Retribution: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky

there.
    “Don’t touch anything,” I said, kneeling at the body for a number of reasons.
    First, I wanted to confirm that he was really dead. He was. Completely. The body was cool. The dead man was wearing a robe. It was pulled high enough so I could see the only other thing he had on, a pair of underpants.
    I guessed the dead man had been in his late sixties, maybe older. I guessed he was Bernard Corsello. I wondered about a lot of things.
    “Quick look around,” I said. “Touch nothing.”
    “What am I looking for?”
    “Something that says this has something to do with Adele. Something I don’t want to find.”
    Ames strode over the body and into the living room. I went for the open bedroom. On the table next to the bed was a flat and warm glass that seemed to have about two inches of some liquid in it. I smelled it. Cola. Next to the drink were two pens, a pad of paper, a telephone, a wallet, and some change. I picked up the wallet, opened it, and found sixty-two dollars. I rubbed off my prints with my shirt and put the wallet down. Nothing else in the room seemed interesting except for the hanging Jesus who looked down on me. I didn’t say anything to him. I hadn’t since I was a kid.
    I went into the bathroom. Nothing of interest. The third room, the one with the closed door, I opened with my shirt as a mitt. The lights were off. I hit the wall switch and wiped away my print.
    This was clearly Mickey Merrymen’s home away from home. The drawers were open, and nearly empty except for a few T-shirts and a single pair of underpants with a hole in them. A CD player sat on the small dresser. The bed was a mess. There was a small bookcase next to the bed. There were only a few books in it, all horror stories, Straub, Koontz, King, Saul, McKimmon. What made it clearlyMickey’s room were the three photographs tacked to the wall above the bed. They were small. One was on an angle. Adele was in all of them. From the holes in the wall around the three photographs I guessed there had been more, lots more.
    Adele was alone in two of the photographs, both outdoors. Adele from stomach to head. The other of her alone was also outdoors. In the first she was smiling. In the second, she pursed her lips with a pretend kiss for the camera. She looked like any other pretty sixteen-year-old. Her past didn’t show. In the third photograph, Adele was leaning against a tall young man who reminded me of both Michael “the bat” Merrymen and a young Anthony Perkins. His arm was around Adele. He was grinning. I liked his white button-down shirt. I liked his smile. I didn’t like having Adele’s photographs on the wall. I took them down, dropped the tacks in an empty wastebasket, and pocketed the pictures. There was nothing else I could find to link Adele to the house. I doubted the police would go over every print in the place, but there was nothing I could do about it.
    I found Ames in the kitchen looking at the refrigerator. There were magnets holding up three messages. Each magnet was a photograph, Einstein, Marlon Brando, and Hank Aaron. One message was a simple grocery list. The second message read: “Insurance due first Tuesday of the month.” The third message was, “Remember to call for pizza for Mickey and the girl.”
    I pulled the pizza message from under Hank Aaron and said, “Anything?”
    Ames shook his head “no” and we headed toward the corpse and the door.
    “Didn’t take his money, the television, CD player,” I said.
    We moved past the dead man and Ames stepped out of the door. I should have hurried after him but I looked one last time at the dead man and the thought came. That was the way I wanted to see the man who had run down my wife four years ago on Lake Shore Drive. He had left her bleeding, dying, barely alive. It took at least five minutesbefore someone went to help her. It was too late. The driver had gone on. What was that murderer doing now? Was he haunted by what he had done? Had he been a