Read Online Crime Zero by Michael Cordy - Free Book Online Page A

walked upstairs to the middle floor. The mahogany banisters had just been polished, and the smell took him back to his childhood. His mother and maternal grandparents had brought him up in this house. He had spent half his life here, and whenever he entered the front door, it felt like coming home. On the middle landing he walked to the spacious music room. A piano stood in the corner, alongside an empty open violin case. Luke's own battered saxophone leaned against a tall bookcase filled with tapes, compact discs, and sadly antiquated vinyl.
    Photographs of his grandfather sat atop the piano next to an ancient metronome. Most of the pictures were taken at Davies Hall, where despite offers from the best orchestras in the world, he had played with his beloved San Francisco Symphony for most of his illustrious career. Other photographs showed Matty at the Hollywood Bowl, in London's Royal Albert Hall with Yehudi Menuhin, and of course the famous one of him embracing Isaac Stern onstage at Carnegie Hall. Beside them, slightly by itself, was a picture of a tall blond man and a petite dark woman, Richard and Rachel Decker, Luke's parents. The man was in naval uniform, and his hair was cut short, like Luke's.
    Just as Luke had imagined, his grandfather stood by the large window facing out across the blue bay, violin tucked under his chin, his guide dog, Brutus, at his feet. He was shrunken and stooped with only whispers of hair on his head but Matty Rheiman still played as if his very survival depended on it. There was a time in his life when it had.
    Decker's grandfather had spent his early teenage years during the Second World War at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where most of his family had been led in turn to the killing chambers. He had been blinded in the camp's experimental hospital by Nazi doctors' injecting blue dye into his brown pupils, trying to change their color and turn a Jew into an Aryan. Only his prodigious gift for the violin and the lessons invested in by his parents had saved him. The com-mandant's wife, Frau Ilse Koch, wanted a talented violinist to entertain guests at their villa in the camp. The fact that the scrawny Matty was only barely a teenager made him an additional curiosity.
    "Hello, Gramps," Decker said, walking over to embrace him. As he put his arm around Matty's frail shoulders, he realized how old he was, eighty-one in December.
    The sound of music was replaced with a deep laugh as his grandfather turned, leveled dead eyes of brilliant unnatural blue on Decker, and smiled. "Hello, Luke." He placed his precious violin carefully down on the piano top. "Brutus, look who's here," he said as he returned Decker's embrace with both arms. Luke felt a warm, wet tongue graze across his hand as Brutus raised himself on two legs and began barking to join in with the greeting.
    "Come, come, Luke. Sit down," said his grandfather, ushering him to the nearby sofa. "How long are you staying this time?"
    Decker heard the pleasure in Matty's voice and was stricken by the brevity of his visit. "Just the night. Then I must get back to Quantico. But I'm thinking of moving back here, you know, Gramps."
    "Really?" Matty said, in a way that meant "I think I've heard this before." "What, they've finally had enough of you in Virginia?"
    "No, I'm thinking of leaving the bureau altogether." Decker told him about his offer at Berkeley and how he wanted to come back here to settle down and get his life in order.
    "Well, that sounds like a good plan to me. And about time too," said Matty with a surprised grin. "You could stay here. It's your home after all."
    Decker smiled. He suddenly had a compelling urge to ask him about Axelman's claim, to hear him laugh at it. But before he could say anything, the doorbell rang.
    Matty's eyes lit up. "That'll be Joey. He's coming around for a violin lesson. Hey, we could all play together, Luke."
    "Joey Barzini?" Decker groaned. "Come on, Gramps, you're not still schmoozing with that