Read Hark! for Free Online

It’s like that nut years ago who wrote in lipstick on the mirror, whatever his name was.”
    â€œHere? One of our cases?”
    â€œNo, Chicago. Catch me before I kill more. Whatever it was he wrote on the mirror.”
    â€œThat’s what he wrote.”
    â€œHe wanted them to stop him.”
    â€œBut this guy doesn’t want us to stop him. He doesn’t say ‘ Stop me!’ ”
    â€œ ‘ Catch me’ was what he said. Heirens, that was his name. William Heirens. The guy in Chicago.”
    â€œ Our guy says I killed this girl and I’m giving you a hint who she is, that’s what he says in his note.”
    â€œIn his first note. What about the other two?”
    A copy of the second was on Meyer’s lap.
    A WET CORPUS?
CORN, ETC?
    â€œSame thing. He’s telling us to pay attention here. I killed this woman, her nice white blouse is all covered with blood…”
    â€œWhere does it say that?”
    â€œMetaphorically. A wet corpus. A bloody body. Is what he’s saying. Do your usual corny thing, he’s saying.”
    â€œAnd the third note?”
    Carella glanced at the copy:
    BRASS HUNT?
CELLAR?
    â€œI don’t know,” he said.
    â€œI mean, she was killed in her own bedroom. What’s he talking about, a cellar?”
    â€œI don’t know. The techs didn’t find any spent cartridge casings, so he can’t mean brass in that way.”
    â€œYou’re thinking, like, a hunt for brass shell casings?”
    â€œYes, but we already…”
    â€œLike he’s telling us we won’t find any shell casings cause the murder gun was an automatic?”
    â€œBut we already know that. Ballistics already told us it was a forty-five.”
    â€œSo he’s telling us again.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause he thinks he’s smarter than we are. He’s telling us we’re still in the cellar on this thing. No spent cartridge cases, we don’t know what kind of gun, we don’t know who the body is, we’re totally lost, we’re in the cellar. He’s giving us all these hints, but we’re just plain stupid. Is what he’s saying.”
    â€œMaybe,” Carella said.
    â€œIt’s the next driveway,” Meyer said. “Where it says ‘Main Entrance.’ ”
    â€œYou think he may have tossed the weapon in the basement?” Carella asked. “On his way out of the building?”
    â€œI don’t think so,” Meyer said. “But we can ask Mobile to check again.”
    â€œIf not, why’s he pointing us to the cellar?” Carella asked, and shook his head, and pulled the police sedan into Boniface’s parking lot.
    Â 
    D ETECTIVE /S ECOND G RADE Cotton Hawes was enormously pissed off. Sitting up in bed, wearing a blue-striped hospital gown, a shaft of sunlight streaming through the bedside window to highlight the white streak in his otherwise red hair, he fumed and snorted about having been cold-cocked by a rooftop sniper, and having to spend the day here…
    â€œFor observation !” he shouted. “What do they have to observe? They’ve already cleaned and dressed the wound, what the hell do they have to observe?”
    â€œYou got shot, Cotton,” Carella observed.
    â€œIn broad daylight!” Hawes said. “Can you imagine someone shooting a cop in broad daylight?”
    Meyer could imagine it.
    â€œWhat was he thinking ?” Hawes said. “A cop? Broad daylight? A good thing Sharyn yanked me out of Fluke’s. They wanted to amputate the foot!”
    â€œYou didn’t happen to see the shooter, did you?” Carella asked.
    â€œI was too busy ducking. He was on one of the rooftops across the way.”
    â€œThe Eight-Six is already up there looking around,” Meyer said.
    â€œSilk Stocking precinct.”
    â€œWho’s on it, do you know?”
    â€œKling didn’t say.”
    â€œNot often