Suspects Read Free Page B

in front, along with many police cars, marked and unmarked. Vehicles sent by the local TV channels and the daily paper were kept at the end of the block. Uniformed officers were on hand to restrain the news-people and the gathering crowd that had begun as the immediate neighbors but had gradually attracted those from nearby streets and others in transit.
    Dr. Pollack, an assistant medical examiner, had made a preliminary examination of the bodies, and they were taken to the morgue, to be thoroughly autopsied in the lab upstairs. Pollack’s estimate of the time of death was any time from six to two hours before he arrived on the scene of the crime. He would not know for sure until the body was on his steel table—and perhaps not even then, for forensic medicine was not mathematics, as he was wont to remind complainers. With her smaller body, the little girl’s death was even harder to time: so little flesh cooled quickly. The cuts had been made by a very thin and very keen blade, perhaps a straight razor or the like, or so it seemed.
    Photographs had been taken before the bodies were touched by anyone in an official capacity. The detectives for whom the case was the primary assignment had looked at the bodies and walked through the house, again without touching any surface, and promptly left the premises to the Identification team, who would gather evidence and fingerprint the place.
    One of the members of the Ident team was a blond and very fit-looking officer named Daisy O’Connor, whose policeman father, a year before his retirement a decade and a half before, had been given as partner a rookie by the name of Nick Moody. Moody was now, with his partner, Dennis LeBeau, the detective assigned to the Howland murders.
    Moody, a detective first grade, was the senior man, but after putting a few questions to Mary Jane Jones on the subject of her discovery of the bodies, he turned the job over to LeBeau and joined the other detectives in interviewing the rest of the neighbors. It was Moody’s theory, and not LeBeau’s, that because of Dennis’ headful of curls and big brown eyes he was more successful with the female subjects. But it was Moody, not LeBeau, who was always on the prowl. LeBeau was very married, whereas Moody was twice divorced. The breakup of his second marriage, the year before, had impoverished him financially and emotionally.
    Without the sum the store owed him, Lloyd’s funds were insufficient for the drinking he wanted to do. Not for the first time in his life, he thought about getting money in a criminal way. The problem was how . He had done some shoplifting as a kid and been picked up for it a few times, but was always put on probation or simply warned. All that he had been caught at as an adult was employee pilfering, for which the punishment was, at worst, being fired. Therefore he had no police record. He took that fact into consideration whenever he thought about raising funds by illegal means. He hated cops and did not wish to give them an advantage over him. Also, he feared losing control of himself under certain conditions. It had never yet happened, but he believed he had the capacity for it. Could he trust himself to keep within bounds if he tried to mug someone who resisted violently? There were fools who fought back with bare hands against an armed adversary. He should probably avoid crimes against the person. He could not stand being shamed. He did not consider what happened with the produce manager as being personally degrading, but it would have been had he not backed the man against the tomatoes.
    Thinking of the supermarket gave him an idea for a quick source of funds. He had observed how careless women food shoppers were, especially those with small children. They often carried shoulder-strap purses, which with their movements, sometimes abrupt ones necessitated by what the kid was getting into, swung to a blind spot back of one hip. Often these big bags even