Raw Bone Read Online Free Page A

the clutter as if for an answer. “The registers are somewhere in here … so, if it’s all the same to you, come back tomorrow with a warrant like, and I’ll give ’em to ya. Is that okay with you?”
    “It is.” MacNeice put the photocopy in the envelope and stood up. “Not that I’m accusing you of anything, but if those records are missing, or if they’ve been altered even in the slightest, I will be prepared to have you charged with tampering, and trust me, you won’t want that to happen.”
    At the door MacNeice hesitated, then took out his cellphone. “I’ll take your cellphone number in case I have to call.” He held the phone up, waiting.
    Byrne gave him the number.
    MacNeice punched it in and pressed the green button. A moment later, Byrne’s phone rang.
    “Just checkin’ on me, I see, detective,” said Byrne.
    MacNeice met the man’s eyes. “I’ll be here with the warrant at eight tomorrow morning.”
    Walking back to the Chevy, MacNeice thought about Byrne’s response to the photograph. While it may have been an absent-minded gesture, or just part of the man’s theatrics, he hadn’t reacted the way one would if the face meant nothing. Glancing back at the BTB, MacNeice couldn’t picture that young woman walking in there for a beer, let alone to rent a room. But, in the absence of evidence, one is left with intuition: a hand’s gentle passage across a photograph of a beautiful face would suffice for the moment.
    In the Chevy MacNeice took a deep breath and took out the photograph. Ryan had done an admirable job. Though black and white, he’d recreated the porcelain skin of her face and the gentle curve of her cheekbones framed by her hair. She looked like she’d just closed her eyes and was about to open them and smile. MacNeice put the photo back in the envelope. He called Ryan and asked him to find the residential address for Byrne. It turned out that Byrne owned a small cottage just a few blocks south of the bar.
    MacNeice called Deputy Chief Wallace to fill him in and to ask for a warrant for the records, another to search the bar and Byrne’s residence, and wiretaps on Byrne’s cellphone and the land lines of the bar and home. And, while he was at it, unmarked surveillance on the bar.
    “Based on what?” Wallace said.
    “A hunch.”
    “Christ, MacNeice, you know judges don’t like hunches. Can you give me anything better?”
    “An educated guess.”
    Wallace sighed. “Leave it with me. There’s a surveillance team I can redirect. They’ll be there in five minutes or so. Brief them when they arrive.”
    MacNeice opened his CD wallet and took out Thelonious Monk. He slid
Solo Monk
into the CD player and, as he waited, let the light-fingered playing carry his thoughts down to the water and over to the shallow inlet across Dundurn Bay. The striding piano stripped away a myriad of concerns and allowed him to focus on the possibility of Byrne as a killer. It didn’t work. Byrne didn’t have the strength to crush the girl’s neck, let alone lift her and the heavy anchor over the side of a shallow draft boat. An aluminum or cedar strip runabout would have been unsteady, too, like trying to throw her out of a canoe. And, as far as a second man to help him went, he’d have had to be younger than those he’d seen at the bar. They were doing all they could just to lift a pint of beer.
    A rusted-out blue Ford Windstar approached slowly from the south. The driver flashed the headlights once before turning onto the side street. He did a slow U-turn before parking comfortably between two driveways, one home to a tired old Chrysler and the other, a worn-out Lincoln with one of its rear wheel hubs rusted and resting on a jack, within sight of the BTB entrance and side door. MacNeice drove around the block and came to a stop behind the van. When the driver emerged, he was wearing a black wool watch cap, blue jeans, cross-trainers and a grey hoodie under a beat-up Harley-Davidson