Page 48 of Deathmarch

Harper caught up on paperwork, then went back to Frank Carmelo’s list of fellow preppers and started calling around. No sense in driving out to somebody’s house if they weren’t home.

He made two calls and was deciding who’d be third when Chase stopped by his desk. “Anything?”

“Nick Hale is in Florida for the winter, visiting his brother.Al Hanselman is in the hospital, switching to a new knee. Two names crossed off. Seven to go. I’m going to have someone look at that busted safe too.” Harper pushed his chair back. “ You?”

“Heading out on a call. Drunk and disorderly.”

“Don’t get shot in the ass like the last time.”

“Birdshot.” Chase shrugged it off. “Can barely call it being shot.”

“Was that what Luanne said?”

Chase groaned. “Not exactly.”

“It’s a sad day when a grown man can’t even risk his own ass without a woman giving him grief over it.”

“At least I have a woman who cares about my ass.”

“Plenty of women care about my ass.”

“Plenty of women think youarean ass. Not the same, bro. Not the same,” Chase swaggered away.

At the front desk, Leila put the phone to her shoulder, her face just a little too straight as she looked at Harper.

Harper shook his head. “Go ahead. Laugh.”

She did. Then she told him, “Dusty says he can come over right now.”

“Can he meet me at Lamm’s place?” Harper opened the blue folder he’d been keeping on his desk, added a few notes to it, then shoved to his feet, rattling off the victim’s address.

He was at the front desk by the time Leila hung up and said, “He’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks.” Harper handed her the blue folder. “Would you mind giving this to Mike when he comes in? I’d like him to look into something for me, if he has the time.”

Then he booked it over to Lamm’s place, arriving just in time to see Dusty pulling up in an old yellow Mustang.

In his midthirties, the guy had light brown hair brushing his shoulders, especially since he had his shoulders up, around his ears, his hands shoved into his pockets as he walked toward Harper. He didn’t look eager for the meeting, must have heard about Lamm on the news and didn’t like being called to a murder scene, but didn’t want to say no to the police either.

“Detective Harper Finnegan. Thank you for coming on short notice,” Harper said as they shook hands. “You live around here?”

“DustyChotkowski. Just down the road in Avondale. I was already in Broslin for a delivery.”

They walked up to the front door together, where Harper pulled the keys from his pocket and brushed the police tape aside from the front door. “Leila says you know a lot about safes. I’m hoping you can answer a couple of questions.”

He led the man in, then across the kitchen, skirting the dried blood on the linoleum floor.

Dusty swallowed hard and turned his head. When his hands started to shake, he shoved them back into his pockets. He had trouble getting the words out when he spoke. “That’s messed up, man.”

“Sorry you had to see it. Family usually arranges for crime scene cleaners, but the victim’s next of kin is in California.”

Harper made a mental note to call Lamm’s nephew again and tell him about the need to have the house cleaned if he ever hoped to put it on the market.

They were silent down the stairs. Then Dusty asked, his voice still shaky, “Since I’m here to look at the safe, I guess the old guy was killed for money?”

“Looks like it.” Harper led the way to where he’d shoved aside the pallet of food rations, the safe fully visible and still open, fingerprinting dust all over the metal. “What can you tell me about the injury to the door? Do you think it was busted open while it was locked, or someone used the keypad and then beat up the lock to make me think he didn’t have the combination?”

Dusty stared at him for a minute as if his mind was too scrambled to understand the question on the first run. But then he nodded, indicating he’d untangled the complexities of Harper’s query, and then he lowered himself to his knees next to the safe. “Am I allowed to touch it?”