Read Online Konrath, Joe - Dirty Martini by J.A. Konrath - Free Book Online Page A

fear overtakes you. Some people are naturally brave. Others, like me, learn to fake it. I still had no idea if faked bravery and real bravery were the same thing. Cops didn’t talk about their fears. Instead they drank, got divorced, committed suicide, or all three. It beat dwelling on being killed in the line of duty.
    So into the house we marched, stiff upper lips in place. Wells took me past the living room, past the staircase, and back into the kitchen, where a black, charred stain marked the linoleum where Stryker had burned alive.
    The refrigerator was open.
    Curiosity overtook my jitters and I peered inside.
    Standard fridge contents. Milk. Cheese. Lunch meat. Beer. Condiments in the door. But one item was out of place.
    On the top rack, laid out on a CorningWare plate, were three severed fingers.
    I knew immediately whose they were.
    Officer Scott Hajek, my lab guy, was short, plump, and needed both hands to carry his crime scene kit, housed in an oversized Umco tackle box. He came into the kitchen and set the heavy case by my feet.
    “Anything good to eat in there?” Hajek asked.
    “Only finger food,” I replied.
    Hajek squinted into the fridge through Coke-bottle glasses, then frowned.
    “That’s bad.”
    “It was that, or a
hand on rye
joke.”
    “Where’s Herb? He has that gallows humor schtick down to a science.”
    I had no idea where Herb was. After he’d disappeared last night, I hadn’t heard from him.
    Hajek opened up his case, the hinged drawers expanding to three times the size of the base. After digging around for a few seconds, he came up with a vial of black fingerprint powder—to contrast the white appliance—and a horsehair brush.
    He found several latents on the door handle, and several more on the front surface of the fridge. He used Pro-Lift stickers to remove and mount the prints.
    “Got a glove mark.”
    He handed over the Pro-Lift card, and I noted the black oval smudge, no ridges. Someone had opened the refrigerator wearing gloves. I compared two other decent partials to a laptop display showing Alger’s prints, and found that they matched. The homeowner used his own fridge; no surprise there.
    Hajek then printed the severed fingers. He used modeling clay to avoid getting ink all over, and as I’d suspected the fingers belonged to former Chicago police officer Jason Alger.
    It had been my suspicion that the cop had been killed, his fingers severed, and then his prints manually placed on the letter to the superintendent. The Chemist had known Alger’s prints would be on file, and had wanted to lead us to this death trap.
    “Can you lift any latents from the dead tissue?” I asked, hoping that perhaps the Chemist had handled Alger’s fingers without using gloves.
    “I could fume with iodine or cyanoacrylate, but let’s try good old low-tech to start off.”
    Hajek dug around in his box and found a glass microscope slide. He handed it to me.
    “Press this between your palms. My hands are always cold.”
    I did as instructed, and after a few seconds he took it back, wiped it with a nonabrasive cloth, and pressed the slide to the back of one of the fingers.
    “Glass is great for picking up oils. The fingers are cold, so we warm the slide, and the oils cling to the glass.”
    He removed the slide and peered at it through a jeweler’s loupe.
    We repeated the process four times, and then he said, “Got one.”
    He dusted the slide, mounted the print with the Pro-Lift sticker, and frowned.
    “Gloves.”
    The Chemist was careful. I didn’t hold out hope for finding any prints elsewhere in the house, but sent Scott off to do the thankless work just the same.
    “Dust any of the traps that the bombies have deemed safe. Hand railings. Toilet handles. Doorknobs. Light switches. You know the drill. Plus find Henderson—he’s been taking swabs from the IEDs, which you’ll need to identify some of the poisons.”
    Scott made a face. “I’ll be here the rest of my