Past Crimes Read Free

belts.
    The first was forty-something, with prematurely white hair. His blue suit was pressed and clean. The second detective was closer to my age, a thin guy in a brown sport coat and a shiny shirt with matching tie. He took in the scene in the front room and let out a low whistle. His partner frowned.
    The white-haired cop took my identification and papers from Voh and looked at me for a moment. “I’m Detective Guerin,” he said. “This is Detective Kanellis.”
    “Van Shaw.”
    “Would you excuse us for a moment, Mr. Shaw?” He motioned to Voh, who followed the two detectives out onto the porch. Before he stepped outside, the thin cop looked me up and down.
    “Keep an eye on things here, Bob,” he said to Olssen.
    Olssen and I were left in the foyer. He shifted his feet.
    “You in the war?” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    I had been on base in Germany, fourteen hours ago. Less than a day before that, I’d made the decision to come back to Seattle.
    Damn it, Dono. I’d been ready. I’d been locked and loaded to actually talk to you again. I know you, old man. That letter had not been easy for you to write.
    I felt a cold breeze across my chest, coming down the hallway. The shooter must have left the back door open when he ran out. Christ. If the cops had been quicker getting here, they might have caught the fucker.
    And if I’d taken a cab instead of renting a car, I might have kept Dono from getting shot entirely.
    The detectives and Voh came back in, and behind them I heard more footsteps tramping along the porch. A parade of four tired-looking men in blue SPD Windbreakers and carrying tackle boxes followed. Guerin pointed, and they carefully edged into the front room. Crime-scene crew.
    Guerin motioned to me. “Let’s talk in the back, where it’s a little quieter.”
    The two detectives followed me down the hallway. Voh and Olssen stayed with the techs.
    Dono’s kitchen was small and crowded with cabinets and appliances. There was almost no counter space, so he kept a butcher’s block in the center of the tiled floor. A fat man would have trouble squeezing between it and the refrigerator. Next to the kitchen was a dining alcove with a circular pine table and three rickety wooden chairs, the same old set that had been there when I was a kid. The breeze coming through the house was stronger here, icy across my face and bare chest.
    Guerin motioned to a chair. I stayed standing. Kanellis sat.
    “I’m sorry about your grandfather, Mr. Shaw,” Guerin said. “Or do you prefer ‘Sergeant’?”
    “‘Mr.’ is fine.”
    “Okay. Tell me what happened,” he said.
    I recapped what I knew. From receiving Dono’s letter all the way to finding him on the floor. It didn’t take long. The detectives listened and nodded. Kanellis fidgeted in his seat.
    “Do you know of anybody who might have wanted to hurt your grandfather? Or any arguments he might have had with anyone?” Detective Guerin said.
    “No.”
    “The front door isn’t broken open. Did anyone else have access to the house? A girlfriend, maybe?”
    “I don’t know.” Christ, Dono might even be
married
. There wasn’t any sign down here that a woman now lived in the house, but I’d only seen three rooms and the hallway.
    “Do
you
have a key to the place?” Kanellis said.
    “No.”
    One of the crime-scene guys came into the room. He said, “Excuse me,” and began to put adhesive strips on my hands and wrists. Testing for gunshot residue. When he peeled the strips off, the dried blood came up with them, leaving rectangular tiger stripes of pink. I walked pastKanellis to the kitchen sink and began to scrub my hands half raw with Dono’s scouring sponge.
    There was a clock with a picture of a bull on it hung over the window. Another new addition. By the little hands shaped like matador’s swords, it had been forty minutes since the medics had taken Dono out.
    He’d be through triage by now. The hospital would be able to tell me something.
    I