The Glass-Eyed Witness

• Chapter 1 The Dead Among the Stuffed
• Chapter 2 Glass Eyes and Alibis
• Chapter 3 Formalin and Smoke
• Chapter 4 The Taxidermist's Ledger
• Chapter 5 A Quiet Precinct
• Chapter 6 The Widow's Veil
• Chapter 7 Feather and Bone
• Chapter 8 Midnight at the Docks
• Chapter 9 The Wrong Man's Shoes
• Chapter 10 Ink on the Blotter
• Chapter 11 A Clean Confession
• Chapter 12 The Chief's Handshake
• Chapter 13 Case Closed
• Chapter 14 The Morning After
• Chapter 15 A Missing File
• Chapter 16 The Promotion
• Chapter 17 Whispers in the Squad Room
• Chapter 18 The Real Killer's Shadow
• Chapter 19 City Hall Calls
• Chapter 20 Blood on the Badge
• Chapter 21 The Bribe
• Chapter 22 Ashes in the Ashtray
• Chapter 23 Reopening the Wound
• Chapter 24 The Price of Truth
• Chapter 25 A Reckoning in Rain
• Chapter 26 The Glass-Eyed Witness

The call came in at six-fifteen on a Tuesday morning, just as the radiator in the fourteenth precinct squad room began its daily battle with the November chill. Detective Jack Harlan was halfway through a cup of coffee that tasted like boiled pennies when the desk sergeant leaned over the railing and pointed a thumb toward the switchboard.

"Homicide on West Elm," Sergeant Boyle said, not bothering to lower his voice. "Brenner’s Taxidermy. Beat cop says the baker next door found the front door ajar and a pair of boots sticking out from behind the counter."

Harlan set his mug down on a stack of unsigned burglary reports. Across the desk, his partner, Sam Russo, was already shrugging into his wool overcoat. Russo was forty-two, five years older than Harlan, and moved with the deliberate economy of a man who had learned early on that rushing to a murder scene never made the victim any less dead.

"Taxidermy," Russo muttered, patting his breast pocket to make sure his Chesterfields were there. "That’s a new one. Usually it’s taverns and alleys."

"People die wherever they happen to be standing," Harlan said, grabbing his fedora from the coat tree. "Let’s go see what Otto Brenner was standing near."

The rain had stopped an hour before dawn, leaving the asphalt on West Elm Street slick and black under the sputtering amber streetlights. The neighborhood was a quiet stretch of brick storefronts—a shoe repair, a kosher butcher, a dry cleaner—wedged between the rail yards and the river. Above the narrow entrance of number 412, a faded wooden sign swung gently in the damp breeze: O. Brenner, Naturalist & Taxidermist. Specimens Preserved.

A black-and-white prowl car sat double-parked at the curb, its red roof light dark. Patrolman Miller, a kid barely out of the academy with ears that stuck out from under his cap, stood shivering on the sidewalk beside a stout man in a flour-dusted apron.

"Morning, Detectives," Miller said, snapping a half-salute that Harlan ignored. "This is Mr. Kowalski. He runs the bakery next door. He called it in."

Harlan nodded to the baker, whose round face was the color of unbaked dough. "You went inside, Mr. Kowalski?"

"Just a step," Kowalski said, his hands twisting the hem of his apron. "I always wave to Otto when I’m setting out the rye. Usually he’s up at five, pottering around with his birds. Today the light was on, the door was unlatched, and when I pushed it open, I saw his shoes. I didn’t touch nothing. I swear to God."

"You did right," Harlan said. "Miller, get his statement and keep him warm in the cruiser. Nobody else goes in until Doc gets here."

Harlan pushed open the heavy glass-paned door. A small brass bell mounted above the frame gave a cheerful, absurdly inappropriate chime.

The first thing that hit them was the smell. It wasn’t the sharp, sweet stink of decay—not yet. It was a dry, dusty compound of camphor, cedar shavings, old varnish, and something faintly chemical that made the back of Harlan’s throat itch. Beneath it all, however, was the unmistakable, metallic tang of fresh blood.

