Angel of Darkness by Katy Munger Read Free Book Online

coroner yet? Is it for sure his signature?’
    Maggie nodded. ‘Doc called late this afternoon.’ She sounded grim.
    â€˜What is it?’ Calvano asked.
    â€˜He said that if it isn’t the same man as before, they have something in common. They both really enjoy their work. Because after this guy strangled our girl, he did other things to her. The exact same things Parker did to the prior victims.’
    â€˜Things I don’t want to know about,’ Calvano said and he meant it. He was funny that way. For a guy on the job who had seen it all, he couldn’t handle the details of what killers did to their victims, not if they were women.
    â€˜Definitely things you don’t want to know,’ Maggie agreed.
    â€˜Maybe she knew her killer? Picked him up at a bar?’
    â€˜Maybe, but her panel showed no evidence of alcohol or drugs in her system. She was clean.’
    â€˜Baby daddy?’ Calvano suggested. He tended to head off in predictable directions when it came to an investigation, directions clearly colored by his own life.
    â€˜She was definitely not pregnant,’ Maggie said. ‘Doc said she may even have been a virgin, based on—’
    â€˜I don’t want to know,’ Calvano interrupted.
    Maggie smiled at him tolerantly. ‘We’ll know a lot more when Doc is done.’
    â€˜So let’s find her connection with Parker,’ Calvano suggested. ‘Find out who she is – get to know her and who her friends were – and how she ended up on that riverbank, right? Maybe we’ll find a connection to Parker in there somewhere.’
    Maggie nodded. ‘You know, Adrian, pretty soon you won’t need me at all.’
    â€˜I think we both know that’s not true.’
    Make that three of us.

NINE
    T he dead girl was named Darcy Swan and her family had not bothered to report her missing. Maggie learned of her identity when a stammering fifteen-year-old boy who bussed tables at the Freeway Diner called 911 to say that Darcy had failed to report for her shift and he just knew she’d never do a thing like that unless something bad had happened to her. When the dispatcher realized he was describing the girl found by the river, she alerted Maggie. Sometimes, a small town has its advantages.
    Calls to both high school principals in town quickly yielded her photo and address. The dead girl was confirmed to be Darcy Swan and she did indeed live on the wrong side of the tracks, in a shabby rental house down the street from a sprawling Walmart that had taken over that end of Helltown. Maggie and Calvano volunteered to do the notification in hopes of finding out something useful to start their investigation with.
    I hitched a ride over in the back of their car, the ultimate third wheel, shamelessly eavesdropping on their conversation. They had an OK partnership these days – especially considering Calvano made up half of it – and I admit I was jealous. It should have been me riding shotgun.
    The woman who answered the door at Darcy Swan’s house was pushing fifty and proclaimed herself to be Darcy’s grandmother. Like everyone else in Helltown would have been, she was too busy being suspicious of Maggie and Calvano to realize why they might be there. It was clear she had been drinking for hours. Before Maggie could explain why they were there, the old lady assumed that her granddaughter had been caught shoplifting and began ranting about the girl’s shortcomings. The house was already filled with useless objects touted in the front aisles of drugstores every holiday season and I quite frankly could not think of what was left for Darcy to have shoplifted. But granny had a head of steam up and neither Maggie nor Calvano could get a word in as she embarked on a rant about the moral shortcomings of the younger generation. Obviously, she had no concept of what generation she was in: she wore acres of costume jewelry and her hair