The Crooked Street (Frost Easton Book 3) by Brian Freeman

Author:Brian Freeman [Freeman, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781503900943
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2019-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

25

Nobody had moved the body yet. It still lay sprawled across the train tracks where the MUNI J line came down the hill into Mission Dolores Park. Dr. Finder from the medical examiner’s office, who had studied the body of Denny Clark in Frost’s foyer, was crouched over this body, too. The remains were gruesome. The man on the ground had no face, just an unrecognizable jam of blood, bone, and cartilage. One arm had been scissored from his body and lay with its shirt sleeve still intact on the redbrick sidewalk leading into the park.

“Heart attack?” Frost asked.

Dr. Finder chuckled behind his mask. A plastic cap struggled to contain the halo of hair sprouting like wheatgrass from his head. “Well, I guess his heart might have stopped in the second or so before he got run over. But let’s assume not. Tonight MUNI stands for man underneath it. He was hit as the trolley came down the hill and then dragged here before the undercarriage spit him loose. Or most of him, anyway.”

“Was this an accident? Was he playing chicken with the train?”

The pathologist shook his head. “Not according to the MUNI driver. He says there were two men struggling near the tracks, and one pushed the other. There was no way to stop. I believe Officer Timko has the man who did the pushing in a squad car over there. Apparently, the man claims it was self-defense. He’s the one who called the cops after it happened.”

“What about the pushee?” Frost asked. “Who is he?”

“According to his driver’s license, our deceased’s name was Diego Casal. Twenty-three years old. He’s well known to our friends in vice.”

“Why does Cyril think Diego was involved in Denny Clark’s murder?” Frost asked.

“Probably because of what I found in Mr. Casal’s pocket. Namely a long-barreled pellet pistol that would have worked very nicely to fire the kind of gel round that poisoned Mr. Clark. And if that weren’t enough, there was a dissolving pellet left in the chamber. I won’t know until I test it in the lab, of course, but I won’t be at all surprised if we find a matching poison.”

“Hmm,” Frost said dubiously.

“You don’t sound pleased, Inspector.”

“When I was a kid and Santa got me exactly what I wanted for Christmas, I always wondered how he knew.”

“What a suspicious boy you were,” the pathologist chided him. “Me, I’m pleased to have a corpse with no mystery for once. And if it wraps up the saga of Mr. Clark, that’s an added bonus.”

“Yes, all neatly tied up with a bow,” Frost said. “Ho, ho, ho.”

He left Dr. Finder to continue his work with the body, and he headed across the green grass of Mission Dolores Park to find Cyril Timko. The park overlooked the glowing city skyline. Around him, the J line was shut down, and half a dozen squad cars surrounded the intersection at Twentieth Street. Gawkers ringed the area with cameras that flashed like lightning. He suspected that pictures of Casal’s mangled body had already made their way onto social media.

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