Written Off

Read Written Off for Free Online Page B

Book: Read Written Off for Free Online
Authors: E. J. Copperman
Tags: FIC022000 Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General
manner. I gave it to him, but just for a loan. I was going to need it again later.
    “I’m Rachel Goldman,” I said, mostly because I am. I could have added that I write a series of novels about a guy who claimed to be working for him, but I wanted to gauge Petrosky’s sudden interest. It was clear Duffy’s name had gotten me in. Maybe not talking was a better way to find out something about what was going on.
    “You’re the woman Duffy’s been talking about,” Petrosky said, sitting back down and gesturing for me to sit on a county-issued chair in front of his county-issued desk. Okay, that indicated that there in fact was a Duffy Madison, or at least someone using that name, and that Petrosky had heard of him—and me. This keeping quiet thing was working out, so I did it some more.
    Sure enough, more information came my way. “Duffy says you write novels and that you use his name for a character you write,” Petrosky went on. “How did you find out about Duffy?”
    Clearly, I couldn’t stay silent after that, since I’d probably set a personal best just in those twenty seconds. “Wait,” I said, “this guy really is Duffy Madison? And he says I stole his name from him ?”
    Petrosky smiled in an avuncular manner and spread his hands in a gesture of calm and reconciliation. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “Nobody’s going to sue you.”
    Sue me? For using my imagination and creating a fictional character? What world was this? Still, I had to maintain my composure. I was talking to a man who came to work in a navy-blue suit. Some sense of professionalism was called for, clearly.
    I couldn’t get my jaw to open the whole way, so through the tiny space my teeth would allow, I said, “Well, I’d hardly think I was going to get sued, but I don’t understand.” The jaw loosened up a little. Soon Petrosky would be able to recognize vowel sounds I made. I barreled on through before he could ask me for the name of my translator. “You see, I created Duffy Madison, my character, from scratch four years ago. I had no idea there was someone going around using that name. I made him a consultant with the Morris County prosecutor. I took two whole days to settle on the name Duffy Madison after using baby name books, death registries, and a random search of the Morristown phone book.”
    Petrosky’s smile had dimmed, and he leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his desk. “So you’re saying that you’d never heard of Duffy Madison before you wrote his name down?”
    “That’s exactly what I’m saying. How long have you known your Duffy Madison?” I asked.
    “Just over four years,” the chief investigator said, staring at a point about two feet above my head.
    “And how did you meet him?”
    Petrosky didn’t focus so much as he simply answered the question from memory. “We were working a missing person case in Lodi,” he said. “Woman left her bed in the middle of the night and vanished. We had no trail at all. This guy walks up to one of my investigators at the woman’s home while it was still a crime scene, says he specializes in this stuff. We looked at him hard as the possible kidnapper, but nothing pointed to him ever having met her before.”
    “And that was the guy who calls himself Duffy Madison,” I said.
    Suddenly, Petrosky’s face was completely attentive and focused directly on me. “Look, lady, we didn’t just take him in off the street and ask him to start looking into crimes. I checked into his background personally. Saw his ID—Social Security number, Selective Service registration, driver’s license. Had him fingerprinted, no matches. We took samples of his DNA to use when we thought he might be a suspect. Nothing. He’s clean as a whistle.”
    “How is that possible?” I asked. “The guy’s claiming to be a fictional character.”
    “And you’re claiming you’d never heard of him when you started writing your books,” the chief investigator

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