Rise of a Phoenix: Rise of a Phoenix by phill syron-jones Read Free Book Online Page B

wondering just how the hell did he get there and when?
    “You have got to be kidding me.” McCall’s jaw hung slack at the sight of the man who had caused her so much trouble and kept eluding her. Now he was finally within her grasp but why was he coming forward? And why now? No, the only question she had, and it was a simple one, was not ‘Who are you?’ or ‘What are you doing here?’ No! The question she wanted to ask was much less complicated. It was, ‘Can I shoot him?’
    Tina Franks was busy checking over what remained of the female from Pier 15. She scanned the remains carefully inch by inch, taking photographs of any distinguishing marks such as bruises and scars. In the background there was music coming from her MP3 player that sat happily on top of the stereo; its blue lights broke up the sterile whiteness of the morgue.
    McCall entered, her footsteps sounding loud and aggressive. Her expression could have frozen the very depths of hell.
    “Hi, what we got, Tina?” asked McCall, trying not to think about the events on the pier, and the details of their ghoulish discovery.
    “Well, I have got a Caucasian female with lots missing. What I heard too, is your white knight in black armour put in an appearance.” Tina gave McCall the look that said ‘more information please’.
    “Oh really, and what else did you hear?”
    “I heard he was British and kind of cute.”
    McCall’s glare stiffened. Why was he here, she wondered? Was he following her? It was strange that he always showed up just in time; she shook off the temptation to work out theories. The mystery guy would have to wait—the case came first.
    “Are there any similarities with the two other killings?” McCall was desperate for a clue. This guy was good, but in her experience the more comfortable they got as they killed more and more, the more likely it was they would eventually mess up.
    Tina stopped what she was doing and took off her slightly scratched eye protectors. “Well, what we have is a man who, for some reason, drains all of his victims’ blood, and removes not just body parts but whole chunks of body parts.” She walked between the tables on which lay the remains of the first two victims. “What I don’t get is the kind of parts that have been removed. Most of the ‘trophies crew’ takes a finger or an ear. This is way too extreme.”
    “Maybe he is fussy about what he eats.” McCall smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but she couldn’t budge the look of worry on the pretty ME’s face.
    “This guy knows how to use a scalpel,” Tina pointed out. “So we’re probably looking for some kind of surgeon.”
    McCall looked puzzled. “How do you know?” She moved closer to the most recent corpse, unable to resist her curiosity.
    “If you look here, you can see the cuts that were made are straight and even, not jagged and ripped. No, the guy took his time and by the look of the others I would say that this surgery was done with respect more than out of brutality.” Tina shrugged. “You see McCall, the person who did this, did it for a reason. It wasn’t so much about the kill itself like we see so many times, no, the parts he took meant something to him because of the way they were removed. And our last vic, the blood wasn’t even hers—it was animal blood, added maybe because he wanted the body to be found more easily. I still don’t understand why he is draining them.” Tina shook her head in apparent disbelief.
    McCall sat at her desk when Tooms and Tony returned from interviewing the boss at the law firm where one of the victims had worked. They strolled in, and Tooms sat in the spare chair at McCall’s desk and flipped open his notepad as Tony crashed into his chair and picked up his phone and started to dial.
    “So what did you get?” she asked her sweating colleagues, who had been busy.
    “Well, we scored,” Tooms told her. “We got the place of work and a name, Miss Karen Lane, aged forty. She had an