Read Red Light for Free Online

it's just me, Man Friend
Number One. I forgot my jacket. My cell phone. My glasses."
    Merci
came into the dining room and looked at the chalk outline. "So he came to
dinner knowing he was going to kill her."
    "Absolutely.
That's why he left and came back."
    "To
get the gun. Because he couldn't carry the gun in without her seeing it."
    "That's
what I get, Merci. And not just a gun, but a gun with a suppressor. We got four
neighbors who were home last night, and nobody heard a shot. Nothing like a
shot. You know what a racket a forty-five would make here. A covered porch and
entryway, the door half open. It had to be silenced."
    Merci
thought he was right: The shooter came here to shoot, she tried to take it the
other way: Man Friend comes to dinner and leaves mad, by the time he gets to
his car he's furious, gets the gun and goes back up. Working girls get killed
by furious johns all the time. But she couldn't get any logic out of that one.
She didn't think Aubrey Whitaker was working that night. Call girls don't make
dinner for their clients. The bed was made up. And nobody carried a silenced
.45 auto unless they planned to use it. Soon.
    "All
right," she said. She hadn't worked with Zamorra long enough to know how
he reasoned, so she wanted to take things slow, get them right from the start.
"Take our path back to the first fork, though, if there were two
guys?"
    "Then it's
connected or unconnected."
    "Connected is a
lot of coming and going, a lot of personnel on the job.”
    "Lots
of secrets to keep," said Zamorra. "I like one guy, period, no matter
what Alexander Coates heard."
    Merci was leaning
that way, too. "That could explain why he came in after he shot her."
    "Exactly.
To clean his prints off of everything he touched at dinner."
    "And
something else, now that I think of it."
    Zamorra
looked at her.
    "He wanted the
brass. A semiauto ejects to the shooter's right. He would follow her in as she
fell, look to his right for the shell. He couldn't have heard the case hit the
door because the gun just went off. Even a silenced auto is going to make a
noise. He wouldn't have noticed the nick in the paint. That was our luck. He
didn't find his casing immediately, so he pulled the girl out of the way, shut
the door and looked again. But he still struck out, because he was looking in
the wrong part of the apartment. Even if he'd thought of a ricochet, what are
the chances of him looking into the flower vase? It was all the way to his
left."
    Zamorra was nodding.
"The trouble with that is, it works for Man Friend Number Two, also. If
he's connected with Man Friend Number One, then he cleans the place and looks
for his brass. If he's not connected, he likes all the fingerprints Man Friend
Number One must have left, but he still wants his casing."
    "How
does he know what his partner touched?"
    "He
goes with the obvious."
    Merci followed this
one as far as she could. One path, many forks, one fork at a time. "Nobody
plans a murder but leaves his fingerprints on the silverware. If we find a load
of good prints, that means two guys, not working together. Two sets of footsteps.
Two guys. Just like Coates said."
    Zamorra looked down
at the body outline like he'd never seen it before. He cocked his head like one
of Mike's bloodhounds. Uncocked it, kept staring.
    "What."
    "I'm
pulling out walls, putting in windows."
    She said nothing. She
figured it was like Hess seeing things that weren't there.
    "You
know," he said, "just trying to get past my own bad ideas."
    "I
know about that."
    "Two guys. Just
like Coates said," he repeated her words verbatim. Something in the tone
told her he was lending credence to their earwitness for the first time.
    Stoned
or not.
    "But
why?" he asked. "Why kill her?"
    "I've been
thinking about that ever since I saw the money wallet. In fact, I wondered if
that might be part of the answer."
    "You
lost me."
    "He's
aware of us. He left the money to make us wonder."
    "That's
far-fetched." Zamorra looked at her