Read Online The Witchfinder by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online

had condemned its historic section to make room for a General Motors plant, shipping in vandals and arsonists by the carload when the residents were slow to evacuate. They evacuated, the thugs remained. Now the place is just more of Detroit and you don’t leave the windows open when you go away if you want to come back to your furniture. By the time I’d flung up all the sashes that weren’t painted shut I had sweated right through the summerweight. I hung it in front of a window to air, stood under a cold shower for five minutes, and put on a thin cotton robe. The suit was still there when I came out, evidence that either the neighborhood was improving or my taste in clothes wasn’t. I put the oven on the lowest reasonable setting, slid in a tray of frozen drumsticks and peas, opened a beer, and sat in front of the fan in the living room to watch the news.
    It was the same thing on all the local channels: a dozen recent Debate Club graduates representing all three sexes and most of the acknowledged racial and ethnic persuasions trying to do the work of one competent reporter. The city cops had chased a speeding driver into a station wagon containing a family of three, another preschooler had been killed in the crossfire between warring youth drug gangs, and the ACLU had won another district court victory in its campaign to stamp out Christianity. The national news was more of the same, with a better wardrobe. The ghoul shift outside Jay Bell Furlong’s room at Cedars of Lebanon was in its third week and the news reader stationed on the sidewalk in front of the hospital was running out of quotes from James Russell Lowell. He plainly wanted to be off covering something that required a trenchcoat. I flipped around until I found a rerun of M*A*S*H .
    The telephone rang during a commercial for PMS, or maybe it was con.
    “Inaction News desk.”
    “Walker?”
    Stuart Lund’s public-school accent was thickening with the dusk. Head colds are that way too.
    “Not much to report, Mr. Lund. I talked to Oswald Belder and Karen and John Furlong, also to someone who knows a thing or twelve about faking photographs.” I gave him what I could without checking my notes for fashion details.
    “You seem to be running in place,” he said. “We’ve known all along Arsenault had to be involved.”
    “The first day of an investigation is mostly catch-up. I’ll talk to Arsenault tomorrow.”
    “He’ll just deny everything.”
    “If he didn’t, you wouldn’t need me. Demolishing alibis is part of the service.”
    “Will you use force?”
    I rapped the mouthpiece twice with the rim of the beer can. “Brass knuckles. They spit out the truth with their teeth.”
    “I don’t suppose I’ll ever be a true American. I never know when I’m being gulled.”
    “Don’t be too hard on yourself. I still don’t understand steak-and-kidney pie.” I set down the beer. It was getting warm anyway; which was another thing about the English I didn’t understand. “The truth is I’m getting a little old to throw people down staircases. Fortunately, a big bag of novelties and notions comes with the license. One of them usually clicks before the opening-round bell.”
    “Just don’t break his jaw so he can’t talk.”
    “Now who’s being gulled?”
    “I once defended an Irish rebel who blew up a busful of English schoolchildren. Violent details are not foreign to my experience.”
    “Mine neither. But if it’s muscle you’re looking for, you could have hired it anywhere in town for a lot less than I charge.”
    “I never considered anything of the sort.” But he sounded disappointed.
    “How’s Mr. Furlong?”
    “Dying, although not as precipitately as he was this morning. He’s asleep now. He sleeps often, but never for long, and then he has errands for me. For a week now I haven’t been in bed long enough to bother with changing into and out of pyjamas.” There would be a Y in the word the way he used it.
    “How’s your