The Barker Street Regulars

Romans isn’t just random. Rather—surprise, surprise—the association has to do with dogs and specifically with the mastiff, a breed found by the Romans in England and subsequently taken home to such cozy spots as the Coliseum, and the breed with which Kevin has an obvious anatomical and temperamental affinity- True! Giant breed, weight of adult male up to about two hundred pounds, massive head, short coat, natural protectiveness, unmatched loyalty... Except that Kevin has red hair and freckles and that if you set him down in the middle of Dublin, no one else there would look Irish at all. There is, however, an additional point of similarity: The mastiff has a kind nature.
    “It’s a darling little cat, too,” I said. “Practically a kitten. And desperately in need of a good home. Once Steve checks it out and gives it its shots, it’ll be a readymade perfect pet.”
    Yes, I tried to con a cop. In the Holmes stories, Lestrade, Gregson, and other members of the force are usually slow-witted foils for the Great Detective. They have to be, really. If Conan Doyle had made them superbright, Holmes would have been stuck home fiddling and doing drugs.
    “No,” said Kevin.
    “Well, you could at least find this bastard who tried to murder the poor thing,” I replied. I’d already given him a detailed description of the man. “I’d definitely recognize him. I’ll be happy to testify against him. And I have the pillowcase and the big rock that was in it and the twine that was used to tie it up.” I rose from my seat and retrieved the items from the kitchen closet. To avoid contaminating the evidence, I’d stored the stone, the pillowcase, and the twine in a brown paper grocery hag. Now I rather dramatically lowered the bundle to the kitchen table and revealed its contents. “You see? It’s a really smooth stone. You’ll get a beautiful set of Prints from it.”
    Kevin eyed my carefully preserved evidence with less enthusiasm than I might have wished.
    “And,” I added, pointing at the stone, “for all we know, this is some rare kind of rock that an expert could identify instantly.”
    “It’s granite,” Kevin said.
    “Well, to you maybe it looks like ordinary granite, but granite isn’t all the same, is it? You must have geologists you could ask. And for all I know, there’s someone in the state crime lab who specializes in being able to take one look at a lump of rock and know exactly where it came from. The pillowcase and the twine are admittedly pretty ordinary-looking, but think about trace evidence! Put this stone and the pillowcase and the twine under a microscope, and you’ll probably find fibers and maybe even little flakes of skin or whatever that you can test for DNA. I mean, if we get lucky, maybe he slept with his head on the pillowcase. Maybe he had a cut on his hand and bled on the twine!” Instead of rushing to use my phone to summon a team of crime-scene technicians, Kevin reminded me that he’d warned me about that stretch of the river.
    “I was just driving by. I didn’t intend to stop. But obviously it’s a good thing I did. So what are you going to do about it?”
    Kevin shrugged. “It’s M.D.C.” As the signs on Greenough Boulevard announce, the agency in charge is the Metropolitan District Commission. The M.D.C., for reasons I don’t understand, maintains and polices a lot of parks, skating rinks, pools, and other recreation areas in Greater Boston.
    “You know people at the M.D.C.,” I said. “And the crime took place in Watertown. I’m sure you know people there, too.” I didn’t mean just any old people, of course. “And I know I should’ve noticed the license plate.”
    “Make and model of—”
    “Kevin, it was a perfectly ordinary van. Panel truck. With no windows. The kind plumbers drive. Electricians. Or like a delivery van, but with no sign on it, no lettering or anything. Just a plain van. I’m not Sherlock Holmes. I didn’t see anything distinctive about it.”
    “Hey, hey,” said Kevin. “ ’Quick, Watson, the needle.’ I got no use for that.”
    For the past week, Kevin, together with the state police and someone from the D.A.’s office, had been investigating the brutal and highly publicized murder of a Cambridge drug dealer named Donald Lively. Lively, who’d been in his early thirties, had been bludgeoned to death in the parking area behind his lavish condo in East Cambridge, only a few blocks from the courthouse. According to the