The shop was narrow and deep, lit by a single bare bulb hanging over the front counter and a pair of green-shaded lamps in the back. Every inch of wall space was occupied. Mounted deer heads stared down from the plaster, their antlers casting long, tangled shadows across the ceiling. On shelves lining the left wall stood a silent congregation of birds: a great horned owl with its wings half-spread, a pair of ring-necked pheasants, a snowy egret, and a dozen smaller songbirds wired to chunks of driftwood. On the right, a timber wolf snarled soundlessly from a plywood plinth, while a black bear cub sat upright near the radiator, holding a wooden sign that read Cash Only.

"Jesus," Russo whispered, his hand instinctively dropping toward his hip before he remembered there was nothing left to shoot. "It’s like walking into a haunted house."

"They’re just stuffing and wire, Sam," Harlan said, though he couldn’t quite shake the sensation of fifty pairs of glass eyes tracking him as he moved down the narrow aisle.

They rounded the wooden counter. Otto Brenner lay on his back on the worn linoleum, wedged between a display case of glass eyeballs and a heavy oak workbench. He was a small, spare man in his late sixties, wearing a gray cardigan over a flannel shirt and brown corduroy trousers. His wire-rimmed spectacles had been knocked askew, one lens cracked against the floor.

Harlan crouched beside the body, careful to keep his trench coat from brushing the dark, tacky pool spreading beneath Brenner’s left shoulder. A single bullet hole sat neatly in the center of the gray cardigan, the wool around it singed and stiff with dried blood.

"Small caliber," Harlan said, leaning in without touching. "Twenty-two or a thirty-two. Close range, judging by the powder."

Russo looked down at the dead man’s hands. The fingers were stained yellow-brown with nicotine and chemicals, and the nails were clipped short. There were no defensive wounds, no torn knuckles, no sign of a struggle. "He didn't put up much of a fight."

"Maybe he knew who was holding the gun," Harlan said. He stood up, his knees popping in the quiet room, and surveyed the counter. A brass cash register sat closed, its No Sale flag tucked neatly out of sight. Beside it lay a half-finished crossword puzzle from yesterday’s Tribune, a stubby yellow pencil resting across the squares.

"Doesn't look like a stickup," Russo observed, peering over the counter at the register. "You don't shoot a guy in the chest and leave the till untouched."

"Maybe the killer got spooked," Harlan said, though he didn't believe it. West Elm at night was as quiet as a tomb. If someone had come here to rob Otto Brenner, they would have had all the time in the world to empty the drawer.

He stepped past the body toward the rear of the shop, where a heavy canvas curtain separated the showroom from the workroom. Pushing it aside with the tip of his fountain pen, Harlan found a space that looked part butcher shop, part carpenter’s den. A long zinc-topped table dominated the center of the room. Upon it rested the limp, skinned carcass of a red fox, its hollow eye sockets staring at nothing, beside a neat row of scalpels, pliers, and spools of heavy linen thread.

Along the back wall stood tall wooden cabinets with glass doors, filled with jars of white powder, bottles of clear liquid, and boxes labeled by size and species. A galvanized bucket sat near the sink, half-full of soapy water. Everything was orderly. The tools were wiped clean. Even the sawdust on the floor looked as though it had been swept into a neat pile near the baseboard.

"Clean," Harlan murmured.

"Too clean?" Russo asked from the doorway.

"Just a man who liked his shop tidy," Harlan said. He turned back toward the showroom, his eyes catching on a small wooden desk tucked into the corner near the curtain. A green ledger lay open on the blotter, its pages filled with neat, cramped handwriting. Harlan didn't touch it—the lab boys would want to dust for prints first—but he noted the date at the top of the right-hand page: November 14. Yesterday.

The front bell chimed again, followed by the heavy, shuffling footsteps of Dr. Arthur Pendelton, the city’s assistant medical examiner. Pendelton was a man who looked as though he had been assembled from spare parts—tall, stooped, with a permanent squint from years of working under bright morgue lights and a tweed suit that always smelled faintly of peppermint.

"Morning, Jack. Sam," Pendelton said, setting his battered leather bag on the counter. He glanced around the room, his eyes lingering briefly on the snarling timber wolf. "Charming place. Remind me never to die in a museum."

