Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1) by M.K. Gilroy Read Free Book Online

but no big deal. For his reports, he used no notes. He recorded them in one take, every time. He edited everything himself. Talk about low overhead. He watched himself. He wasn’t the striking figure he had been when he dreamed of anchoring the CBS Evening News , but his trademark baritone voice was deep and clear as ever. His blue-gray eyes had not lost their ability to bore into the hearts and minds of his viewers.
    “Welcome to my jungle, friends and family, fans and foes. You are watching the ChiTownVlogger—Chicago’s number one source for news that matters. It’s the wee hours of the night, so good thing for you, I never sleep.
    “I started getting some calls and texts and email messages late last night. Some very interesting—and very disturbing—chatter. So I reached out to people who are in the know in the mayor’s office and at Chicago Police headquarters—and no one wanted to talk to me. That hurt my feelings a little, but it made me even more curious about a potential story of blood and horror. You already know that when I get curious, it turns to suspicion. And when I get suspicious, I really go to work. Usually when people won’t talk to me it means they have something they want to hide. It also means our very own führer, the one and only Mayor Doyle, is doing his best Joseph Goebbels impression and trying to suppress your access to important news. Particularly news that doesn’t help his reelection campaign.
    “After pulling strings for a couple hours, I learned that the mayor was awakened from his beauty sleep—not an easy task—and spent a long night on the phone with the director of the FBI in Washington, DC, and his favorite crony at the Chicago Police Department, Commissioner Fergosi.
    “Good to know they’ll put in at least a little overtime since crime and violent crime is up in Chicagoland for a third straight year. What caught the mayor’s attention? No, they still haven’t captured the old lady who keeps letting her dog do a nasty deed on the sidewalk in front of city hall without scooping it. That wasn’t it.
    “I did check with the big boys, the serious news sources, to see what they knew first. But when you’ve sold your soul to Chicago politicians and the Corporate States of America, you’re content not to know much. Case in point, they didn’t know what has caught the mayor’s attention either. They’re still asleep even as I speak.
    “Let me make it simple, folks. You heard Sandra Reed was murdered. Maybe you weren’t paying attention—and that’s just what Mayor Doyle and Commissioner Fergosi hoped for. If you can remember her name and the report at all, you probably heard she was murdered in a dispute with her boyfriend. Wrong. She doesn’t even have a boyfriend. What Commissioner Fergosi and the men in blue don’t want you to know is this was no domestic dispute, no crime of passion, no simple shoot or stab murder.
    “One of the fair maidens of our city was brutally cut up. Yeah. You heard me right. She was slashed and bled out in a gruesome death that might have been designed to last an entire night. Sadist? Satanist? Sicko? All of the above? Or a different kind of animal? You’ll know when I know. I don’t operate like Mayor Doyle. And I’ll know before ‘they’ know. You know who ‘they’ are.
    “I won’t keep you any longer. So now you can go listen to the hacks from WGL, WCI, and the other serious news sources as they play catch-up with the ChiTownVlogger. Check back into my jungle soon. There’s a predator on the prowl.”
    Satisfied, Allen Johnson hit the button to upload and publish his report.
    I’m going to get a million hits before noon.

10
    I LOOK AT the clock on my nightstand. How did it get to be 9:40 already? Did I just sleep ten hours? Since I tossed and turned all night and never really drifted off, I guess the better question is whether I’ve been in bed ten hours. Regardless, the answer is that I’ve overslept, big time. I jump