Finders Keepers by Mark Bowden & Bowden

Author:Mark Bowden & Bowden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2002-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

2

Pat Laurenzi had grabbed a few hours of sleep on top of his metal desk at South Detectives Monday night. Tuesday dawned grim. It had been five days since the money had fallen off the truck.

He had nothing much more to go on than he had started with the previous Thursday, a description of the car, a glimpse of a young man with fair hair stepping out and yanking the money bags inside, and a solid hunch that whoever that young, fair-haired man was, he lived or worked somewhere in the vicinity of Front Street.

Pat was weary and forlorn as he leafed through the thick manila file of leads and notes he had accumulated over the last five days. There were nearly five hundred telephone tips, all transcribed in a variety of handwriting on notes that placed the unknown suspect everywhere from Atlantic City to Texas. The detective had an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach that was more than just hunger.

It was then, deep in the pile of looseleaf notes, that a message caught Pat’s eye that he did not recall seeing before. It was from the previous Saturday, the note from the Gloucester City, New Jersey police correcting their earlier report on the model year of the abandoned Chevy. The Malibu was not a ’75 model, but a’71!

Two of Pat’s colleagues drove across the Walt Whitman Bridge to Gloucester City to look for themselves. It was a 1971 Chevy Malibu, maroon, blue primer paint on the right front fender. It was almost certainly the car.

When Pat got the news, he excitedly typed into the office computer the car’s serial number. The computer came back with the information that the car belonged to a John Henry Behlau, who lived at 314 Durfor Street, which was, as Pat imediately realized, not more than three blocks from where the money fell off the truck.

He ran through the precinct and assembled a group of uniformed men to back him up. Then they drove to the house. When he rang the bell a woman answered. She looked at the detective, then at the uniformed officer beside him. Pat identified himself. She didn’t seem at all surprised.

“We were wondering when you were going to come,” she said.

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