Free Dead Ball by R. D. Rosen Page B

estate office by eleven-fifteen.
    The house in Exeter was just right: a dark, shingled colonial on the far loop of a high-end development, set well back from the street, protected from its equally affluent neighbors by phalanxes of evergreens. Inside, it was tastefully furnished and boasted a fully equipped designer kitchen. Harvey trailed behind the matronly Rubino, now only faintly reminiscent of the buxom blond he had once wooed, as she led him from one room to another. She pointed out each of the house’s virtues with that absurd zeal only real estate brokers can summon while keeping a straight face. With the possible exception of the first seven years of sex with Mickey, Harvey had never achieved the levels of enthusiasm Debbie Rubino expressed as she pointed out the flagstone fireplace and the northern light in the master bedroom. Harvey occupied himself with mentally calculating the added security arrangements he would have to make to keep them secure at night until Cooley’s hitting streak was over.
    Back at Rubino’s office, Harvey wrote out checks, received two sets of keys in return, thanked her profusely, and retired to his Honda to call a local home security firm with whom he’d had dealings on a few occasions. Within half an hour he was walking through the colonial again, this time with two of the firm’s installers, indicating where he wanted motion and sound detectors, pressure mats, and pressure switches on the stairs to the second floor. He left the men his second set of keys so they could begin work as soon as possible and then took off for the University of Rhode Island’s Crime Lab, glancing over his shoulder now and then to make sure the box containing the lawn jockey was still wearing its seat belt.
    “Don’t see many of these anymore, not even with their heads on,” Professor Roy Hinch said once Harvey had lugged the boxed lawn jockey upstairs and hoisted it onto his office desk. Although Harvey had done all the heavy lifting, it was Hinch who dabbed his forehead with a neatly folded handkerchief, took a plastic comb out of his shirt pocket, where it had been hiding behind a trio of cheap Paper Mates and a rectangular magnifying glass, and carefully tucked the hair on his graying temples back behind his ears. As he groomed himself, he never took his eyes off the jockey and the grinning head that lay gruesomely on the desk next to it. Professor Hinch worked his lips, saying nothing for the longest time. He picked up the head and examined its surfaces, then ran his finger over the severed neck of the figure.
    “What do you want to know?” he said, touching an index finger to his lips. He looked more like a man who knew a lot about wine, which he did, than a man familiar with the microscopic intricacies of crime.
    “How was it decapitated? Blunt object?”
    “Oh, I doubt that, Harvey. I doubt it very much. Cast iron’s very brittle. A blow would’ve broken or shattered the head. Even if it was wrapped in a towel. No, this was done with a Sawzall.”
    “A Sawzall?”
    “An electric reciprocating saw made by Milwaukee.” Hinch indicated a rapid forward-and-backward motion with his hand flattened into a knife’s edge.
    “Oh, of course,” Harvey said, who didn’t know his power tools very well.
    “You can tell by the unevenness of the cut,” he said, again running his index finger over the severed neck. “Cast iron’s hard to cut, and a Sawzall will make reasonably fast work of it, but because the blade moves back and forth at a high speed, it’s a little tough to control, which explains the undulating planes of the cut here. Now, you can cut cast iron with a hacksaw, and you’ll get a cleaner cut because its teeth are finer and the blade’s not shaking like a fat lady without a girdle, but it’ll take you forever.”
    Harvey took the two bottles of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise 1997 out of his backpack and brought them down, one in each fist, on the professor’s desk.
    “That’s