"Right behind the counter, Doc," Harlan said.

Pendelton squeezed past them and knelt beside Brenner, groaning softly as he did so. He pulled a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket, snapped them on, and began his preliminary examination. Harlan and Russo stepped back to give him room, watching as the doctor gently lifted Brenner’s wrist, checked the stiffness of the jaw, and peered at the wound in the cardigan.

"Rigor is well-established in the jaw and neck, starting in the shoulders," Pendelton said, his voice flat and clinical. "Lividity is fixed on the back. Factoring in the room temperature—which is a bit brisk, thanks to whoever left that front door cracked—I’d put time of death between ten and midnight last night."

"Cause?" Harlan asked.

"Well, it wasn't the flu," Pendelton said dryly, pointing a gloved finger at the singed wool. "Single gunshot wound to the chest. Likely a thirty-two, maybe a thirty-eight, though the entry looks small. Fired from less than two feet away. I’ll dig the slug out this afternoon and let ballistics earn their keep."

"Any chance he walked around after?" Russo asked.

"If it clipped the aorta, he dropped where he stood," Pendelton said. "Which, given the blood pattern on the floor and the way his legs are folded, is exactly what happened. He was standing behind his counter, facing the front door, and someone put a bullet in him."

A flashbulb popped, blindingly bright in the dim shop. Detective Sergeant Miller had let in the crime scene photographer, a wiry kid named Higgins who chewed gum like he was trying to win a prize. Behind Higgins came two lab technicians carrying fingerprint kits.

"Alright, boys," Harlan said, stepping out of the frame. "Get the wide shots first, then the body. Sam and I are going to check the back alley."

The rear door of the shop was bolted from the inside with a heavy iron slide. Harlan unlatched it carefully, using his handkerchief to avoid smudging any prints, and stepped out into a narrow cobblestone alley lined with galvanized trash cans and overflowing crates of empty milk bottles.

The alley was wet from the night’s rain, the stones gleaming dull gray. There were no footprints in the mud near the drain, no discarded cigarette butts that looked fresh, no pry marks on the heavy oak door. Whoever had killed Otto Brenner hadn't come in through the back. They had walked right through the front door, listened to that cheerful little brass bell chime, and shot him across his own counter.

"So," Russo said, lighting a Chesterfield and cupping the flame against the damp breeze. "Somebody comes in between ten and midnight. Brenner’s still awake, maybe doing his books or his crossword. He knows the guy, or at least he isn't scared of him. Lets him get within two feet."

"Or Brenner was hard of hearing and didn't notice him until it was too late," Harlan countered. "Still doesn't explain why the cash register is full."

"Personal, then," Russo said, blowing a stream of gray smoke toward the brick wall. "A grudge. Old debt. Maybe a woman."

Harlan looked back through the open doorway into the dimly lit workroom, where the skinned fox lay waiting on the zinc table. "Otto Brenner was sixty-eight years old, Sam. He spent his nights stuffing dead squirrels and doing crossword puzzles. Doesn't strike me as a man with a lot of enemies."

"Everybody’s got somebody who’d rather see them dead," Russo said. "Usually it’s the quiet ones who have the worst secrets."

They walked back inside, the warmth of the shop—such as it was—feeling oppressive after the crisp alley air. Higgins was packing up his camera, and two morgue attendants had arrived with a collapsible stretcher.

Harlan walked back to the front counter, careful to stay clear of the chalk outline Higgins had just drawn around Brenner’s boots. He stood where the killer must have stood, looking down at the floorboards, then up at the shelves of mounted birds.

Directly across from the counter, perched on a high wooden shelf above the cash register, sat a large snowy owl. Its head was turned slightly to the left, its yellow glass eyes fixed squarely on the spot where Otto Brenner had fallen.

Harlan stared at the owl for a long moment. Beside it, a gap of about eight inches sat empty in the dust on the shelf—a clean, rectangular patch where something else had recently stood.

"Hey, Sam," Harlan called out, his voice low.

Russo walked over, squinting up at the shelf. "What?"

