Chain of Evidence Read Free Page A

his back to the man, lifted his right hand and flipped the man his middle finger. He heard Kowalski chuckling to himself.
    It was good—they were getting along tonight.
    The witness wore his New York Knicks hat backward, the plastic strap across his forehead. His dark green, absurdly oversized shorts came down to the middle of his black calves. Dart displayed his shield to the patrolman keeping the kid under wraps and the boy’s face screwed up into a knot, and he shifted uneasily from foot to foot like a member of a marching band. Rap music whined loudly from a pair of fuzzy black earpieces stuffed into his ears. The smell of marijuana intensified the closer Dart drew to the kid. Dart indicated for the kid to lose the tunes. He introduced himself formally as Detective Joseph Dartelli, Crimes Against Persons Division of the Hartford Police Department. He did so within earshot of the uniform, and he noted the uniform’s name in the spiral pad alongside the date and time. He took down the kid’s name and drew a line beneath all the information, annoyed by what the courts put a person through.
    â€œYou don’t look like no cop,” the kid said.
    â€œYou don’t look like a reliable witness,” Dartelli countered. “You looked stoned out of your gourd. You want this patrolman and me to search your person?”
    The kid shifted nervously. “Just making conversation, Jack,” he said.
    It was true, of course, Dartelli looked more like a Disneyland visitor than a robbery/homicide cop, but it was important not to let his witness gain a sense of superiority or confidence. Walter Zeller, Dartelli’s mentor and former sergeant, had once schooled him to quickly judge the witness—right or wrong. A cocky witness was to be kept off guard, a reluctant witness nurtured and comforted.
    Dartelli had the nervous habit of thrusting his tongue into the small scar that he carried on his lower lip where a tooth had once punctured through. The accepted explanation for this scar was that an out-of-control toboggan had met a birch tree when Dart had been a twelve-year-old with too much nerve and too little sense. The truth was closer to home. The old lady’s swollen claw had caught him across the jaw in the midst of one of her delirium-induced tantrums and had sent him to the emergency room for four stitches and some creative explaining.
    Dartelli wore his curly head of sandy hair cut short, especially over his forehead, where the front line was in full retreat. He had gray eyes and sharp bones and fair Northern Italian skin that most women envied. In the right light, Joe Dartelli looked mean, which came in handy for a cop. The artificial street lamp light produced just such an effect, fracturing his features into a cubist, impressionistic image of himself, masking his otherwise gentle features. “Tell me what you saw,” Dart complained, irritated by the heat. He barked up another cough, his lungs dry despite the humidity. It was something he had come to live with.
    â€œLike I’m parking that Buick over there, Jack, you know? And the suit has left his sunroof open, right? So I’m making it shut, okay?—looking right up through it—when that boy done dives out the damn window and smears his ass all over the fucking sidewalk. Blood everywhere.”
    â€œDives?” Dartelli questioned, doubting the statement immediately. There was no such thing as a reliable witness. No such thing.
    â€œRight out the window, Jack: I’m telling you.” He arched his big hand with its long fingers and pink skin under the nails, and imitated a dive as he whistled down a Doppler scale to indicate the fall. “Bam!” he said when the hand reached the imaginary pavement. “Fucked himself bad.”
    Dart was thinking about bed. About how it had been a long day, and that he had been stupid to stop and involve himself. A piece of shit witness. Some sorry piece of dead meat