Page 116 of Near Miss

“He sounds like an unpleasant person.”

“He does, at that.”

“I wonder why he thought he had to prove it?” Carly mused.

There was a low moan from a police siren outside, and Joanlet in two detectives—as usual, one Stone knew named Kelly, and a younger one.

“Hello, Stone,” Kelly said. “I hear you’ve got some business for us.” He gestured toward the other guy. “This is my partner, Smith.”

“What kind of name is that for a cop?” Stone asked.

“Call me Smitty,” the younger man said.

“Smitty, it is,” Stone said. “Call me Stone, if this is going to be a pleasant meeting.”

“Just a few questions,” Smitty said, taking a seat near the corpse.

“Shoot.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Nope. He was like that when I got home from a meeting at my law firm.”

“How long has he been dead?”

“Beats me.”

“About two hours,” Carly said.

Stone introduced her to the two cops.

“How do you figure?” Smitty asked her.

“I have a nose.”

“A better one than mine,” Stone said.

“Okay, let’s start with where everybody was two hours ago. We gotta do something until the ME gets here and tells us if we got a psychic on our hands.” He nodded at Carly.

“My advice is to take her word for it,” Stone said. “She’s not often wrong.”

“Hardly ever,” Carly added. “I worked in the New Haven morgue nights and weekends as an undergrad at Yale. At the morgue, they called me ‘the Nose.’ ”

“Okay,” Smitty said.

A man wearing scrubs and carrying a satchel entered the room. “I’m Dr. Carson,” he said, looking at Greco and sniffing the air. “About two hours, I’d say.”

“Can you get him out of here beforeIstart smelling him?” Stone asked.

Dino entered the room. “Okay, how long?” he said to the ME.

“About two hours.”

“Carly had already made that estimate,” Stone said. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d appreciate it if he were moved before he stinks up the whole place.”

Dino looked at the ME and jerked a thumb.

“Whatever you say, Commissioner,” the man replied, and made the same gesture to the two men pushing the gurney. The atmosphere began to improve.

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