Free A Song of Shadows by John Connolly Page B

Bloom continued, ‘he doesn’t seem to have any close family that we can find. He appears to have been pretty much on his own.’
    ‘What about the state police?’
    ‘They have their hands full looking for that Oran Wilde kid. Same with the ME’s office: she’s got four charred corpses on her hands. They’ll all get to us when they can. They’ve been in touch, but …’
    She trailed off. He finished for her.
    ‘It’s a car by a beach, and a body on another beach – a body, what’s more, that nobody is rushing to claim or mourn. Did you find a note?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘There’s a lot of water to throw yourself into between Florida and here, most of it a lot warmer than this.’
    He gestured at the ocean with a pale hand. Bloom half expected to see an albatross appear, as though summoned before them.
    ‘Is there a logic to taking your own life?’ she asked.
    He considered the question.
    ‘You know, I expect that there probably is,’ he said. ‘Would you mind if I took a look at his car?’
    ‘Why would you want to do that? And why are you so interested?’
    ‘It used to be my job,’ he said.
    ‘And now?’
    He looked at her, and she felt the full force of his gaze.
    ‘Call it my vocation,’ he said. ‘I’m out of practice. Indulge me, Chief Bloom. After all, what harm can it do?’
    But those last five words came back to Cory Bloom later, as it all blew up, as she felt her life draining away, and she knew that she would take them to her grave.
    The car, stored in the police garage at the back of the town office, was a 2003 Honda Accord in a dull silver-gray. It had 91,000 miles on it, according to the clock, but Bloom told Parker that it had probably turned over at least once, given that the car seemed to be held together with goodwill and Bondo, and the a/c was shot. She’d draped the vehicle with a tarp to protect it from getting any more fingerprints and marks on the paint job than it had already.
    She handed Parker a pair of latex gloves.
    ‘You can open the door and take a look inside, but try not to touch anything, even with the gloves on, okay?’
    She felt ridiculous giving him the warning. After all, he’d once carried a detective’s shield. He might have been a renegade, but if so, he was one who knew the drill. He’d also annoyed her with his questions on the beach, and his wish to examine the vehicle. Bloom knew better than to make assumptions, or so she told herself, but she had to admit that she’d already mentally filed the corpse away as a probable suicide. Perhaps it was, in part, the reaction of the state police. Yes, the minds of its detectives were elsewhere – on four bodies, and the missing, possibly troubled youth who might well be responsible for their deaths – but, even so, they didn’t seem particularly troubled about the body that she currently had on ice. Right or wrong, these attitudes were contagious. Now, though, Parker’s reactions reminded her of the importance of taking nothing for granted, and she didn’t want the chain of evidence interfered with, if it turned out that Bruno Perlman had not entered the sea of his own volition.
    But Parker didn’t seem interested in searching the interior, not yet. He walked around the car under the bright fluorescents of the garage, his brow furrowed in the slightest of frowns. Only when he had done that did he open first the driver’s door, then the front passenger door. He took in the mess on the floor – soda bottles, chip bags, candy wrappers, a copy of the Boston Globe dated a couple of days before the body washed ashore – then leaned in and searched the glove compartment without coming upon anything that caught his attention. He checked the newspaper, and the copy of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union that lay on the back seat, flicking through the pages but finding nothing. So much for not touching stuff, thought Bloom. He used the release handle in the car to open the trunk. Inside was a single traveling