Grayson by Delores Fossen Read Free Book Online

from Dade. Soon Grayson would want that update as well, but first he had to deal with the most hardheaded woman in Texas.
    Ahead of him, Eve made her way to his office while she fished for something in her purse. She finally pulled out her cell phone when she came to a quick stop. Her hand and phone had been moving toward her ear, but that stopped, as well. She stood there frozen, her gaze fixed on something in his office.
    Grayson cursed and hurried to pull her aside because he knew what had shocked her. The crime board in his office had photos of the dead woman. Or rather what was left of her. To put it mildly, they weren’t pretty.
    “Sorry about that,” he mumbled. And he crossed the room to turn the board around so that the gruesome pictures would be facing the wall.
    “Wait!” Eve insisted.
    She walked closer, her attention nailed to the grisliest of the photos. It was a close-up view of the dead woman’s bashed-in face and had been taken several hours after her body had been fished out of the creek.
    “There’s no need for you to see these,” Grayson assured her. When he tried to turn the board again, she caught on to his arm to stop them.
    She moved even closer, until her face was just inches from the photo. Eve mumbled something and then dropped her equipment bag onto his desk. Frantically, she began to rummage through it, pulling out the pictures that Grayson had seen earlier on the counter at the cottage.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “I’ve seen her before.” Her voice was all breath now. “Well, I’ve seen that hair anyway.”
    Grayson glanced back at the dead woman’s hair, though the image was already embedded into his mind. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forget it. But the hair was certainly distinctive. Three colors. Red, blond, black, and the black was only on the ends of her choppily cut hair.
    Eve continued to pull photos from her bag, glancing at each and then tossing them aside on the tops of folders and reports that Grayson had spread out on his desk. She plucked another from the bag and froze again.
    Grayson looked at the shot from over her shoulder. He recognized the location—it had been taken at the indoor rodeo arena in San Antonio. There were at least a dozen people standing at the railings, their eyes fixed on the bull rider who had just been tossed into the air.
    Then he saw the woman.
    And her hair.
    “When did you take this?” Grayson couldn’t ask the question fast enough. He grabbed the picture from her so he could study it.
    “Four days ago at the fundraiser rodeo. I had these printed because I wanted to take a better look at them to see which to include in the story. But I didn’t use this one.” She paused. “It’s her, isn’t it?”
    Grayson paused too, but not because he wasn’t sure.
    He was.
    The image of the dead woman stared back at him.
     
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    Eve hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until her lungs began to ache. “Is that the murdered woman?” she asked Grayson.
    “Yeah,” he finally said, his attention still glued to that photo. “Any idea who she is?”
    “No, I took dozens of random shots that day. She was just someone in the crowd.”
    “Yes. But if the medical examiner is right, this is also the day she was murdered.” He tipped his head to her bag. “I need to look at all the pictures.”
    She gave a shaky nod, and while she was doing that, Grayson peeled off his jacket and tossed it over the back of his chair. Then he put the photo on his fax machine. “I’m sending it to the Ranger crime lab in Austin with a request for immediate processing.”
    Good. Soon, he might have a name to go with that face.
    Eve continued to dump pictures onto his desk, but with each one she mumbled a no. She huffed. “That’s it. The only one I have of her.”
    “Then I’ll have to get what I can from it.”
    He made several more copies of the picture, one that he pinned on to the corkboard with the other photos.