Free The Butcher's Theatre by Jonathan Kellerman

center of the fence was an electric gate controlled by a uniform inside a guard station. Daniel pulled up next to the observation window.
    “Morning, Tzvika.”
    “Morning, Dani.”
    The gate opened like a yawn.
    A steel revolving door provided access to the lobby. Inside, all was cool and quiet, the white marble floors spotless. A solitary woman in jeans and T-shirt sat on a bench kneading
    her fingers and waiting. Three uniforms stood behind the shiny black reception counter, joking and laughing, nodding at him without interrupting their conversation. He walked past them quickly, past the bomb display and the burglary prevention exhibit, ignored the elevators, swung open the door to the stairs, and bounded up to the third floor.
    He stepped out into a long hallway and turned right, stopping at a plain wooden door. Only a strip of tape with his name on it distinguished it from the dozens of others that checkered the corridor. Ringing telephones and the white noise of conversation filtered through the hall in tidelike waves, but at a discreet level. Businesslike. He might have been in a law firm.
    So different from the old Russian Compound, with its green copper domes and cold, dingy walls, the ancient plaster crackled like eggshell. The constant press of bodies, the eternal human parade. His cubicle had been noisy, cramped, bereft of privacy. Suspects rubbing elbows with policemen. Vine-laced leaded windows offering views of manacled suspects escorted across the courtyard, bound over for hearing at the Magistrates Hall, some shuffling, others fairly dancing to judgment. The bitter smell of sweat and fear, voices raised in the same old cantata of accusation and denial. The working space of a detective.
    His Major Crimes assignment had meant a move to National Headquarters. But National Headquarters had been built with administrators in mind. Paper blizzards and the high technology of contemporary police work. Basement labs and banks of computers. Well-lit conference rooms and lecture halls. Clean, respectable. Sterile.
    He turned the key. His office was spanking-white and tiny—ten by ten with a view of the parking lot. His desk, files, and shelves filled it, so that there was barely space for a single guest chair; more than one visitor meant a move to one of the interrogation rooms. On the wall was a framed batik Laura had done last summer. A pair of old Yemenite men, brown figures on a cream-colored background, dancing in ecstasy under a flaming orange swirl of sun. Next to it, a pictorial calendar from the Conservation League, this month’s illustration a pair of young almond
    trees in full snowy blossom against a backdrop of gray rolling hills.
    He squeezed behind the desk. The surface was clear except for a snapshot cube of Laura and the children and a stack of mail. At the top of the stack was a message to call Laufer if he had anything to report, some Research and Development questionnaires to be filled out as soon as possible, a memo explaining new regulations for submitting expense vouchers, and a final death report from Abu Kabir on the Dutch tourist who’d been found dead three days ago in the woodlands just below the Dormition Abbey. He picked up the report and put the rest aside. Scanning the stiff, cruel poetry of the necropsy protocol (“This is the body of a well-developed, well-nourished white male …”), he dropped his eyes to the last paragraph: Extensive atherosclerotic disease including blockage of several main blood vessels, no sign of toxins or foul play. Conclusion: The man had been a heart attack waiting to happen. The steep climb to the abbey had done him in.
    He put the report aside, picked up the phone, dialed the main switchboard, and got put on hold. After waiting for several moments, he hung up, dialed again, and was answered by an operator with a cheerful voice. Identifying himself, he gave her three names and left messages for them to contact him as soon as possible.
    She read the names