The Art of Dying: A Ray Hanley Crime Thriller (Ray Hanley Crime Thrillers) by Derik Cavignano

Author:Derik Cavignano [Cavignano, Derik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Corners Press
Published: 2019-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“How’d it go yesterday?” Billy asked. “I miss anything good?”

Ray sipped his coffee. “The autopsy was interesting.”

“Yeah? Did Tina miss me?”

The mention of Tina filled him with self-loathing, but he played it cool to avoid arousing suspicion. “Not that I could tell.”

“She’ll come around,” Billy said, “once I turn on the charm.”

“You actually think you have charm?”

“Of course not, but I can fake it. Did I tell you what happened with Kelly?”

The last thing Ray wanted was to hear about Billy’s love life, but Billy didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll tell you what, that chick was a freak in the bedroom. The things she did would make a porn star blush. Too bad she turned into a full-fledged psycho bitch.”

“You don’t think you had anything to do with that?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You cheated on her, didn’t you?”

“We weren’t exclusive.”

“Did she know that?”

“If she didn’t, she does now.”

Ray shook his head. As much as Billy behaved like a dirtbag, what Ray had done to Michelle was ten times worse, and there was nothing he could do to take it back.

Sergeant Callahan poked his head into the breakroom. “The lieutenant wants to see you.”

Billy groaned. “What’d we do this time?”

Callahan motioned to the hallway. “Let’s go.”

Ray and Billy exchanged a glance before following Callahan to Spinonni’s office, where the lieutenant sat behind his desk berating the station’s janitor, Henry.

“How can we be out of cleaner?” Spinonni asked. “Isn’t part of your job knowing when to reorder supplies? Were you planning to sit on your ass until the supplies magically appeared? Until a leprechaun shat out a bottle of Windex?”

Ray could only see the back of Henry’s snowy-white head, but he knew the old janitor must be seething.

“It takes a special solution to remove that much graffiti,” Henry said. “And the last time you only gave me enough money for one bottle.”

“Are you saying this is my fault?”

“No sir, I just—”

Spinonni reached into his drawer for the petty cash envelope and threw a fistful of bills at Henry. “Get two bottles this time, and don’t forget to bring me the receipt.”

Henry stooped down to retrieve the bills before shuffling out of Spinonni’s office with his shoulders slumped. He met Ray’s gaze as he passed through the door. “He’s all yours.”

Ray patted the old man on the back. “Thanks for warming him up.”

Spinonni waved them into his office. With his hair-trigger temper and monster beer gut, the lieutenant was a heart attack waiting to happen. But since only the good die young, Ray figured Spinonni would ride out the apocalypse with the rats and the cockroaches.

Spinonni smoothed out the bristles of his moustache and waited until they’d settled into the chairs opposite his desk. “Sergeant Callahan tells me you’ve got a lead on the Finkleton case.”

Ray nodded. “We think the same guy did both Finkleton and Danny the Mule.”

“Because they were both disfigured? I hope you’ve got more than that.”

“He made them into things,” Ray said. “Finkleton into a spider and Danny into an elephant.

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