"Look at the dust next to the owl."

Russo leaned in, careful not to touch the wood. "Something was sitting there. A small box? Another bird?"

"Could be," Harlan said. He turned his gaze back to the floor, where the morgue attendants were lifting Otto Brenner onto the canvas stretcher. "Or maybe Otto just moved it before he closed up. Either way, I want to know what it was."

He pulled his notebook from his coat pocket, flipped to a fresh page, and wrote down the time, the address, and the name of the victim. Outside, the city was waking up. Milk trucks rattled down the avenue, and the smell of fresh rye bread from Kowalski’s bakery began to drift through the propped-open front door, momentarily masking the scent of camphor and blood.

It was going to be a long November. Harlan clicked his pen shut, slipped it back into his pocket, and nodded to Russo.

"Come on," he said. "Let’s go talk to the baker."

The smell of baking rye was a mercy after the taxidermy shop. Harlan pushed open the door to Kowalski’s Bakery, the little brass bell above the frame giving a twin chime to the one next door, and held it for Russo. Inside, the air was thick, warm, and sweet with yeast. Flour dust hung in the slant of gray morning light coming through the front window, where trays of poppy-seed rolls and braided challah sat cooling behind the glass.

Patrolman Miller had brought Kowalski inside out of the damp, and the baker was now standing behind his counter, nervously wiping down an already spotless stretch of marble. He had taken off his heavy coat, leaving him in his flour-dusted apron and a rolled-up white shirt that showed forearms thick as fence posts.

"Sorry to interrupt the morning rush, Mr. Kowalski," Harlan said, taking off his fedora and shaking a few stray drops of rain from the brim. "We just need a few more minutes of your time."

"No rush," Kowalski said, though his eyes flicked toward the swinging door that led to the ovens. "The bread don't wait for nobody, Detective, but I got a boy in the back watching the dampers. You ask whatever you need."

Harlan pulled out his notebook and leaned against the glass display case. "You told Officer Miller you usually wave to Otto around five."

"Every morning," Kowalski said, nodding vigorously. "I get down here at four-thirty to fire the ovens. Otto, he’s an early bird too. Usually by five, five-fifteen, he’s got his kettle on in the back and he’s sweeping his front walk. Sometimes I bring him a heel of warm rye, he brings me a jar of honey he gets from some farmer out in the county. Good neighbor. Quiet."

"And this morning?"

"This morning, I’m setting the trays in the window—must’ve been ten past six. I look over, and his front light is still on. The bare bulb over the counter. Now, Otto, he’s tight with a nickel, Detective. He don't leave lights burning all night. So I step outside, and I see the door isn't latched all the way. Just cracked an inch or two. I push it open, call his name, and…" Kowalski swallowed hard, his round face paling again. "And I see his boots. Brown lace-ups. Pointing straight up."

Russo, who had been admiring a tray of jelly doughnuts, turned around. "You didn't see anybody else on the street? Nobody walking away?"

"Nobody. Street was dead."

"What about last night?" Harlan asked. "You live upstairs, Mr. Kowalski?"

"Yeah, me and my wife, Sofia. Right above the shop." Kowalski rubbed the back of his neck. "We go to bed early. Nine, nine-thirty, latest. You work baker’s hours, you don't stay up listening to the radio."

"Hear anything unusual between ten and midnight?" Harlan pressed. "A car? Voices? A loud noise?"

Kowalski frowned, his thick eyebrows knitting together. He looked toward the back door, then back at Harlan. "Well, now that you mention it. Sofia, she’s a light sleeper. She nudged me awake—I don't know what time it was, maybe eleven-fifteen, eleven-thirty. Said there was a car idling out front."

Harlan’s pen stopped moving. "Idling? Right in front of Brenner’s?"

"Right on the street," Kowalski said. "You don't get much traffic on West Elm after nine o'clock. Mostly just the milk trucks before dawn. Sofia heard the engine. Said it sounded heavy, like a big eight-cylinder. A Buick, maybe, or a Packard. Something with some weight to it."

"Did she look out the window?" Russo asked.

