The Suspect - L R Wright Read Online Free Page A

that fluff underneath it.”
    "Yeah, it does," said Gainer, and showed
him. "You can't even hardly notice it now, right?" He
whipped off the hat. "What do you think, Staff? Women'll love
it. I'm guaranteed."
    " Then what do you care what I think?" said
Alberg, irritated. "Did you get that done around here?" he
said, as an afterthought.
    " Yeah, in Sechelt. There's this girl I met,
she's a hairdresser. She says they get as many guys as girls going in
for this. It's supposed to last three months, she says. At least."
    Alberg drank some more of his beer. His scratches
stung. His head ached. He could already tell where he would be stiff
and sore the next day. "You use different muscles," he
said, feeling old, "attacking plants."
    "Listen, Staff, the reason I'm here. We've got
us a homicide, and the sarge said you'd want to handle it.”
    Alberg stared at him. "Why the hell didn't you
use the telephone?”
    "I did, but there wasn't any answer. I guess you
couldn't hear it outside.”
    Alberg dumped the rest of his beer into the sink and
went down the hall to the bathroom, stripping off his shirt. "Fill
me in while I get dressed.”
    It would be a domestic disturbance, he thought,
splashing his face with cool water. Some guy crying and hugging his
wife while she bled to death from sixteen stab wounds and the knife
lying right next to him, his prints all over it. He splashed more
water under his arms, over his chest, across the top of his back. Or
a brawl at a beer parlor down the highway, two good-time buddies
slashing at one another with broken bottles, one a little faster, a
little angrier, than the other. In his twenty years on the force,
Alberg had worked on fewer than a dozen homicides which hadn't solved
themselves at the scene or within twenty-four hours.
    No suspicious deaths of any kind had occurred in
Sechelt since he'd arrived, eighteen months earlier.
    He was rubbing his face and arms dry when he realized
what Gainer was telling him.
    He caught sight of himself in the mirror over the
sink. He looked scrubbed and healthy and not at all tired, any more.
Gainer, waiting in the hall, wondered hopefully if Alberg would
decide that the occasion called for the uniform. Hell, he thought,
he's probably forgotten where he put it.
 
    CHAPTER 5
    When they arrived at the house there were two
blue-and-white patrol cars parked on the shoulder. Theirs made three.
There was also an ambulance. Two white-coated attendants waited,
leaning against the hood, for instructions.
    Alberg saw an elderly couple watching from the end of
the driveway which led into the yard next door. Across the street, a
woman looked out from a window. A small boy cycled past, slowing to
get a better look at what was going on.
    Alberg and Gainer went through a gate in a tall
laurel hedge and down a crushed gravel path to the front of the
house. A constable was stationed at the door. Sid Sokolowski was
giving instructions to a dark-haired, blue-eyed corporal when he saw
them approaching. "Okay, Sanducci," he said, "get at
it,” and the corporal went off purposefully toward the far side of
the house. Alberg was convinced on little evidence that Sanducci was
far more impressed with his own good looks than he ought to have
been. He found the young corporal irritating.
    Sergeant Sokolowski came up to him, a massive,
muscular man whose notebook looked tiny clutched in his large paw.
    " It happened within the last few hours, Staff.
The guy's name was Carlyle Burke. He was eighty-five. Guy who found
him isn't a hell of a lot younger—George Wilcox. He was a friend of
the victim, lives down the road a ways. Dropped in to say hello and
found a corpse."
    "Where's Wilcox now?"
    "Around back. Redding's with him.”
    " Okay. Go 0n."
    " The victim was struck on the head. No sign of a
struggle, no sign of a break-in or a weapon. This Wilcox called in at
two thirty-seven. Sanducci and Gainer got here in eight minutes. It's
Sanducci's Italian blood. He oughta be a race-car