"Laird Long - Negative Identification" - читать интересную книгу автора (Long Laird)

= Negative Identification
by Laird Long


The Sheriff and I were slinging the shod pretty good when there was a knock on his office door. I peeled my eyes off the tight-sweatered Rita Hayworth hanging from the 1947 calendar and ogled the door instead.

Sheriff Janner pulled the fountain pen he used as a chew-toy out of his mouth and yelled: "Yeah?"

The door creaked open and a cop head filled the crack. It spoke: "Mrs. DeWheeler is here to identify her husband, Sheriff."

"Yeah?"

Janner had used up his entire vocabulary on me.

"She's waiting outside, sir."

"Yeah."

"Mind if I tag along, Ed?" I asked, just for the hell of it.

Janner threw me a quizzical look. "Digging up clients in the morgue now, Charles?"

I shrugged. "Cemetery doesn't open for another couple of hours."

Janner grinned. He pushed his massive bulk out of the tiny wooden chair and made for the door. "Let's go," he said.

Mrs. DeWheeler was sitting on the edge of a narrow bench in the hallway. She stood up as we approached, as if to defend herself. She was almost perfectly round. If you drilled three holes in her head you could have used her to throw a strike. She was solid, though, and her moon face, curly blue hair, and wire-rim glasses bespoke a kindly, grandmother-type.

"Follow me," Janner ordered, with just a small side-dish of sympathy.

We three marched to the morgue downstairs in the basement. A white-coated test tube jockey ushered us into a meat locker and pulled a long drawer out of a stainless steel filing cabinet. A blue man lay at the bottom of the drawer.

Janner put a hand on Mrs. DeWheeler's plump shoulder. "This your husband, ma'am?" he asked, knowing the answer.

Mrs. DeWheeler bent down to take a close look at the icy face. "No," she said.

That wasn't the answer.

Janner's bushy eyebrows struggled to stay rooted to his face. "Um, uh, you sure?"

"Yes," she said, definitively. She turned to leave.

"We-we found your husband's wallet in his overcoat pocket." Janner was getting desperate. "Your husband's birth certificate was in the wallet."

"This man must have stolen the wallet," Mrs. DeWheeler replied matter-of-factly.

Janner wasn't giving up. "You reported your husband missing a week ago, and last night a body shows up with your husband's identification." Janner's face was turning apoplectic now. "If you take another look you-"

"That man is not my husband," Mrs. DeWheeler stated emphatically. The granny routine was fading faster than Billy Conn in the fourteenth versus Louis. "Maybe if you find something out about that man, you'll find something out about my husband. Can I leave?"