LITMIR.BIZ

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      The phone rang and rang. Finally it was answered. “Crime lab, Longfellow speaking.”

      “Did you know that you have the surname of a famous poet?” Alice teased.

      The other woman was all business, all the time, and she didn’t get jokes. “Yes. I’m a far-removed distant cousin of the poet, in fact. You want to know about your scrap of paper, I suppose? It’s much too early for any analysis of the paper or ink…”

      “The writing, Longfellow, the writing,” Alice interrupted.

      “As I said, it’s too early in the analysis. We’d need a sample to compare, first, and then we’d need a handwriting expert…”

      “But what does the message say?” Alice blurted out impatiently. Honest to God, the other woman was so ponderously slow sometimes!

      “Oh, that. Just a minute.” There was a pause, some paper ruffling, a cough. Longfellow came back on the line. “It doesn’t say anything.”

      “You can’t make out the letters? Is it waterlogged, or something?”

      “It doesn’t have letters.”

      “Then what does it have?” Alice said with the last of her patience straining at the leash. She was picturing Longfellow on the floor with herself standing over the lab tech with a large studded bat…

      “It has numbers, Jones,” came the droll reply. “Just a few numbers. Nothing else.”

      “An address?”

      “Not likely.”

      “Give me the numbers.”

      “Only the last six are visible. The others apparently were obliterated by the man’s sweaty palms when he clenched it so tightly. Here goes.”

      She read the series of numbers.

      “Which ones were obliterated?” Alice asked.

      “Looks like the ones at the beginning. If it’s a telephone number, the area code and the first of the exchange numbers is missing. We’ll probably be able to reconstruct those at the FBI lab, but not immediately. Sorry.”

      “No, listen, you’ve been a world of help. If I controlled salaries, you’d get a raise.”

      “Why, thank you, Jones,” came the astonished reply. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

      “You’re very welcome. Let me know if you come up with anything else.”

      “Of course I will.”

      Alice hung up. She looked at the numbers and frowned.

      “What have you got?” Hayes asked.

      “I’m not sure. A telephone number, perhaps.”

      He moved closer and peered at the paper where she’d written those numbers down. “Could that be the exchange?” he asked, noting some of the numbers.

      “I don’t know. If it is, it could be a San Antonio number, but we’d need to have the area code to determine that, and it’s missing.”

      “Get that lab busy.”

      She glowered at him. “Like we sleep late, take two-hour coffee breaks, and wander into the crime lab about noon daily!”

      “Sorry,” he said, and grinned.

      She pursed her full lips and gave him a roguish look. “Hey, you law enforcement guys live at doughnut shops and lounge around in the office reading sports magazines and playing games on the computer, right?”

      He glowered back.

      She held out one hand, palm up. “Welcome to the stereotype club.”

      “When will she have some more of those numbers?”

      “Your guess is as good as mine. Has anybody spoken to the woman whose car was stolen to ask if someone she knew might have taken it? Or to pump her for information and find out if she really loaned it to him?” she added shrewdly.

      “No, nobody’s talked to her. The feds in charge of the investigation wanted to wait until they had enough information to coax her into giving them something they needed,” he said.

      “As we speak, they’re roping Jon Blackhawk to his desk chair and gagging him,” she pronounced with a grin. “His first reaction would be to drag her downtown and grill her.”

      “He’s young and hotheaded. At least to hear his brother tell it.”

      “Kilraven loves his brother,” Alice replied. “But he does know his failings.”

      “I wouldn’t call rushing in headfirst a failing,” Hayes pointed out.

      “That’s why you’ve been shot, Hayes,” she said.

      “Anybody can get shot,” he said.

      “Yes, but you’ve been shot twice,” she reminded him. “The word locally is that you’d have a better chance of being named king of some small country than you’d have getting a wife. Nobody around here is rushing to line up and become a widow.”

      “I’ve calmed down,” he muttered defensively. “And who’s been saying that, anyway?”

      “I heard that Minette Raynor was,” she replied without quite meeting his eyes.

      His jaw tautened. “I have no desire to marry Miss Raynor, now or ever,” he returned coldly. “She helped kill my brother.”

      “She didn’t, and you have proof, but suit yourself,” she said when he looked angry enough to say something unforgivable. “Now, do you have any idea how we can talk to that woman before somebody shuts her up? It looks like whoever killed that poor man on the river wouldn’t hesitate to give him company. I’d bet my reputation that he knew something that could bring down someone powerful, and he was stopped dead first. If the woman has any info at all, she’s on the endangered list.”

      “Good point,” Hayes had to admit. “Do you have a plan?”

      She shook her head. “I wish.”

      “About that number, you might run it by the 911 operators,” he said. “They deal with a lot of telephone traffic. They might recognize it.”

      “Now that’s constructive thinking,” she said with a grin. “But this isn’t my jurisdiction, you know.”

      “The crime was committed in the county. That’s my jurisdiction. I’m giving you the authority to investigate.”

      “Won’t your own investigator feel slighted?”

      “He would if he was here,” he sighed. “He took his remaining days off and went to Wyoming for Christmas. He said he’d lose them if he didn’t use them by the end of the year. I couldn’t disagree and we didn’t have much going on when I let him go.” He shook his head. “He’ll punch me when he gets back and discovers that we had a real DB right here and he didn’t get to investigate it.”

      “The way things look,” she said slowly, “he may still get to help. I don’t think we’re going to solve this one in a couple of days.”

      “Hey, I saw a murder like this one on one of those CSI shows,” he said with pretended excitement. “They sent trace evidence out, got results in two hours and had the guy arrested and convicted and sent to jail just before the last commercial!”

      She gave him a smile and a gesture that was universal before she picked up her purse, and the slip of paper, and left his office.

      She was eating lunch at Barbara’s Café in town when the object of her most recent daydreams walked in, tall and handsome in real cowboy duds, complete with a shepherd’s coat, polished black boots and a real black Stetson cowboy hat with a brim that looked just like the one worn by Richard Boone in the television series

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