Free The Stolen Ones by Richard Montanari

work, and whether or not he seemed troubled or agitated that day. When I told him nothing seemed out of the ordinary, he just stared at me for the longest time.’
    ‘Then what happened?’
    ‘Nothing for a little while. Then he asked if I would turn the music up.’
    ‘The music?’
    ‘Yes. The odd thing was, there wasn’t any music playing. We sometimes play easy listening through the intercom speakers, but we didn’t have it on that day.’
    Byrne glanced at Jessica, back at Karen Jacobs. He buttoned his coat, put his notebook in his pocket.
    ‘Can you think of anything else about Robert?’ he asked at the door.
    She thought for a few moments. ‘Not really. Like I said, Robert was pretty much a closed book. You might be able to find something in the stuff we took out of his desk, if you’d like to take a look at it.’
    Jessica looked at Byrne, then back at Karen Jacobs. ‘You still have the contents of his desk?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s all in a box in our storeroom. We figured someone in his family would come for it. No one ever did. There isn’t much.’
    ‘Did you show Detective Garcia Robert’s desk when he was here?’ Jessica asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘And why is that?’
    ‘Well, two reasons, to be perfectly honest, Detective. One, it was a bit of a shock having just learned that Robert had been murdered. That was a first for me, and I hope it’s a last.’
    ‘Of course,’ Jessica said. ‘And the second reason?’
    Karen Jacobs shrugged. ‘Detective Garcia never asked.’
     
    They stood in the parking lot of the industrial park. The rain had let up for the moment, but the occasional drop signaled a return. The white, legal-document-size cardboard box was on the hood of the car.
    ‘Makes you wonder what else John didn’t ask,’ Jessica said.
    ‘Yes, it does.’
    Jessica opened the box, looked inside. The woman was right. There wasn’t much in there – a stapler, a tape dispenser, a pair of local Philadelphia yellow page directories, along with a white pages directory. There was also a flip-over desk calendar. Jessica took the calendar out of the box and put it on the hood of the car. She began to page through the days.
    ‘Are there any entries around February twentieth?’ Byrne asked.
    Jessica checked. The page for 20 February, the day Robert Freitag was murdered, was gone. As were the pages for the previous six days. The nearest calendar page was for 13 February. Jessica took out her Maglite, angled the beam on that page. There were indentations on the page, as if something had been written on the page above it.
    ‘Can you read what’s there?’ Byrne asked.
    ‘Hard to tell.’
    ‘Wish we had a pencil.’
    ‘I think we do,’ Jessica said. She rummaged in the white box, soon produced an unsharpened pencil, as well as a desktop pencil sharpener. The manual kind, not the electric kind.
    ‘Thank God our friend Robert was old-school,’ Byrne said.
    While Byrne held the sharpener, Jessica put a tip on the pencil, blew on it. She then gently rubbed the graphite over the serrations on the calendar page. Just like in the old movies, an image began to appear. When she was done she aimed her Maglite on the page.
    ‘Looks like JCD 10K 8P.’ Jessica handed the calendar to Byrne. ‘What do you think?’
    Byrne scanned the entry. ‘Well, Robert didn’t really look like a runner to me, so I’m thinking this 10K doesn’t refer to a race.’
    ‘Not too many races start at eight p.m., either.’
    ‘Good point.’
    ‘JCD,’ Jessica said. ‘Any bells?’
    ‘Not yet,’ Byrne said. ‘Check the list of CycleLife employees. See if any of the initials sync.’
    Jessica took out the list, scanned it. ‘Nothing. There’s a Judith, but her last name is Blaylock.’ She looked back at the calendar page.
    ‘Let’s assume, for the moment, he wrote this on February fourteenth,’ Byrne said.
    ‘Six days before his murder,’ Jessica said.
    ‘So, Freitag goes to meet with this JCD, gets