œTalk to the girl. Get the mother on the phone. I want a list of everyone who had access to that alarm code.”
    â€œMaybe it was just off for the night.”
    â€œIt’s the most expensive system Intercity sells. It’s wired with Cat-5 networking, motion detectors, glass break monitors, and they just got it hooked into the station. You don’t have a system like that and not use it.”
    Charlie shrugged. “I got a four hundred dollar a month gym membership and I don’t use it.”
    I stopped myself from making the obvious uncharitable reply. Instead I said: “I don’t watch much cable TV, either. But this is different. Get me the names.”
    â€œOkay.”
    I patted Charlie’s arm. “It’s getting late. Let’s check out the bedroom.”
    I shut the garage door and we went back upstairs. The bedroom was closed off with yellow crime scene tape. I ducked under it, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. Charlie followed me.
    â€œMove anything?,” I asked. “Touch anything?”
    â€œChief.”
    â€œI mean it, Charlie.”
    â€œSo do I. This ain’t Podunk.”
    I smiled. “People who actually live in Podunk must spend their whole lives pissed off. The name just means hick town full of rubes and retards. There must be some bright people there thinking, ‘Hey, Des Moines ain’t exactly Paris, either.’”
    Charlie laughed nervously. It seemed disrespectful, but I knew better. In these death chambers you worked quickly and you made bad jokes. One SID tech I had known in L.A. sang Puccini arias while he worked. Death may have won but you wanted life to make a showing. That was what dignity meant to me. No puke, no despair, just shrug it off and do your job. Measure the spatter patterns. Examine the ligature marks. Check the hands for defensive injuries. Pace the scene off for droppings, for the bits and pieces the perpetrators left behind. It was Locardo’s Exchange Principle, the fundamental axiom of police work. I had