Ashes to Ashes by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page A

shallow bowl of ground that had afforded excellent cover. The park was studded with trees, both deciduous and evergreen. By dead of night this would be a small world all its own. The nearest residences—neat middle-class single-family homes—were well away from the crime scene, the skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis several miles to the north. Even the small service lot where they were parked was obscured from view by trees and what was likely a beautiful row of lilacs in the spring—camouflage to hide a small locked utility shed and the park maintenance vehicles that came and went as needed.
    Their UNSUB (unknown subject) had likely parked here and carried the body down the hill for his little ceremony. Quinn looked up at the sodium vapor security light that topped a dark pole near the utility shed. The glass had been shattered, but there were no visible fragments of it on the ground.
    “We know how long that light’s been out?”
    Walsh looked up, blinking and grimacing as the rain hit him in the face. “You’ll have to ask the cops.”
    A couple of days, Quinn bet. Not long enough that the park service would have gotten around to fixing it. If the damage was the work of their man in preparation for his midnight call … If he had come here in advance, knocked out the light, cleaned up the glass to help avoid detection of the vandalism and thereby improve his odds that the security light would not be replaced quickly … if all of that was true, they were dealing with a strong degree of planning and premeditation. And experience. MO was learned behavior. A criminal learned by trial and error what to do and what not to do in the commission of his crimes. He improved his methods with time and repetition.
    Ignoring the rain that pelted down on his bare head, Quinn hunched his shoulders inside his trench coat and started down the hill, conscious that the killer would have taken this route with a body in his arms. It was a fair distance—fifty or sixty yards. The crime scene unit would have the exact measurements. It took strength to carry a dead weight that far. The time of death would have determined how he had carried her. Over the shoulder would have been easiest—if rigor had not yet set in, or if it had come and gone already. If he had been able to carry her over his shoulder, then his size could vary more; a smaller man could accomplish the task. If he had to carry her in his arms, he would had to have been larger. Quinn hoped they would know more after the autopsy.
    “What did the crime scene unit cover?” he asked, the words coming out of his mouth on a cloud of steam.
    Walsh hustled along three paces behind him, coughing. “Everything. This whole section of park, including the parking area and the utility shed. The homicide guys called in their own Bureau of Investigation crime scene people and the mobile lab from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension as well. They were very thorough.”
    “When did this rain start?”
    “This morning.”
    “Shit,” Quinn grumbled. “Last night—would the ground have been hard or soft?”
    “Like a rock. They didn’t get any shoe prints. They picked up some garbage—scraps of paper, cigarette butts, like that. But hell, it’s a public park. The stuff could have come from anyone.”
    “Anything distinguishing left at the first two scenes?”
    “The victims’ driver’s licenses. Other than that, nothing to my knowledge.”
    “Who’s doing the lab work?”
    “BCA. Their facilities are excellent.”
    “I’ve heard that.”
    “They’re aware they can contact the FBI lab if they need help or clarification on anything.”
    Quinn pulled up just short of the charred ground where the body had been left, a thick, dark sense of oppression closing tight around his chest as it always did at a crime scene. He had never tried to discern whether the feeling was anything as mystical or romantic as the notion of a malingering sense of evil or something as