Read Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death for Free Online Page A

Eckhoff nodded. "Did you recognize the guy?"
    "I thought it looked like Wally, the guy who's missing from the junk crew. He had a key to the apartment because he was supposed to meet the cameraman here earlier this morning."
    "Okay." Eckhoff put his notepad away. "So, this Graham girl is your ex-sister -in-law."
    "Yeah."
    "And she's one of these hoarders?"
    "Yeah. You saw inside the apartment. It was twice that bad yesterday."
    Eckhoff looked mystified. "I've never understood the hoarding thing. Why do they do it?"
    Pete answered. "It's a mental illness. Related to obsessive compulsive disorder. It takes a lot of therapy to get them to change."
    I tipped my head at Pete, and said to Eckhoff, "Psychologist."
    "Ah." Eckhoff grinned. "But you're not the shrink for the show."
    Pete laughed. "Oh, God, no. I couldn't work with these people all the time."
    "What kind of people do you work with?"
    "College students. I'm on faculty at Santa Monica College. I'm just here to help with the cleanup." Pete was watching Eckhoff; I could tell he'd come to a decision. "I was Kevin Brodie's partner when we were officers in West LA. When he made detective, I went to grad school."
    "Aha." Eckhoff looked impressed. "I wondered; most people would have gone farther into the apartment than you did. I thought maybe you were just a big CSI fan."
    Pete laughed. "Can't stand that show, to tell you the truth."
    "Me either." Eckhoff laughed too. "So you were sure he was dead when you looked at him."
    "He had a big hole in his chest. I was sure."
    "Okay." We all watched as the crime scene and coroner’s vans pulled into the parking lot and the attendants started unloading their equipment. Eckhoff turned back to us. "Let me check with my partner, but I think you all can go. We'll probably come talk to you later today, but we can do it at your place."
    "That sounds good." It was 10:00 , and I was getting tired of sitting around. "We're not going anywhere today."
    "Cool." Eckhoff gave us one of his cards. "So we'll see you this afternoon, then."
    The three of us went home, stopping on the way to get a few groceries. We ate lunch and were settled in the living room, watching an NFL game, when Eckhoff and Belardo came to the door.
    Belardo hadn’t spoken to us at Jennifer’s apartment. When we introduced ourselves, he gave Pete and me a look of barely disguised disgust. Pete gazed at him impassively; I narrowed my eyes a little to let him know that I’d noticed. It was guys like Belardo that helped speed up Pete’s decision to leave the police force and go to graduate school. Things were a lot better for gay and lesbian cops than they used to be. But there were still plenty of guys on the force, like Belardo, who thought we were deviant scum.
    I hoped that we wouldn’t be involved in this investigation beyond today.
    Belardo did most of the talking this time and told us that Wally’s name was actually Howard Wallace. He covered the same questions as before, which was what I'd expected. Then he started asking about what had happened the previous day - had we noticed anything odd about Wally's behavior, or anything like that. We told him about Wally’s scrutiny of the magazines and newspapers we were throwing away.
    Then he sprang the big news on us.
    "We found something clutched in the hand of the body. Does this look familiar to either of you?"
    The detective held out a plastic zip top bag, containing what looked at first glance like a scrap of old paper. I took it. The paper was either very old or artificially aged to look very old. It looked like the corner of a larger page, about 4 or 5 inches wide, with decorative writing on both sides. "Wow. This looks like it could be a page from an illuminated manuscript."
    Belardo frowned. "What’s that?"
    "Illuminated manuscripts are usually all or part of the Bible, produced by hand by monks back in the Middle Ages. It's how the Bible got reproduced in those days, before the invention of the printing press.