Free Night Watchman (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 8) by Tony Dunbar Page A

paper. The top one had a Police Department letterhead.
    Her seatmate, a fat lady with a Bible on her lap, was watching this out of the corner of her eye. Cherrylynn closed the envelope and stared out the window at the chicken shacks and drug clinics they were rolling past. She hopped off on St. Charles Avenue and was unlocking the DUBONNET & ASSOCIATES offices five minutes later. Obviously, Tubby had not yet returned.
    No doubt the boss would expect her to inventory the contents and transfer them into a file. This would also satisfy her curiosity. She extracted the pages and spread them out on her desk.
    Here’s what she found:
    A worn dirty manila file folder with a tag pasted to it that read: “No. JDX2374.”
    A form releasing the body of John Doe to the Dennis Mortuary on Louisiana Avenue, signed by Frank Minyard, the Parish Coroner.
    A copy of a piece of paper with a handwritten name on it. It was Bert Haggarty, followed by “Indiana.”
    The official Police Department document was a short report. It had one paragraph, denoted as “SUMMARY.” It read:
    “Deceased John Doe, wounds possibly self-inflicted. Subversive anti-war buttons, vagrant, possible altercation with unknown parties. Possible drug deal. One marijuana cigarette in pants pocket, sent to evidence. Prints taken. No known match. Photo of body shows gunshot.”
    There was no marijuana cigarette, and there were no prints. There was no photograph of the body.
    Cherrylynn inspected the pages carefully. She turned them over and scanned the backs. Nothing. The manila folder, except for the file number and a small blue ink doodle on the inside that resembled a spider, was blank. But wait, near the doodle there was an indentation likely made by a pen or pencil writing on something with the folder underneath. She got out the magnifying glass she sometimes used to check her skin and made out a name. It appeared to be “Carlos Pancera,” and beside that a phone number with a five-o-four area code. She jotted it down.
    Cherrylynn put everything back into the envelope and locked it in her desk. After checking her phone and picking some dead leaves off the ficus plant in the corner, she couldn’t think of anything else to do. So she opened up her Philosophy reading,
Critique of Pure Reason
by Immanuel Kant, and gave it a try. “That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.” Okay, so far. “So how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise other than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representation…” She closed the text. Critique of Poor Reason, maybe. She could get this, she knew. But not now.
    Tapping on her laptop, she Googled “New Orleans Police Officer P. Kronke.”
    It didn’t take long. He was in the White Pages.
    * * *
    At Galatoire’s 33, the diners’ conversation languished. What remained of their meal passed in strained silence. Jason Boaz and his guest both said no to the waiter’s offer to serve them additional drinks. The last bite of quail remained on the plate. Dessert, sadly, was forgotten.
    “Jason. That was a very important event in my life,” Tubby pointed out, signaling the waiter that they were done. “I’m not going to let it go.”
    “I beg you, my friend. Let it alone.”
    “No. It’s not going to end here,” the lawyer insisted.
    “
Eres hombre muerto
.”
    Tubby didn’t know what that meant, but he stood up.
    Jason pulled out his credit card and paid while his friend left.
    When the mystified boss got back to the office Cherrylynn announced, “I have some news for you.”
    She told him what she had learned at the library, showed him the picture she had taken of the brief death announcement in the Times-Picayune , and produced the file that Officer Sandoval had given her.
    “He expects it back,” she said, laying out the pages on the desk for him to read.
    She showed him the faint scratches on the file folder and