Read Online The Shadow Man by John Katzenbach - Free Book Online Page B

bruise marks on the old woman’s neck in his memory. The skin by her windpipe was crushed, deformed by the force that had encircled her. Mentally, he measured the distance between the marks.
    Large hands, he thought. Strong hands.
    ‘Is that Mrs Sophie Millstein?’ Robinson asked.
    Simon Winter continued to stare. The woman’s eyes were still wide open, staring sightlessly up toward the ceiling. Winter saw the fear in his neighbor’s face. She must have known, if only briefly, that she was dying then and there. He wondered if he’d worn the same look earlier in the evening, when he lifted his own pistol to his mouth.
    He wondered if she’d managed to think of Leo in her last panicked moments.
    He looked at Sophie Millstein’s eyes again. No, he thought. All they saw was terror.
    Winter took note of a scratch, really a long frayed slice of skin on her neck, oddly unaccompanied by blood. He remembered the gold necklace she wore. It was gone. Ripped from her postmortem, he thought. That’s why the cut to the skin didn’t bleed.
    ‘Mr Winter?’ Walter Robinson’s voice was questioning.
    Simon Winter quickly glanced down at his neighbor’s fingers. Did she fight back? Did she scratch and flail away and try to win her remaining years back from the man who sought to steal them? Her killer’s flesh should be beneath the fingernails. But he saw Sophie Millstein kept hers cut close.
    His eyes moved up to Sophie Millstein’s right forearm. He could just make out the number tattooed there in faded blue.
    Winter felt something touch his sleeve, turned and looked hard at the young detective.
    ‘Of course,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s Sophie Millstein. Her necklace is missing. A single strand, gold chain, but it had her name stamped in a charm at the center. The same kind that kids like to wear, but hers was distinctive. There were two diamonds, not big ones, at either end of the 5. Her husband gave that to her about eighteen months ago, and she never took it off.’
    He took a deep breath, watching Walter Robinson make a notation in his book. ‘You’d recognize the necklace?’ the younger man asked.
    ‘Yes.’ He continued, ‘You might try taking samples from beneath her fingernails …’
    ‘They do that at the morgue,’ Robinson replied. ‘Standard procedure. Do you know her next of kin?’
    ‘Yes. She has a son named Murray Millstein, who’s an attorney on Long Island. She has an address book in a drawer in the living room. The little table that holds the phone. A little leather address book. That’s where she said she always kept it.’
    ‘In the living room?’
    ‘That’s right. I’ll show you.’
    Robinson started to lead Winter from the room. ‘Thank you for your help on this, Mr Winter. We really appreciate it …’
    ‘She was scared,’ Simon Winter said abruptly, under his voice, to the detective. ‘That’s why she came to me.’
    ‘Scared?’
    ‘Yes. She’d had a fright. Today. She saw someone. She was scared and threatened.’
    ‘You think this person that scared her had anything to do with the crime?’
    ‘I don’t know. It was unusual. She was very frightened.’
    ‘It was unusual for her to be frightened?’
    ‘No,’ Winter replied, slightly exasperated. ‘She was old and alone. She was always frightened.’
    ‘That’s what I would have thought. Well, just give your statement to the patrolman. Tell him what happened.’
    ‘This person was someone—’
    ‘He’ll take your statement. I need to secure this scene and contact the family.’
    ‘But the person—’
    ‘Mr Winter, you were a detective. What do you think happened here?’
    Simon Winter didn’t look around. Instead he eyed Walter Robinson. ‘I’d say someone broke in, killed her, robbed her, and ran when he heard the neighbors. That’s the obvious explanation, isn’t it?’
    ‘That’s right. And we even have several witnesses who saw the perpetrator fleeing. Mr and Mrs Kadosh and Mr Finkel. Your neighbors. So