Krewe of Hunters 3 Sacred Evil by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

bag and dug in it briefly to produce a piece of paper with a picture on it. “Polly Nichols—a morgue photo. Care to compare the medical examiner’s report with our corpse?”
    Jude looked from her unique eyes to the photo, and despite his determination to keep an entirely open mind, he had to give the comparison credence.
    The Ripper’s victim had been older; life had not been kind. The image was not that of a pretty young woman.
    Whatever else Virginia Rockford might have been, she hadn’t been old. She had been attractive; killed when it seemed that the world was waiting for her.
    But, despite the difference in the living appearances and situations of the women, the wounds on the bodies were the same.
    Exactly the same.
    The autopsy had just begun. He thought they had already learned what they needed to know.

3
     
    S he was losing credibility, Whitney thought, and doing so by proving a point.
    But learning how to work with Jude Crosby wasn’t going to be easy.
    He was a hard-boiled cop. And the perfect vision of one. So tall, so leanly, ruggedly muscled. He had dark hair, with no signs of gray yet, neatly clipped. She estimated that he was in his mid-thirties; a man with gray eyes that had seen too much; he was weary, and yet he still seemed to have the look of a man who wanted to change the world.
    Whitney thought that he must have grown up reading every old detective novel that had ever been printed. He didn’t have to speak a word; she could tell by his body language that he wasn’t happy about her being on the case.
    Maybe she shouldn’t have been so pleased that she’d been the first of her team to arrive on-site, or that she should be the one to dive headfirst into the macabre killing. Perhaps it would have been better if they would have started out with Jude Crosby meeting one of the guys; Jackson Crow, Jake Mallory or Will Chan might have made a better impression. She doubted that Jude Crosby had ever worked with a female partner. He kept looking at her as if she were a little mosquito that had gotten in his way. She wasn’t out to prove anything; she and the others were a team, and each member was always glad to make use of his or her gender, color or any perceived edge when it meant getting done what needed to get done.
    “Let’s move through this autopsy before leaping to any conclusions, shall we?” Jude Crosby suggested. His voice was even; his tone was cool.
    Doesn’t play well with others! she thought.
    Too bad. Fullbright seemed fine; he accepted her simply as an FBI agent, and he was interested in the photo of Jack the Ripper’s first canonical victim. Fullbright was intrigued by the puzzle before him, and it seemed evident that he was an armchair detective himself, fascinated by the mystery of old. The medical examiner was convinced that the killer had, at the least, studied the modus operandi of the mysterious nineteenth-century killer.
    Crosby wasn’t happy. Maybe he was always that way. Maybe he felt that the federal government was encroaching upon his right as state law enforcement.
    Well, that was all right. They had worked with cops who were grateful to have them around—and cops who didn’t want them at all. They were learning as they went, and so far, their odd mix of a team had done very well.
    She could step back.
    “Definitely,” she replied, and did step back, clearly defining her role as observer.
    Whitney had seen many horrible things, but nothing like what had been done to the young woman on the gurney. She didn’t want to blink or blanch as the doctor reported his findings in a dispassionate voice; she couldn’t appear too weak to stomach it. The only thing she could do was force herself to take a huge mental step back as well. In truth, that wasn’t so hard. It couldn’t be real flesh on the table; that was too terrible to accept.
    But she had known what the findings would be. Not exact, perhaps. But close. There were two grievously deep slashes across the