Page 49 of Deathmarch

“Go ahead.”

Dusty ran shaky fingers over the damage, the scratches, then the little metal bars that normally kept the safe locked. “I don’t know.” He turned to look at Harper over his shoulder. “This isn’t something I’ve ever had to figure out before.”

“Best guess.”

The man turned back to the safe and thought for a minute. “Someone busted the lock afterwards.”

“Opened it first?”

“Yeah. I think so. I think that’s what happened. Probably.”

Dusty stood, while Harper accepted that he couldn’t call him as an expert witness for court when the time came. Any half-decent defense attorney would rip into Dusty’s unsure mumblings with gusto and tear the case apart.

“Thank you,” he told the guy anyway.

“Yeah. Sure.” Dusty returned his hands into his pockets, his shoulders coming up next to his ears again. “Is that it?”

“That’s all. I appreciate the help.”

Harper walked him out, putting himself between the pool of blood and Dusty in the kitchen. Then Dusty jumped into his beat-up Mustang and took off, probably promising himself never to do another crime scene consultation.

Harper locked up before driving by Dave Grambus’s place again, since it was on his way. He tried not to be too frustrated over not having been able to get a more committed opinion out of Dusty. This was how most investigations went: two steps forward, one step back, a dozen sideways. He just needed to keep at it.

He checked out the parking lot at Grambus’s prison-block-gray apartment building before going in. Lamm’s missing Camry was nowhere to be seen, but the pale blue, late-model Cadillac registered to Grambus sat at the far end. Harper walked around the car. No blood anywhere, no bag of silver coins on the back seat.

He walked into the building and found apartment 03 on the ground floor without trouble. Knocked.

No response.

Knocked again. “Police!”

Some shuffling on the other side, then a response at last, although not one Harper had expected.

“Who gives a shit?”

“Mr. Grambus? Detective Harper Finnegan here. I’m going to need to ask you some questions.”

“You can do it from where you are. I’m listenin’.”

Harper glanced down the hall. “I’m sure all your neighbors are too.”

That did the trick. Grambus unlocked the door and opened it an inch, checking to make sure Harper was who he’d said he was.

“I know my rights,” he said. “Back in my day, we learned civics in school.”

Harper nodded. “Yes, sir. My father did too. He’s not shy about giving a person a lesson either, when he feels someone needs it.”

That bought some goodwill, and the man opened the door all the way. “Hurry up. It’s colder out there than a witch’s tit in a brass bra.”

Grambus led Harper to the kitchen, pointing him to an overstuffed chair. He wore blue tartan house slippers and faded jeans withtwoflannel shirts, which seemed excessive considering the heat was cranked up to close to eighty. His baseball hat, also blue, said TRUCKERS DO IT ALL NIGHT. He didn’t seem to have much hair under it, if any.

As Harper unbuttoned his coat, he scanned the large apartment. A once-cream sofa with a brown flower pattern dominated the living room. The white-glass light fixtures were straight from the fifties, and so was the tan shag carpet. The enormous new flat-screen TV looked out of place.

Harper began with “You must have heard about Chuck Lamm’s death.”

“Everybody heard,” Grambus snapped. “People being killed in their damn homes. What kind of world do we live in?”

He pinned Harper with an accusing look as if Harper were personally responsible for the decline of humankind’s morals.