Free Gray Matter by Shirley Kennett Page B

Mickey Mouse clock, and a pencil cup containing her prized Space Pen she had bought at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Tomorrow, if she had time, she would bring in some prints for the walls. PJ had a collection of wildlife prints, mostly big cats. Most of them would overwhelm this office, but she could think of two or three that might work. Then maybe she could paint the walls some weekend, surely they wouldn’t mind.
    Suddenly the door flew open hard enough to smash the doorknob into the wall. Schultz filled the doorway. There was a momentary look of confusion on his face, quickly replaced by a sheepish grin.
    “Didn’t your mama ever teach you to knock?” PJ said.
    “Sorry. Nobody ever closed this door before. I didn’t think you were inside. It gets God awful hot with the door closed.” Realizing he was rambling, Schultz closed his mouth. Then he took in the improvements. “Say, this place looks better already. I could get jealous.”
    Schultz didn’t look like a man who had gotten an intimidating note from the boss. In fact, PJ thought he looked downright buoyant, like a hangman with a new rope. She decided to act neutral. “Sit down, Leo. What can I do for you?”
    Schultz gave her an exaggerated leer. “Any number of things, Doc.”
    “Really, Detective, you are in a strange and ornery mood today.”
    “Strange and horny might be more like it, Doc, but the more you’re around me, you’ll find that’s not unusual.”
    She gestured at a chair and he lowered himself into it. She noticed that he seemed to flex his knees with care as he sat down.
    “I guess you’re wondering about my note,” she said, channeling the conversation back to the subject she had in mind. She was trying to figure out how to tell Schultz that she wanted him to do a lot of what she considered gruntwork while she sat in her office preparing a demo for Wall.
    “Note? Did you leave something at my desk? I came here straight from the crapper. Washed my hands, first, though. You should feel honored. I don’t always do that, especially if I’m heading for the lieutenant’s office.”
    PJ let her annoyance show. Somehow her conversations with Schultz never went as planned. “Anything new on the case?” she asked.
    “Turns out that stuff under the cat’s claws was the bonafide shit. You mind that kind of language, you let me know, OK? I can be real genteel when I need to, just got to work at it, that’s all. Anyway, it was human blood, and it didn’t belong to Burton. The creep didn’t leave any fingerprints, but he left something even better. Considerate bastard, just handed me the knife to cut his balls off with.”
    “I assume you’re referring to DNA matching. Aren’t you forgetting a few things?”
    “Such as?”
    “You have to have a suspect before you can match the DNA to the sample from the cat’s claws. The last I heard, a comprehensive DNA database like the FBI’s fingerprint file didn’t exist yet, so there’s nothing to search through. Secondly, I thought you were the one who was skeptical about whether the blood belongs to the murderer. Even if it turns out to be from the murderer, how could you ever prove that the cat scratched the suspect during the murder and not out on the street someplace?”
    Schultz waved his hand dismissively.
    “You have a suspect?” PJ said.
    “Nope.”
    “Then why are you so cheerful this morning?”
    “Gut instinct, Doc. Instinct says we’re going to get this guy, and now we’ve got something to nail his ass with when we catch up to him.”
    PJ sighed. Schultz was assuming that the cat scratched the killer while he was in Burton’s apartment. Personally she thought that was highly probable, just about a certainty, but there was room for doubt. Not only that, Schultz himself had pointed out that the chain of custody for the blood sample was compromised. The cat had been taken from the scene and the evidence that it was carrying under its claws had left police