"She started to get up, you know, to pull the curtain back, and then she heard a pop." Kowalski slapped his palms together once, a dull, flat sound. "Like a cork coming out of a bottle, or a truck backfiring over on the avenue. She figured it was just some kids fooling around, or a bad muffler, and then the car pulled away. Fast. She told me to go back to sleep, so I did. Didn't think nothing of it until…" He gestured vaguely toward the brick wall separating his bakery from number 412.

"Did she see which way the car went?" Harlan asked.

"Didn't make it to the window in time," Kowalski said. "Just heard it gunning toward the river. No headlights, neither, she said, until it hit the corner. Wait—she said she didn't see the reflection on the wet pavement, that’s what it was. Dark street, you notice headlights."

Harlan wrote it down. A heavy sedan, idling around eleven-thirty, a muffled pop, and a fast exit without lights. It fit Pendelton’s window of ten to midnight like a custom-tailored glove.

"We’ll need to talk to your wife, just to get it on the record," Harlan said, snapping his notebook shut. "Keep the ovens going, Mr. Kowalski. And if you remember anything else—anybody Otto was arguing with lately, any strange customers—you call the fourteenth precinct and ask for Detective Harlan."

"I will," Kowalski said. "God rest him. He was a good man, Otto. Didn't bother a soul."

They stepped back out into the gray morning. The rain had held off, though the sky hung low and bruised over the rail yards, promising more before noon. Across the street, a city bus hissed to a stop, letting off a handful of men in damp overcoats carrying lunch pails. Life on West Elm was grinding into gear, indifferent to the fact that one of its fixtures was currently being zipped into a canvas bag fifty feet away.

"A heavy sedan," Russo said, lighting another Chesterfield and squinting through the smoke. "Doesn't sound like a local punk looking for beer money."

"No," Harlan agreed. "Sounds like someone who had business with Otto Brenner and didn't want to walk there in the rain. Let’s try the other neighbors."

They walked past the taxidermy shop, where Higgins was loading his camera gear into the trunk of a city car, and stopped at number 410, a narrow storefront with a painted boot hanging over the door. Sal’s Shoe Repair. Inside, a bell jangled, and the smell of leather, rubber cement, and neat's-foot oil washed over them.

Sal was a wiry man in his seventies with silver hair combed straight back and half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose. He was sitting behind a battered wooden counter, hammering a heel onto a woman’s pump with rhythmic, practiced blows. He didn't look up until Harlan laid his badge on the counter.

"Police," Sal said, setting the hammer down without a trace of surprise. "It’s about Otto, yeah? I saw the meat wagon."

"You know what happened?" Harlan asked.

"I know when they bring the black stretcher, nobody’s going to the hospital," Sal said, wiping his hands on a stained leather apron. "Heart attack? He was always eating those greasy sausages from Glickman’s."

"Not a heart attack," Russo said. "Somebody shot him."

Sal froze. His dark eyes widened behind the half-moons. "Shot? Otto? Who the hell shoots a guy who stuffs ducks?"

"That’s what we’re trying to find out," Harlan said. "You live here, Sal?"

"In the back," Sal said, jerking a thumb toward a curtained doorway. "Thirty years. But I’m half-deaf in my left ear, and I sleep like a log. Didn't hear nothing last night. If you’re looking for witnesses, you’re wasting shoe leather."

"What about yesterday afternoon?" Harlan asked. "Otto have any visitors? Anybody out of the ordinary?"

Sal leaned his elbows on the counter, thinking. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a stubby briar pipe, and tapped it against his palm. "Well, now. Usually Otto just gets the hunters. Guys in red plaid jackets smelling like wet dog, bringing in a deer head or a bass they caught upstate. Yesterday, though… maybe three-thirty, four o'clock, I was sweeping the stoop."

"And?" Russo prompted.

"A guy comes walking down the street," Sal said. "Didn't look like no hunter. Sharp dresser. Camel-hair coat, fedora, leather gloves. Looked like he belonged downtown, maybe a lawyer or a bookie. He goes right into Otto’s."

"You see his face?" Harlan asked.

