Read Online Harry Dolan by Bad Things Happen - Free Book Online

the book. “Did you get a picture of this?”
    “I got half a dozen.”
    “And this pen was here. You haven’t moved it.”
    “Give me some credit, Lizzie.”
    “The way it’s placed—it’s underneath a particular line.”
    Shan nodded. “I saw that. It’s something Horatio says. ‘I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.’ I read the thing in high school. I suppose I ought to know what that means.”
    Elizabeth stood back and smoothed away the strands of raven hair that had fallen into her eyes. “We’re supposed to think it’s a suicide note.”
     
     
     
    Chief Owen McCaleb of the Ann Arbor police was wiry and handsome and fifty-four years old. He had a bag of golf clubs in a corner of his office, but no one in the department had ever seen him on a golf course. Everyone had seen him jogging. He was the sort of jogger who always kept moving. At a crosswalk, waiting for a light to change, he would jog in place. Even indoors, he was never quite still. Sometimes, talking to subordinates, he would bounce on the balls of his feet.
    He was doing it now, as Elizabeth Waishkey and Carter Shan filled him in on the scene at Kristoll’s office. Shan had gotten to the part about Hamlet.
    “So in the play, Hamlet’s dying,” he said.
    “I know that much,” said McCaleb.
    “His uncle, the king, has plotted to have him killed. The king has Laertes challenge Hamlet to a duel. He gives Laertes a sword with a poisoned tip. But if the sword doesn’t do it, the king has a backup plan—he’ll offer Hamlet a cup of poisoned wine.”
    “The details aren’t that important,” Elizabeth said.
    Shan continued. “So Laertes stabs Hamlet with the poisoned sword. But Hamlet stabs Laertes too. And Hamlet’s mother drinks the wine, not knowing it’s poisoned. Then Hamlet stabs the king—”
    “The details aren’t important,” Elizabeth said again. “The point is Hamlet’s dying. He asks Horatio—”
    “Horatio’s his friend,” Shan explained.
    “He wants Horatio to tell his story,” Elizabeth said. “But Horatio reaches for the poisoned cup. And that’s when he says, ‘I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.’ ”
    “He’s not literally a Roman, he’s a Dane,” Shan said. “Hamlet’s a Dane too. They’re all Danes.”
    “It’s his way of saying he wants to kill himself,” said Elizabeth. “It’s a matter of loyalty. When a Roman nobleman was killed, his followers sometimes committed suicide. It was a point of honor. Horatio feels the same kind of loyalty to Hamlet.”
    Owen McCaleb nodded. “So he kills himself?”
    “He tries to. Hamlet stops him. But that’s the meaning of the line. It’s Horatio’s way of declaring his intention to kill himself.”
    “So the open book is supposed to be a suicide note,” McCaleb said, pacing the office. “But you don’t think Kristoll killed himself. So what we have is a murder made to look like a suicide. And a murderer who quotes Shakespeare.”
    McCaleb reached the doorway and turned back. “And the victim is a man who published a literary magazine. A man who, we have to assume, knew plenty of people capable of quoting Shakespeare. A man who lived in Ann Arbor—a city where, if you order a mocha latte, it gets handed to you by someone who’s read Hamlet. ” He stopped suddenly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Eakins has the body?”
    “Yes,” Elizabeth said.
    “We’ll see what the autopsy tells us,” said McCaleb. “In the meantime, Kristoll’s office stays sealed. And no one talks to the press. I’ve already heard from a reporter at the News. She wanted to know if there was a note. Let’s keep the Shakespeare theory to ourselves.”
     
     
     
    At home, Elizabeth shed her coat and her gun and her cell phone. She boiled water and fixed a cup of herbal tea. She took it into the living room, where the television was on low. Her daughter, Sarah, lay asleep on the couch—a lanky girl of fifteen with sleek black hair like her