Eye of the Witch Read Online Free Page B

machine and relieved it of its last Snickers bar. To see the look in his eyes, you would have thought he had rolled three cherries on a Vegas slot machine, only the pay out here was much more satisfying. I slapped him on the back as he joined up with me at the front door.
    “ That going to hold ya?” I asked. He just smiled and held the candy bar to my face—minus one very large bite. I smiled back. “Very nice. Maybe I should drive.”

    THREE

    We arrived at Detective Webber’s apartment building just as it started raining. A faint chalk line in the approximate shape of a human body was still visible on the sidewalk out front. I stood on the spot and looked straight up, blinking into the rain. One of the balconies four stories up still had crime scene tape flagging from its railings. I imagined that a fall from such a height would almost certainly kill a person instantly. For Detective Webber’s sake, I hoped that was the case. I looked at Carlos and found him assessing the situation similarity. He looked at me and we both looked down at the chalk line.
    “ Probably quick,” he said.
    I nodded. “Yup.”
    We took the elevator to the fourth floor and found the sounds of life abuzz within the building. A television set in one unit drowned out a baby’s wail in another. Down the hall, a woman hollered at her husband to get out and find a job. He hollered back that there weren’t any because the Mexicans had moved into town and taken them all. Carlos found that exchange particularly amusing, since the debate had been argued in Spanish. On the other side of a door, marked STAIRWELL, the steady thumping of a boom box pulsed like the heartbeat of the building. A small dog, probably a terrier, yelped upon our approach from behind another closed door. I imagined it trotting off in triumph back to his doggy bed after hearing us move on without breaking into his castle.
    We found Karen Webber’s apartment at the end of the hall, next to the Spanish couple’s unit. Carlos had secured a door key from the building super earlier, exercising the rule of domain jurisdiction for tactical investigative purposes.
    “ For what?” I asked him, after learning of the excuse he gave. “The rule of….”
    “ Domain jurisdiction for tactical investigative purposes. You’ve heard of it?”
    “ I didn’t,” I said, “because you just made it up!”
    He pressed his finger to his lips. “No. I didn’t just make it up. I made it up this morning. But the super doesn’t need to know that.”
    He unlocked the door and I pushed him into the room when it opened. The apartment seemed a lot smaller than I expected, barely a studio, really. But then Karen did live alone and hardly needed anything larger. And considering the atmosphere of the rest of the building, she had managed to transform the place into quite a cozy little flat. The furnishing (a little too French Provincial for my tastes) were neat, pictures on the walls tasteful and aesthetic. As a trained eye, I saw where police investigators had turned a few things over and poked at some of Karen’s belongings, but otherwise I imagined the apartment appeared just as she left it. On the dinette table, a place setting for two remained untouched, with two empty wineglasses waiting by a bottle of Bordeaux, which sat in an ice bucket soaking in water. A three-day-old pan of cooked lasagna sat on the stovetop growing brown and fuzzy. I turned to Carlos and found him thumbing through a stack of CDs by the stereo.
    “ Carlos, run it by me again,” I said. “What’s the going theory about what happened here?”
    He pulled a CD from the stack and held it up, smiling. “Ooh, I love this one. Have you heard this girl yet, Nora Jones? She kicks at old school.”
    I shook my head. “No. What is it, that Rap crap?”
    He laughed. “Yeah, Tony, that’s it. Rap crap. That’s the kind of music I like.”
    “ Well I don’t know, Carlos. I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”
    “