"Just a glimpse. Thirty, maybe thirty-five. Dark hair, clean-shaven. Had a scar? No, maybe just a shadow under his eye. He was in there about twenty minutes. When he came out, he didn't look happy."

"How do you mean?"

"Red in the face," Sal said. "Walked out fast, slammed the door hard enough to rattle my window. Got into a car parked down by the corner and took off."

Harlan and Russo exchanged a look. "What kind of car, Sal?"

Sal shrugged, his shoulders rising nearly to his ears. "Big one. Dark blue or black. I don't know cars, Detective. They all look like bathtubs to me."

"Did Otto say anything to you after the guy left?"

"Didn't see him," Sal said. "I went back inside to finish a pair of loafers. Next thing I know, there’s a prowl car outside and Miller’s telling me to stay off the sidewalk."

Harlan thanked the cobbler and stepped back out onto the pavement. They tried the kosher butcher at 414 and the dry cleaner at 416, but neither owner lived on the premises, and both had locked up by six the previous evening. By eight-thirty, the canvass of West Elm had given them everything it was going to give: a heavy dark sedan, a sharp-dressed man in a camel-hair coat having a loud disagreement with a quiet taxidermist, and a muffled pop in the middle of the night.

"Brenner didn't live above the shop," Harlan said as they climbed back into their unmarked Ford. He turned the key, and the engine coughed twice before catching. "Miller checked the lease on the counter. He rented a room over on Sycamore Street. Mrs. Gable’s boarding house."

"Let’s go see what the landlady knows," Russo said, rolling down his window an inch to let the cigarette smoke escape. "Maybe Otto had a secret life. Maybe he was running numbers out of the bear cub."

Sycamore Street was three blocks east, a row of sagging Victorian houses that had been carved up into furnished rooms during the war and never put back together. Number 88 had a freshly painted porch and a neat brass plaque by the bell that read No Vacancies. No Drinking. No Exceptions.

Mrs. Gable answered on the second ring. She was a tall, bony woman with her gray hair pinned into a bun so tight it looked painful, wearing a sensible tweed skirt and a cardigan buttoned to the throat. When Harlan showed his badge, she didn't flinch; she merely pursed her lips as if the police were an overdue milkman.

"If this is about Mr. Brenner," she said, before Harlan could open his mouth, "he’s never been a day late with the rent in seven years."

"I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Gable," Harlan said gently, "but Mr. Brenner was killed last night. At his shop."

The woman’s hand went to her throat. For a second, the rigid posture cracked, and she looked her age. "Killed? Good Lord. Otto?"

"May we come in?"

She stepped back, leading them into a narrow hallway that smelled of boiled cabbage and lemon wax. They stood on the braided rug while Harlan asked the standard questions. Brenner had been a widower—his wife, Clara, had died of pneumonia in forty-six, before he moved into the boarding house. He had no children, no siblings in the city, and as far as Mrs. Gable knew, no close friends.

"He was a quiet man," she said, her voice steadying as she folded her arms. "Read the paper, listened to the baseball games on his Philco, went to bed by ten—except when he had a big job at the shop. Never brought anyone here. Never caused a lick of trouble."

"Can we take a look at his room?" Harlan asked.

Mrs. Gable hesitated, then nodded. "Second floor, back. I have the spare key."

The room was small, dominated by an iron bedstead covered in a faded patchwork quilt, a pine dresser, and a single armchair by the window. It was as neat as the workroom at the shop. A pair of polished dress shoes sat side by side under the bed. On the dresser stood a framed sepia photograph of a plain-faced woman in a high-collared dress, beside a ceramic dish holding three pennies, a pocketknife, and a brass key.

Harlan checked the closet—two suits, both worn at the elbows, three flannel shirts, and a heavy wool coat—while Russo opened the dresser drawers. Nothing out of place. No hidden cash, no address book, no letters tied with ribbon. Just wool socks, long underwear, and a stack of Field & Stream magazines dating back to 1949.

"Nothing here, Jack," Russo said, sliding the bottom drawer shut. "The guy lived like a monk."

