Read Online Blood Relatives by Ed McBain - Free Book Online

could have illuminated—”
    “Well, shit, put your own emergency service on it.”
    “No, I want it fixed the way the electric company would have fixed it. Your lightbulb, your globe.”
    “Who’s this I’m talking to?”
    “Detective Carella.”
    “ Paisan, have a heart, huh? I’m up to my ass in orders here. I’ll be lucky if I get through them by the Fourth of—”
    “I need that lamp fixed,” Carella said. He looked up at the wall clock. “It’s a quarter past seven,” he said. “My partner and I are going out for a bite, we’ll be back at the scene there by eight, eight-thirty. I want it fixed by then.”
    “You sure you’re Italian?” the man from the electric company said, and hung up.
    Carella buzzed the desk sergeant, asked for Patrolman Shanahan’s home number, and immediately dialed it. Shanahan barked “Hello!” into the phone, and then immediately apologized when Carella identified himself. He said his sixteen-year-old daughter kept getting phone calls day and night from her girl-friends or from these pimply-faced jerks who kept coming to the house, man couldn’t get a moment’s peace, phone going like sixty all the time.
    “So I’m sorry for snapping your head off,” he said.
    “That’s okay,” Carella said. “There was just one thing I wanted to ask you. On Saturday night, when you found that girl’s body—”
    “Damn shame,” Shanahan said.
    “…would you remember whether the streetlamp was working?”
    “Sure, it was working.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Well, I just know it was working. I automatically look for outages, know what I mean? I see a busted lamp, I fill out a report. But aside from that, I could see the girl’s hand. Up on the top step there, know what I mean? Now if the lamp had been out, it would’ve been blacker’n a witch’s asshole on that corner. Couldn’t have seen the hand, know what I mean? But I could see it. Laying palm up, right there outside the doorway. Didn’t put my flashlight on till after I’d climbed the steps. Threw my beam inside the doorway then and saw the body.”
    “Did you see anything inside the hallway before you turned on your flash?”
    “I could see the outline of the body, yes. I knew there was a body inside there, yes.”
    “Okay, thanks a lot,” Carella said.
    “Don’t mention it,” Shanahan said.
    At a quarter past 8:00 that Monday night, Carella and Kling went back to Harding Avenue. The streetlamp was burning again. It cast a circle of light onto the sidewalk and into the gutter. The circle of light included the entire front stoop of the building in which Muriel Stark had been murdered. The detectives went into the hallway. The only light was the bounce from the lamp outside, but on the floor they could clearly make out the chalked outline of Muriel Stark’s body, and on the walls they could see scribbled graffiti and spatters they assumed were bloodstains. Standing against the wall opposite Kling, Carella could even distinguish the color of his eyes. There was no question but that the reflected light in that hallway was sufficient for identification. They had to believe that Patricia Lowery had indeed seen a dark-haired, blue-eyed man stabbing her cousin to death. This being the case, they further had to believe that she’d mistakenly identified Walt Lefferts only because he resembled the killer more closely than any of the other men in the lineup. They realized with dismay that Patricia’s value to them had been totally destroyed by this false identification. They were looking for a dark-haired, blue-eyed man who looked like Walt Lefferts, yes, but even if they found him, and even if Patricia pointed an accusing finger at him, how could they know for certain that he was the man she’d really seen committing the murder? She had also seen Walt Lefferts committing the murder, hadn’t she?
    As far as they were concerned, they were still looking for someone Patricia had described—accurately, it now