Silent Weapon Read Free Page A

Without the body, every meager speck of evidence the D.A.’s office had was circumstantial. The charges had ended up being dismissed when the state couldn’t come up with the body or irrefutable proof. Sawyer had walked away a free man. For more than two years he hadn’t made a single mistake. Probably never would have.
    With my two psych classes under my belt and my innate sense of people, I had taken a shot in the dark. I’d used the oldest trick in the book. I’d pasted letters together on a plain white page of paper to form the words that would shake Sawyer’s carefully constructed little world. The message was simple: I know where you hid the body.
    I had nothing to lose. If I was wrong about Sawyer, then he would simply get a good laugh out of my meaningless threats and that would be that. But, if he had murdered his competition and disposed of the body as I believed, he would worry, maybe just a little, as to whether or not I was telling the truth.
    When I didn’t get the desired reaction immediately, I sent more letters. Gave the details only someone who knew what he’d done would know. Or, in my case, someone who’d reviewed the case file and, for instance, knew that he’d taken exactly $657 from the missing person’s middle desk drawer. The crime-scene report also reported that enough blood had been found on the carpet of the victim’s office that he couldn’t possibly have survived the attack, but there wasn’t a damned thing that indicated a murder weapon or anything else. No body, just a bunch of coagulated blood.
    But Detective Steven Barlow had a theory. No letter opener had been found in the victim’s desk. None of his employees or associates could actually say whether or not he’d possessed one. When the pocketknife Sawyer carried was found clean of any sort of residue connected to the crime, Barlow had suggested that he’d used a letter opener. Barlow was convinced that Sawyer hadn’t gone to the victim’s office to kill him. The murder had transpired during the ensuing argument. None of which he could prove.
    I, on the other hand, had nothing to lose by using Barlow’s conjecture as a ploy to prod a reaction out of Sawyer. So I sent more cut-and-paste letters. I mentioned tiny little facts no one should know. I also asked questions like, What’d you spend the $657 on? Where did you hide the letter opener? It was a shot in the dark. A play on Barlow’s hunch. But it had worked.
    Sawyer was seriously worried.
    Tonight at ten o’clock he intended to make a drastic move to protect himself.
    I’d sent the first letter in time for Sawyer to receive it the day my vacation started. By Wednesday, when he hadn’t reacted, I sent another from the post office that delivered in his neighborhood. That way I could be sure it would be delivered the next morning. On Thursday I broke down and made a call from a phone booth. The whispered message was simple: I know what you did.
    By Friday, I had my reaction.
    After all, my vacation was only for one week.
    Now all I had to do was stay on his tail until I had the location. Well, there was that one other little detail. I needed backup. Someone who could take him down when he made his move. Even I wasn’t fool enough to believe I could do that part alone.
    With two brothers who are cops and two more who are firemen, I could call one or all of them, but that would be a mistake. Protecting me would be their one and only concern. I needed someone who could look at this objectively with an eye toward capturing a killer.
    I knew exactly who to call.

Chapter 2
    M y voice deserted me when he answered my call. I stared at the name flickering on the screen.
    Steven Barlow.
    Barlow, thirty-five years old. Metro cop for four years, homicide detective for the last nine. Degree in criminology. Barlow was considered one of the top investigators in Metro’s homicide division. He had served as lead investigator—the one who’d tried to nail Sawyer three years ago. I