Read Online Scavenger Hunt by Robert Ferrigno - Free Book Online

everyone. Jimmy was always overly polite with her, complimenting her wardrobe, solicitous about her health. It drove her nuts.
    “Is that a new perfume you’re wearing?” said Jimmy.
    “I’m in my period.”
    “Congratulations. You must be so proud.”
    Katz draped a meaty arm across his shoulders and dragged him closer, her body warm and heavy. “This floater a friend of yours?”
    Jimmy could hear a camera whirling behind him, the uniforms taking Polaroids until the CSI wagon arrived. “His name is—”
    “I know who he is.” Katz grabbed Jimmy by the scruff of the neck, throwing him off balance, his shins butting painfully up against the rocks. One push, and he’d be headfirst into the filthy water. “What I’m interested in is what you’re doing here fouling up my crime scene.”
    Jimmy relaxed, refusing to struggle, not wanting to give her an excuse. He pretended they were old friends out for a stroll in Venice, and that the flies floating around them were pigeons in St. Mark’s Square. He could see Rollo huddling with one of the uniforms, glancing over at him. “I’m writing an article on Walsh—”
    “Detective? Is there a problem?”
    Katz spun around and stared at the young uniformed officer, a strapping Hispanic rookie wearing his Sam Browne belt too high. “A
problem
?” she demanded, her hand still on the back of Jimmy’s neck. “You think I might have a problem that you could actually
do
something about, Commoro?”
    “Yes . . . I mean—yes, sir. Yes, detective,” Commoro corrected himself, his adolescent acne flaring against his dark brown skin.
    “Can you swim, Commoro?” asked Katz.
    “I still hold the record in the hundred-yard butterfly at Santa Ana Catholic—”
    “Good.” Katz tossed him a set of keys. “Go get my boots out of the trunk of my car.”
    Commoro looked at Walsh’s putrid body, then at Katz, then back to the body. He was fingering the car keys like rosary beads.
    “Move it!” Katz waited until the uniform hustled away, handcuff jingling against his belt, before letting Jimmy go, giving his neck one last painful squeeze for good measure. She blotted her sweaty forehead with her necktie. “Now, where were we?”
    “I was mentally composing my police brutality complaint.”
    “That’ll be the day,” Katz snorted. “Nice photo of you and the naked bimbos in SLAP. I bet Jane Holt was thrilled. Why did you have your hands over your unit, though? You got something to be ashamed of?”
    “I’m
sure
yours is bigger than mine, detective.”
    “Follow me,” snapped Katz. The two of them started a slow circuit of the koi pond. Katz stopped after a few feet, chewing on a thumbnail as she studied the body from a new angle. “You said you came here to do an article on Walsh. This your first visit?”
    “I was here once before, about three weeks ago.”
    “Walsh had a drug problem when he went into prison,” Katz said idly. Something in the water had caught her attention. She seemed barely interested in talking with Jimmy. “Did—did he have one when he got out?”
    “I don’t know what that means.”
    Katz looked at him, her eyes the intense blue of an antique doll, painted on and hard all the way down. “So in your position as a professional journalist and helpful citizen, was Walsh still strung out when you last saw him?”
    “He liked to mix painkillers and booze. A lot of people do.”
    Katz watched a blotchy gray koi nuzzle what was left of Walsh’s right ear. Cartilage was the last to go. “I saw a broken bottle in the water back there. A sloppy man and a sloppy death.”
    “Maybe.”
    Katz stared at him, but he didn’t back down. The collar of her white shirt was soaked with sweat, but she wouldn’t loosen her tie if you threatened her with a cattle prod. “Maybe?”
    Jimmy didn’t offer a clarification. The trick with someone like Katz was to make her force the information from you that you
wanted
her to have—the only truth she believed