Read Online The Body Lovers by Mickey Spillane - Free Book Online

there. Right now everybody is in the field on this assignment and little things are drifting in the cops never even heard about.”
    “Like what?”
    “Mitch was around too long not to keep a daily record. Bobby Dale dug it up in his personal effects in the office. The only thing hot he had going was the Poston and Delaney tie-in. He left a page full of speculation about that, including Pat Chambers’ request through you to lay off running it.”
    “Don’t blame Pat for that.”
    “I’m not. But it didn’t stop Mitch from pushing the angle. He hit every damn store he could find who sold negligees like the ones those kids wore and spent over three hundred bucks making purchases in various ones. The boxes started arriving at the office the day he was killed.”
    “What came of it?”
    “He found something that killed him, that’s what. The day he was knifed he was all excited about something and spent a full hour in the morgue file going through stock photographs. He didn’t pull any or there would have been a record of it and the attendant there didn’t notice what section he was working in so we can’t point it up from there.”
    “Any record of that?”
    “It either happened too fast or he was too excited to put it down.”
    “That doesn’t fit him at all.”
    “I know. Dale said he kept a private reference on him at all times.”
    “Nothing like that was found on the body.”
    “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. The position he died in was reaching for his coat. All he grabbed was that handkerchief, but he could have been trying to protect those papers. Whoever killed him simply lifted the stuff.”
    “But they couldn’t be sure he didn’t make a duplicate copy,” I reminded him.
    “It was a chance they took and it paid off. Right now everybody’s backtracking Mitch’s movements and something will show sooner or later. One thing we just found out was that Mitch made four calls to Norman Harrison, the political columnist on his paper. Norm wasn’t home and his answering service took the message to call back. Mitch died before he could reach him. Ordinarily, Mitch and Norm rarely saw each other, so the request was kind of odd.”
    I went to say something, but Hy held up his hand. “Wait, that isn’t all. The day he was poking around in the morgue file Mitch sent a note by messenger to a man named Ronald Miller. He’s an engineer for Pericon Chemicals in their foreign division. We contacted him in Cairo and he said Mitch wanted to see him on an important matter, but he was leaving for Egypt that day and couldn’t make it. He didn’t have any idea of what Mitch wanted, either. Their relationship was normal ... they had served in the army together, got together occasionally and Mitch reviewed a couple of books this Miller wrote on his experiences in the Far East.”
    “It make sense?”
    “I pulled the books from the library and went through them. One was an adventure novel and the other a technical travelogue. Neither sold very well. There wasn’t a single thing in either one that fits this case.”
    “How long ago did he write them?”
    “About ten years back.”
    “Nothing new since then?”
    “No. Why?”
    “Maybe he was intending to write another one.”
    “So what?”
    “He could be an authority on something by now,” I said.
    “What’s on your mind?”
    “I don’t know yet. How much of this has Pat got?”
    “Everything. We’re cooperating right down the line.”
    I grinned at him. “Late enough to get a head start, but cooperating.”
    “We’re in business too,” Hy agreed. “We still know the law on withholding evidence.”
    “And you decide what’s evidence?”
    For the first time Hy let a smile break through. “You ought to know, Mike. Now, where do you go from here?”
    “Looking for Greta Service.”
    “Still on that kick.”
    “It’s the only one I got.”
    “Suppose it leads to Mitch?”
    “He was my friend too, Hy.”
    “Yeah. Maybe you’re