CHAPTER 1

I looked down at death.

The photo was snapped in the traditional police style, the scene-of-the-crime school of camera work. The picture was sharp and clean. The thing sparkled with the floodlighted perfection that brings horrifying details into bold relief. Like the way my dead partner Chuck hung on the steel spiked fence.

I looked down at death.

Chuck had fallen from a great height. He had come down to kiss death on the sharp prongs of that fence. His body was twisted and deformed, his head askew and dripping blood. Three of the arrow-headed spikes had passed through his body. The ends showed gore. And the fourth spike stabbed through his neck.

I looked away from death.

I ran out of the photo file in Police Headquarters. I ran into the john, feeling a great red poker of anger stabbing my guts. Bitter hate clawed at my throat and made me gag. I stood alone in the john and cried like a kid. I kicked at the wall. I beat at the metal door with my fists until the skin was raw. Would I ever be able to forget that photo? Would I ever forget this searing pain that stabbed me into uncontrollable rage?

When I came back into the file room I looked at death again.

But this time, I looked deep and I looked hard. The clerk gave me the complete report. They had the usual answer for this kind of thing: Jumped or fell. They had the usual trivia on a routine case, the hocus-pocus for setting up an accidental death.

I threw the file at the clerk.

“Easy,” he said. “Take it easy, Conacher.”

“Garbage,” I said. “Let me talk to Lunt.”

“Lunt’s out of town.”

“Who was with him on the detail?”

“I can get you Matson.”

“Get him.”

“Take it easy, Conacher,” he said. “Before you blow a gasket.”

Matson came down right away. He was a typical squad horse, amiable, but not too smart. I gave him his head and he told me the whole story.

“Lunt figured it a simple fall or jump,” Matson explained. “But Lunt don’t make up his mind fast. Lunt takes his time. He questioned the whole bunch of them up at Cumber’s, all the people at the damn party on the terrace. They were all clean up there.”

“Lunt says they’re clean,” I said. “What do you say?”

Matson shrugged and blew his nose. “I’m ready to buy it if the Chief thinks so.”

“The Chief has wheels in his head,” I yelled. “Chuck Rosen never drank enough to fall off any roof. And he wasn’t the type to commit suicide.”

“You never know.”

“I know. I also know that something stinks up there at Cumber’s.”

“You think your man was murdered, Conacher?”

“I think he was pushed off that terrace.”

“Why would he be pushed?”

“Because he was smart,” I said, spitting the words at him.

The big dick shook his head at me sadly. But this only made me see things a deeper shade of red. The stupid city cops could whitewash a deal like Chuck’s death. They would be stubborn and stiff about listening to any argument against their pat file on the case. I leaned over the desk and let Matson see my high blood pressure.

“Chuck Rosen was one of the smartest private operators in the country,” I said. “He was put on at Cumber’s to dig up the background for their recent store heists. The way I see it, Chuck was about ready to come up with the answer to the last big robbery at Cumber’s.”

“So somebody pushed him off the roof?” Matson stared at me with his bovine eyes, restraining the amusement I generated for him. “There’s about a thousand people working in that store. You think Rosen was smart enough to grab one of them? He must have been quite a boy. How come he didn’t tell you the guilty party?”

“He never had the chance.”

“The guilty party pushed him off?”

“You’re getting smarter by the minute, Matson.”

Matson laughed out loud. “So what are you waiting for, Conacher? All you got to do is waltz into Cumber’s and finger the guilty party.”

“That’s what I’m going to do.”

And that was why I went to work at Cumber’s Department Store.