Blood and Bone by William Lashner Page A

“What was the name?”
“Double Eye, I think it was. Double Eye Investments.”
“Keep that file for me,” said Kyle. “You find anything else?”
“There’s a storage room around the corner with some old metal file cabinets. I looked through what I could. No O’Malley.”
“What do you mean you looked through what you could?”
“There was one file cabinet, and then a gap with some boxes, and then a couple more. From the case numbers on the drawers, it looks like one cabinet is missing.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in a sec. Let me finish looking through here first.”
Kyle did a quick search of Toth’s office, the drawers, the low wooden file cabinets. He glanced out the window, and a flash of dim light caught his gaze. But when he realized it was just a gleam of a streetlight on a metal sign, he was strangely disappointed. What had he expected to see on the Locust Street sidewalk, a mop of gray hair?
In the storage room, it was the old file cabinets that drew Kyle’s interest. They were metal and brown, with fake wood grain, and seemed designed solely to hold documents of great import. He walked up to one. The lock in the upper right corner was sticking out, with a key inside. He opened a drawer filled with old, tightly packed files. He thumbed through them rapidly. No O’Malley. He closed the drawer and stepped back and stared.
“See,” said Skitch, pointing to a gap.
“Yeah, I see,” said Kyle. “So one is missing.”
Kyle thought for a moment. Where would his father have put a file cabinet? He was trying to think it through when he heard something faint, and then not so faint.
The push of a door opening, the patter of shoes across the floor below. Kyle quickly turned to Skitch. Skitch stared back, his eyes widening.
“I guess turning on the lights wasn’t the best idea,” said Skitch softly, even as a shout rose like an explosion up the twisting stairs.
“Police.”
    CHAPTER 14
    DETECTIVES HENDERSON AND RAMIREZ stood side by side in front
    of the wide one-way mirror that allowed a clear view inside the green interrogation room. Kyle Byrne slumped in a chair across a table, facing them without being able to see them. The partners stood quietly for a moment, observing two very different scenes.
    Ramirez saw a man fighting to control his fear, someone aware that he was being stared at and trying a little too hard not to look concerned, a clever liar trying to fake his way out of a bad situation. But to Henderson, Kyle Byrne seemed neither nervous nor scared. He didn’t look like someone who was racked with doubt after having been arrested for burglary and while being held at the Roundhouse on suspicion of murder. He just looked bored.
    “Doesn’t seem too worried, does he?” said Henderson, pulling at the gray hairs growing out of his ear.
“He’s trying very hard not to.”
The man in the interrogation room stretched in his chair, yawned, lolled his head across the back of the chair.
“And doing a damn good job of it,” said Henderson.
Byrne had given himself up as the uniforms climbed the stairs with guns drawn. His hands were raised, he was smiling weakly, he said, “Don’t shoot. My name’s Kyle Byrne. I’m not trespassing. This is my father’s office.” He was alone, the cops said, and they found nothing on him other than a wallet, which confirmed his identity, and a flashlight. No gun, no contraband, no lock-picking tools, nothing but a few bucks and some loose change. He was so amiable and so nonthreatening that the uniforms had only cuffed him in strict compliance with procedure.
“I would have thought you’d be more excited, Henderson, seeing all your old saws come to fruition. First he attends the funeral of the victim, next he returns to the scene of the crime.”
“That makes him guilty of stupidity, not much more.”
“It’s a start,” said Ramirez. “I thought you said old saws still cut?”
“I did, but then again, sometimes old saws are too