Harlan stood by the window, looking down at the muddy backyard and the rusted clothesline. "A monk who gets into a shouting match with a guy in a camel-hair coat, then takes a thirty-two to the chest six hours later." He turned back to Mrs. Gable, who was waiting in the doorway. "Did Mr. Brenner ever mention anyone he was afraid of? Anyone who owed him money, or someone he owed?"

"Otto didn't owe nobody nothing," Mrs. Gable said sharply. "And as for being afraid, he wasn't the type to talk about his troubles. He kept his own counsel."

They thanked her and drove back to the fourteenth precinct, arriving just as the shift change was turning the squad room into a minor riot. Typewriters clattered like machine guns, phones rang unanswered on empty desks, and a uniformed officer was hauling a handcuffed kid in a leather jacket toward the holding cells, the kid swearing up and down that he’d only borrowed the Buick to visit his sick mother.

Harlan hung his coat on the tree and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee from the scorched glass pot near the radiator. It hadn't improved since six-fifteen. He carried it over to his desk, where Russo was already hunched over a typewriter, hunting and pecking with two fingers to start the preliminary report.

"Novak wants to see us," Detective Miller—no relation to the beat cop—called out from across the room, jerking a thumb toward the frosted-glass door at the back. "He’s been pacing since nine."

Harlan sighed, took a sip of the bitter coffee, and walked toward the lieutenant’s office, Russo trailing a step behind.

Lieutenant Frank Novak was a broad-shouldered man with a flat nose that had been broken twice—once in the Golden Gloves, once in a dockworkers' strike in thirty-eight—and a disposition that suggested he’d rather be anywhere else. His desk was buried under three inches of paper, and a cloud of cheap cigar smoke hung permanently around the overhead light fixture.

"Shut the door," Novak said without looking up from a personnel roster. "Tell me it’s a clean stickup gone wrong and you’ve already got a line on the kid."

"Wish I could, Lou," Harlan said, dropping into the wooden chair opposite the desk. "Till was untouched. No signs of a struggle, back door bolted from the inside. Pendelton puts time of death between ten and midnight. Single shot to the chest, close range, likely a thirty-two."

Novak finally looked up, his pale blue eyes narrowing. "So somebody walked in the front door, shot an old man who stuffs squirrels, and walked out?"

"Looks like," Russo said, leaning against the doorframe. "Baker’s wife heard a heavy sedan idling out front around eleven-thirty, followed by a muffled pop. Shoe repairman next door saw a sharp-dressed guy in a camel-hair coat arguing with Brenner around four yesterday afternoon. Dark hair, thirties, driving a big dark car."

Novak grunted, tapping the ash from his cigar into a tin tray shaped like a tire. "A sharp-dressed guy. That narrows it down to half of downtown. What about the shop? Anything missing?"

"Can't say for sure yet," Harlan said. "There was a clean spot in the dust on a high shelf across from the counter. Right next to a stuffed snowy owl. Whatever was sitting there was about eight inches wide, maybe a small box or another mount. Lab boys are dusting the counter and the green ledger we found on his desk. Once they’re done, we’ll go through the books and see if he had a client who fits the description."

"Do that," Novak said, leaning back in his chair, which groaned under his weight. "The commissioner’s already calling me about the West Elm neighborhood. Merchants' association is screaming that business is going to dry up if people are getting shot behind their counters. I want this wrapped up neat, Jack. No loose ends, no circus."

"We’re on it, Lou," Harlan said.

Before Novak could reply, the phone on his desk jangled. He snatched it up, barked his name, and listened for ten seconds, his expression unreadable. "Yeah. Send it up. Tell Pendelton I want the full report by five."

He hung up and looked at Harlan. "That was the morgue. Pendelton dug the slug out. It’s a thirty-two, all right. Jacketed. He’s sending it over to ballistics now. And the lab boys finished at the shop—they’re bringing the ledger and the cash register prints back to headquarters."

Harlan stood up, feeling the familiar, slow click of gears engaging in his head. The morning had been all legwork and dead ends, the usual fog that hung over the first few hours of a homicide. Now the physical evidence was starting to talk.

"Come on, Sam," Harlan said, heading back out into the noise of the squad room. "Let’s go see what Otto Brenner was writing down before somebody put a hole in his sweater."