Free Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery by Stuart M. Kaminsky

no way of getting around the truth. If Santoro’s death was not connected to Catherine’s, Lew faced a very large coincidence.
    He got up and moved around the desk behind Santoro.
    “You can wait outside,” he said, looking at the top of the desk.
    “You think I want out because of the dead guy?” Franco asked, shaking his head. “I’ve seen dead guys, kids on the roads like roadkill. I’m a tow-truck driver, remember?”
    “I remember,” Lew said.
    “You want help?” he asked, looking at the closed door to Santoro’s office.
    “No,” Lew said.
    There was a fresh, lined, yellow legal pad with a pen next to it. The top page was blank. There was an empty in box, an aluminum football with a clock imbedded in it, facing Santoro. Next to it was a fresh box of Kleenex with a red wood cover. At the right was a flat, black cell phone holder-charger. There was no phone. Franco mumbled something to himself. Lew took a small stack of tissues.
    “You know what your sister’ll do to me if we get arrested ?”
    “No.”
    “I don’t either,” said Franco, clearly frustrated. “But I won’t like it. I know that.”
    Franco’s near panic had been transformed into quiet resignation. He would not be surprised if the killer burst through the door, guns in both hands, firing away. He wouldn’t have been happy either, but he wouldn’t be surprised.
    There were four desk drawers. Lew opened and went through them, flipping papers with the tissues. Then he went through Santoro’s pockets the same way. A little more than four hundred dollars in his wallet. Lew put the wallet back.
    He wanted to touch Santoro’s shoulder. Then he paused and looked down at the dead man.
    “Lewis, you okay?”
    “Yes, let’s go.”
    “I can live with that,” Franco said, moving ahead of Lew to the door. “You find anything?”
    Lew reached past him, opened the door with the tissues and wiped down the knob. Then he realized that while he was erasing their fingerprints, he might well be removing those of the person who had killed Santoro.
    They walked past the reception area, into the hallway outside and then to their right, back toward the elevator.
    “Find anything on him?”
    It wasn’t what Lew had found, but what he hadn’t found. Santoro’s phone was gone. He had no appointment or notebook in his pockets. Whoever had killed him had taken any phone and notebook he might have had.
    “No,” Lew said.
    “Stairs?”
    “No.”
    There were surveillance cameras in the building’s lobby, at the entrance and even one in the wooden mesh grid of the elevator’s ceiling. They were on tape. That would be fine. If Lew were right, the tape and medical examiner would prove Lew and Franco had entered the building at least eight hours or more after Santoro was dead. That wouldn’t stop the police from having questions.
    The elevator pinged and the doors slid open almost silently.
In front of them stood a large black man in his forties. He was wearing a blue suit and matching tie and carrying a briefcase. He looked exactly like his photograph on the wall of the reception room of Santoro’s law firm.
    The man was Turnbull of Glicken, Santoro and Turnbull, or, to be more current, Glicken and Turnbull.
    He took Lew and Franco in and moved toward the offices Lew and Franco had left seconds earlier. Franco and Lew stepped in and Lew hit the Lobby button.
    They were only a few blocks from the County Office Building. Lew headed toward it with Franco at his side, looking back over his left shoulder.
    “I’m not gonna ask,” said Franco.
    People hurried to their offices or jobs serving the people going to their offices. Lew could tell by how they were dressed, by the color of their skin, which were the served and which the servers. Lew was definitely a server.
    They stopped on the broad stone courtyard in front of the building where Lew had worked, where Catherine had worked. Too many demons were being faced too quickly and he had been in the