High Five Read Free Page A

more body parts. What looked like a shinbone, part of a torso maybe, something that might have been the back of the head. Hard to tell if it was man or woman.
    The shock of the pictures had me holding my breath, and I was getting a buzzing sensation in my head. I didn’t want to ruin my bounty-hunter image and keel over onto the floor, so I concentrated on quietly resuming breathing.
    â€œYou have to give these to the police,” I said.
    Mabel gave her head a shake. “I don’t know what Fred was doing with these pictures. Why would a person have pictures like this?”
    No date on the front or the back. “Do you know when they were taken?
    â€œNo. This is the first I saw them.”
    â€œDo you mind if I look through Fred’s desk?”
    â€œIt’s in the cellar,” Mabel said. “Fred spent a lot of time down there.”
    It was a battered government-issue desk. Probably bought at a Fort Dix yard sale. It was positioned against a wall opposite the washer and dryer. And it was set on a stained piece of wall-to-wall carpet that I assumed had been saved when new carpet was laid upstairs.
    I pawed through the drawers, finding the usual junk. Pencils and pens. A drawer filled with instruction booklets and warranty cards for household appliances. Another drawer devoted to old issues of
National Geographic.
The magazines were dog-eared, and I could see Fred down here, escaping from Mabel, reading about the vanishing rain forests of Borneo.
    A canceled RGC check had been carefully placed under a paperweight. Fred had probably made a copy to take with him and had left the original here.
    There are parts of the country where people trust banks to keep their checks and to simply forward computer-generated statements each month. The Burg isn’t one of those places. Residents of the Burg aren’t that trusting of computers or banks. Residents of the Burg like paper. My relatives hoard canceled checks like Scrooge McDuck hoards quarters.
    I didn’t see any more photos of dead bodies. And I couldn’t find any notes or sales receipts that might be connected to the pictures.
    â€œYou don’t suppose Fred killed this person, do you?” Mabel asked.
    I didn’t know what I supposed. What I knew was that I was very creeped out. “Fred didn’t seem like the sort of person to do something like this,” I told Mabel. “Would you like me to pass these on to the police for you?”
    â€œIf you think that’s the right thing to do.”
    Without a shadow of a doubt.
    I had phone calls to make, and my parents’ house was closer than my apartment and less expensive than using my cell phone, so I rumbled back to Roosevelt Street.
    â€œHow’d it go?” Grandma asked, rushing into the foyer to meet me.
    â€œIt went okay.”
    â€œYou gonna take the case?”
    â€œIt’s not a case. It’s a missing person. Sort of.”
    â€œYou’re gonna have a devil of a time finding him if it was aliens,” Grandma said.
    I dialed the central dispatch number for the Trenton Police Department and asked for Eddie Gazarra. Gazarra and I grew up together, and now he was married to my cousin Shirley the Whiner. He was a good friend, a good cop, and a good source for police information.
    â€œYou need something,” Gazarra said.
    â€œHello to you, too.”
    â€œAm I wrong?”
    â€œNo. I need some details on a recent investigation.”
    â€œI can’t give you that kind of stuff.”
    â€œOf course you can,” I said. “Anyway, this is about Uncle Fred.”
    â€œThe missing Uncle Fred?”
    â€œThat’s the one.”
    â€œWhat do you want to know?”
    â€œAnything.”
    â€œHold on.”
    He was back on the line a couple minutes later, and I could hear him leafing through papers. “It says here Fred was reported missing on Friday, which is technically too early for a missing person, but we