"Lawrence Treat - M As in Mugged" - читать интересную книгу автора (Treat Lawrence)

touched up. Because even Bill Decker himself didn’t think he’d ever looked that
handsome.

On his 60th birthday he was at his desk at nine, in the tiny cubicle crammed
with filing cabinets and stacks of technical magazines he had kept to read and had
never managed to. Nobody, including the stuffed crocodile on the bookcase, gave
him flowers or a medal or even sang “Happy Birthday” to him—for all of which he
was deeply grateful.

Out of the morning’s batch of reports that had reached his desk for initialing,
he selected two for the Homicide Squad’s attention. One was an assault case that he
put Bankhart on; the other was a burglary that he assigned to Mitch Taylor—
actually, it was a stolen car case and not the responsibility of the Homicide Squad.
They handled crimes against the person, but they were notified of all larcenies, and
when Decker thought it worthwhile, he ran an independent investigation.

The stolen car was a green Chevy, 1965 model, out-of-state license plates,
649T87. Owner, Harold Waverly, dress salesman. He’d been traveling with his wife
and he’d stopped at an antique shop. Since he’d neglected to lock the car and take
the key out of the ignition, he was practically asking for somebody to get behind the
wheel and drive off; and some-body obliged.

The report listed the loss, in addition to the car and the Waverlys’ personal
belongings, as 20 dresses valued at fifty dollars apiece, plus another thousand
dollars’ worth of expen-sive accessories. Which made quite a haul for the obliger.

So—had Waverly been inexcusably careless, or had he set up the crime and
collaborated in it? The answer could be either way, and Lieutenant Decker told
Taylor to send for the Waverlys and see what cooked.

With that off his chest, Decker picked up the latest issue of Law & Order and
started reading. But his mind kept wander-ing, and after a few minutes he got up and
went down the hall. He spent the better part of an hour in the Records Room, going
over some new procedures that had just been set up.

When he returned, Mitch Taylor was in the outer office with a young couple
who Decker assumed were the Waver-lys. She was a slender willowy brunette with
adoration in her eyes, and she was saying, “It was such a beautiful day. We stopped
on the road to pick some flowers and—”
 Decker marched past and closed the door to his office, but the image of the
girl stayed with him as if it had been stamped on his retina. Still, because he always
noticed people and had developed the habit of filing faces and remembering details,
he had a picture of the husband, too. He had dark hair and an Irish-looking face, and
he was well-built.

Later on, Taylor came in and reported. “The guy’s up on Cloud Nine,” he
said. “He says he feels like a jackass, leaving the car unlocked, but they were on their
honeymoon and business trip, both. And with a dame like this Brenda—well, you
saw her.”