Dark Heart by Margaret Weis;David Baldwin Read Free Book Online Page B

next to her. Imprinted in the carpet, barely defined in the bloody fibers, was a strange depression about sixteen inches in length, roughly half that in width.
    “What is that?” McKenzie cocked his head to the side. “Footprint?”
    The print was an elongated star shape. Three prongs pointing toward the wall, one long prong opposing them, facing the other way.
    Sandra leaned down and sniffed the print. “Yeah. Looks like it. Grab one of the forensics techs.”
    She waited until Mac found another photographer. The first was still busy getting pics of the scratches on the brick wall.
    As he stepped back and light bloomed from his flash, she shook her head again.
    “Great. Fucking great, Mac. What we got is Bigfoot, who’s a Chinese food–eating, rock-climbing, frustrated heart surgeon. Our case reports are starting to read like some kind of Star Wars movie.”
    McKenzie chuckled.
    But the thing did look like a footprint, though like no footprint she’d ever seen. For some reason she felt a sudden, chilly breeze along her spine.
    “This case is developing a very big suck factor, Mac,” she said.
    “What kind of shoes do those really crazy climbers wear?” McKenzie asked.
    “That’s a good question. I haven’t got a clue,” she admitted.
    “I’ll look into it,” he said.
    One of the crime scene boys was dusting the door handle, lifting prints, and taking photos before he washed the blood off it into a sample vial. Sandra tapped him on the shoulder.
    “I want a preliminary report, along with fiber and DNA data as soon as you get it.”
    The techie nodded. “Sure, Detective McCormick.”
    “You know me?” Sandra asked.
    “Detective Sandra McCormick,” the techie replied in a flat, noncommittal tone of voice.
    “Good. So have somebody give me a call when the preliminary results come in. I’ll come get the report.”
    “Sure.” The tech had as little enthusiasm in his voice as before. He went back to dusting the doorknob.
    Sandra moved away and let the tech do his job. She looked at McKenzie. “What about Madrone’s partner?”
    “I don’t know,” McKenzie said. “Dunno if he even had one. I’ll check it out.”
    “Okay.” She sighed and stretched, looked around the room once again. “We’ll keep the tapes up, keep this place off-limits. Mac, can you put out a bulletin to the hospitals? We’ll want immediate notification of any gunshot wounds. Maybe Madrone managed to pop this guy after all. We can hope anyway.”
    “Sure, Bruce.”
    She rubbed hard at her face. Her skin felt like dough, flat and without elasticity. She yawned.
    “I’m gonna go home and get some sleep. You should do the same.”
    “You watch yourself, Bruce. Whoever it is, they’re taking down cops now.”
    She nodded. “You do the same, Mac.”
    He stared at her somber expression. “I want this guy,” he said.
    “So do I, Mac. So do I. So we’ll get him. Right?”
    He nodded grimly. “Yeah, right.”
     
     
     
    On the way home, rolling through the silent city, she thought about it. Most times, she’d walk into a crime scene and find some stupid hairball crying that he’d never meant to kill her, he just wanted to show her who was boss. Or that she was asking for it. Or there’d be some scumbag ranting that if he couldn’t have her, nobody could. Or there’d be gangs or drugs or some other obvious indication of means, motive, opportunity.
    But it always made her a little jittery when she had to run over the possibilities without a clear picture in her head of what had happened, some kind of familiar framework within which to set her ideas. Like a puzzle board. But when the puzzle clicked, when the identity of the killer became clear to her, it was an amazing feeling, one of the reasons she’d chosen this career in the first place.
    Twenty minutes of driving through rain falling on empty city streets brought her to her condominium. The sky was still dark. Not even the first gray glimmerings of false dawn lit