Casting Bones Read Free Page B

right? Lerner?’
    â€˜Has he been here?’
    â€˜I can ask around. I wouldn’t recognize him.’
    â€˜Let’s find out. Can you get your wait staff one at a time? Then the kitchen crew?’
    Walker nodded and walked back toward the bar.
    â€˜Maybe the judge complained about some bad service?’ Strand watched the manager as he brought a waitress to them.
    â€˜Or somebody didn’t like
his
service.’
    â€˜Maybe one of the boys in the kitchen?’
    Q motioned the lady to a seat at an empty table and took a deep breath. He’d done this too many times. At thirty-six, young by most standards, he was already burned out. Detroit, New Orleans, a body in the river … same story, different city.
    â€˜Hey, Q, how many murders do you solve in Detroit? What’s your percentage?’ Strand straddled a chair as Archer sat down.
    â€˜Fifty percent, maybe less.’ There was only one that haunted him every day. One unsolved murder. Denise, his wife. The love of his life. One of the reasons he’d left Detroit.
    â€˜We’ve got an impressive record here,’ Strand said. Highest murder rate per capita, and last year we solved about twenty-two percent. Maybe with you on board our percentage goes up.’
    Archer frowned, drumming his fingers on the table. He hadn’t solved Denise’s murder, so his track record wasn’t that good. But to be fair, he hadn’t given up trying.

4
    H is father had bitched about filing reports. Banging away on a manual Underwood, going through a bottle of Wite-Out every week to correct all the mistakes. He’d told Quentin how cops today had it easy, with computers and everything. It didn’t feel that easy.
    One day, when Q was maybe ten years old, the old man had taken him to the precinct house. Must have been summer because otherwise he’d have been at school, and when they entered the old brick building he smelled the pungent odor of sweat, smoke and burned coffee. The smell stuck with him almost as strong in memory. Even with air conditioning in all the offices and a no smoking policy, he expected to breathe in the aroma of sour body odor and cigarette smoke every time he walked into a police station.
    â€˜Damn,’ Sergeant Dan Sullivan hovered over his shoulder. ‘Had to be a judge.’
    Archer nodded and continued to peck away on the keyboard. Fastest two-finger typist in the building.
    â€˜I’d expect this to happen in One,’ the balding man said. ‘Across Rampart Street. But I can’t picture Lerner hanging out over there. Bad neighborhood.’
    â€˜Could have happened anywhere,’ Archer replied, hitting the keys with his index fingers.
    â€˜Any reports back from the interviews?’ Sullivan continued to press. ‘We can put some more manpower down there, if need be.’
    â€˜Nothing yet. Strand may have heard something. He was finishing up with the kitchen crew.’
    â€˜The minute you know anything I want to know. Anything at all, Q.’ He drifted down the row, talking to another detective.
    â€˜Got it, Sarge.’
    The manager of the Crazy Lobster, Marcus Walker had said point-blank that some of his help had been sentenced by the dead judge. He continued to hunt and peck while detectives drifted in and out of the room.
    Thirty-two homicide detectives, all of them in a pressure cooker situation, working third floor of headquarters in a bullpen setup. An open room, devoid of personality, with gunmetal gray desks crowding each other. Sixteen on one side of the hall, sixteen on the other.
    Archer knew there was manpower if needed, and he also knew the department was down three detectives. Recruiting was apparently not going well. And the guys who had been brought in for relief were all working their own cases. With eighty-some murders already committed for the year, they were busy. Very busy.
    â€˜I knew him,’ Sullivan was back. ‘Played some