Rhymes With Prey by Jeffery Deaver Read Free Book Online Page B

behind them, and as Lucas came up, the ram handlers smashed the door open, and the armored cops went in.
    Lucas was right there with Lily, and as they piled into the entryway, the team suddenly stopped, there was some milling, and the team leader called, “We got a body.”
    Lily and Lucas shouldered their way from behind through the crowd, with Amelia a step behind, and they turned the corner at the door that went into the studio.
    Verlaine was there, staring sightlessly at one of his sculptures. His head was a bloody mess, and a semiauto pistol lay on the floor by his fingertips.
    â€œGot some brass,” Amelia said; she sounded like a professor ofmurder, her voice cool and analytical. Lucas saw the shell sitting by Verlaine’s foot. Then Amelia turned to the entry-team leader and said, “We’ve got to clear the building. But just two guys on this floor, and stay out on the perimeter, away from the kill site.”
    The team leader nodded, and started calling names.
    Lincoln pushed through the crowd in his chair, saw the body. Lily said to him, “This could solve a lot of problems.”
    â€œYes, it could,” he said. “But the statistics say that it probably won’t.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œSerial killers don’t often commit suicide. They like the attention they get from us. The spree killers, who are going through a psychotic break. They’ll kill themselves almost every time, if you give them a chance. It’s either a problem or an opportunity,” Lincoln said.
    â€œOpportunity?”
    â€œIf he didn’t kill himself, it’s a problem,” Lincoln said. “If he did, I might get a nice paper out of it.”

    â€œHOW BAD IS IT, SACHS?”
    Looking over Verlaine’s apartment, she said, “Seen worse.” She was speaking to Lincoln, who was outside on the street in front of the place. They were connected via a headset and stalk mic.
    Her judgment had nothing to do with the unpleasant detritus of gore and bits of bone littering the sculptor’s floor near the body (in fact, head wounds produce minimal blood flow). What she meant was that the place was relatively uncontaminated. If scenes were left virgin after the crime, forensic teams would have a much easier time processing the evidence. But that rarely happened. Bystanders, souvenir hunters, looters, grieving family memberswould pollute the scene with trace evidence, smear fingerprints, and walk off with everything from telltale epidermal cells to the murder weapon itself. And some of the worst offenders were the first-responders. Understandably, of course; saving lives and clearing a scene of the bad guys take priority. But leads have been destroyed and suspects found not guilty because otherwise solid evidence was destroyed by tactical teams and EMTs.
    Here, though, once it looked like Verlaine had offed himself, the entry team backed out and let Lily and Amelia, armed with their Glocks, clear the place. They were careful not to disturb anything.
    Then Lily backed away and let the expert do her thing. Now in her crime scene unit overalls, booties, and hood, Amelia was walking carefully through the fifty-by-fifty open space.
    â€œIt’s like a junkyard, Rhyme.”
    Workbenches were littered with tools and slabs of metal and stone and instruments, welding masks, gloves, and leather jackets so thick they seemed bulletproof. The floor was equally cluttered. Rough-hewn wooden boxes holding ingots of metal. Pallets loaded with stone and more scrap. Gas tanks filled one wall. Hand trucks and jacks. Electric saws and drill presses. Overhead, a series of rails and tracks ran throughout the space at ceiling height, about fifteen feet up. These held electric pulleys and winches for transporting loads of metal and the finished sculptures throughout the space. Rusty chains and hooks dangled.
    How homey, Amelia thought.
    And everywhere: Verlaine’s sculptures, made of