This Thing of Darkness Read Online Free

custody.”
    â€œI don’t work miracles. It’s good quality. Twenty-two carat gold maybe, not the dreck they make nowadays. Hand shaped and hammered by a goldsmith, not off the assembly line in China.”
    â€œChina makes Magen David s?”
    â€œChina makes everything. Mezzuzahs, yarmulkes... You go to Israel today, half the Judaica in Old Jerusalem is from China. But this...” he smiled enigmatically, “this is from Russia.”
    â€œYou can tell that? Something different about the gold?”
    â€œProbably, but who knows?” His smile broadened, showing a row of unnaturally straight, white teeth. In his lumpy, pockmarked face, their perfection was jarring. He stepped back, removed his loupe and held it out to Green. “Have a look. There’s a jeweller’s monogram on the back. Cyrillic letters. ASM, I think. There’s an inscription as well.”
    Dutifully Green peered through the magnifying glass, astonished that he could see every scratch and speck of dust on the gold. At first he could make out nothing beyond a few faint etchings, well worn by the passage of time. Then slowly a pattern emerged. He couldn’t read Russian, couldn’t recognize anything but a few loops, but he took Fine’s word for it.
    â€œCan you photograph this?” he asked. “Would that help you research it?”
    Fine scowled, but Green could see the glint of intrigue in his eye. Objects told a tale, and the older and more widely-travelled they were the more fascinating the tale. Without another word, he had his state-of-the-art digital camera out and was fiddling with lenses.
    Ten minutes later, Green left the shop deep in thought about the elderly victim. Having an old piece of jewellery from Russia meant very little, of course. The old man could have purchased it in an antique store here or in any one of the hundreds of Judaica shops in North America. He could even have purchased it online. Fine might be able to pinpoint who the goldsmith ASM was, and when and where he had lived, but that would tell the police nothing about where the victim was from. Green himself had bought a pair of antique silver Shabbas candlesticks from Fine, who claimed they had come from the Ukraine. Green had never been near the Ukraine.
    Reluctantly, he forced the mystery of the dead man from his mind. The routine homicide investigation was being capably managed by Sergeant Levesque and overseen by Staff Sergeant Sullivan, who had fifteen years in major crimes under his belt. The body had been removed to the morgue, and before heading off to the Britannia Yacht Club for his Sunday afternoon sail, Dr. MacPhail had scheduled the autopsy for Monday morning.
    The Ident Unit was still at the scene, painstakingly collecting cigarette butts and trying to lift footprints from the tiny patch of dirt between the sidewalk and the building. The killer might have hidden there, pressed up against the wall in the shadows, waiting to ambush the old man. A team of uniformed officers under Levesque’s direction was conducting a street canvass, searching for anyone who might know the old man or might have witnessed the assault. In the middle of a weekend market day, a near-futile task.
    Against Levesque’s obvious but unvoiced objection, Green had taken over the tracing of the Star of David, arguing that he had the connections and knew more about the significance and possible origins of the religious piece than either she or Sullivan, both lapsed Catholics. But the truth was, he couldn’t resist the lure of the case. It wasn’t simply the desire to be back in the trenches, following up leads and tracking down killers instead of sitting behind his desk. This victim felt special to him. The death of a courtly old Jewish gentleman out for his evening stroll hit a little too close to home for him. Who knew what this man had accomplished and endured over his life? To meet such a brutal and pointless end was an