Speak No Evil by Allison Brennan Read Free Book Online

probably been destroyed or contaminated when he cleaned the body.
    Chen collected possible trace evidence, tissue samples, and additional blood samples to send to the lab. He confirmed that she hadn’t eaten in at least twelve hours because her stomach was void of food.
    Jim Gage joined them halfway through the autopsy and confirmed that Angie had suffocated in the bag. While the tox screen was clean, the additional tissue and blood samples would be sent to the county lab, which could test for a broader array of drugs. Jim also collected hair samples to test for cocaine to determine whether Steve Thomas’s accusation that Masterson was feeding her the drug had merit. If she took cocaine more than a week earlier, it wouldn’t show up in her blood, but it would show up in her hair follicles.
    Not that drug use would prove Masterson was responsible for her death, but they never knew what information was important or incidental until they closed the case.
    Time of death was fixed at approximately one a.m. Monday, with an hour window on either side.
    “Fucking bastard,” Will mumbled as they left the morgue, the bright afternoon sunlight assaulting them when they stepped outside the cool building.
    “You can say that again.” Jim Gage joined them on the walk back to the police station, though his laboratory was around the corner in the opposite direction.
    “By the way,” Carina asked Jim, “did you find a navel ring in the evidence collected at the beach? It might look like a regular earring.”
    “We found no jewelry whatsoever.”
    “I wonder if the killer kept it,” Carina speculated.
    “Or it was pulled out in a struggle,” Jim suggested. “Dr. Chen is sending over the evidence priority and I’ll rush it as best I can. It would help if you get a suspect in custody; my unit has sixteen cases up for trial in the next two months that I need to prioritize.”
    “We have a suspect,” Carina said.
    “Come by later, I’ll try to give you a better time line.”
    “Sure.”
    She thought Jim’s comment was odd, since she was always coming by the lab for reports on her cases, but she realized how strange when Jim added, “If you come by after five, maybe we can go out for drinks later.”
    “Um, okay.”
    They were outside the main police doors when Jim turned and walked back down the block to the forensics lab. Come by after five? For drinks? Did that mean what she thought it meant? She shook her head. No, they were over the relationship thing. They’d broken up nearly two years ago. And he’d never asked her out for drinks or anything social in all that time.
    “He wants you back,” Will said.
    Carina laughed, dismissing Will’s comment. How did her partner always seem to know what she was thinking?
    “No word on Thomas?”
    “The patrol says he hasn’t come back. I have a BOLO on his car. We’ll have another shot at him.” A “be on the lookout” was standard procedure when they wanted to talk to a person but not bring them down to the station or into custody.
    “Let’s find Doug Masterson.”
    Minor drug offenses and a six-month stint at Descanso for possession of cocaine with intent to sell filled Masterson’s rap sheet. He’d been clean—at least, he hadn’t been caught—for the last two years.
    They had his photo, description, and age—thirty-four.
    After checking out his apartment, his place of work, and known hangouts, they came up empty. No one admitted to seeing him since Sunday afternoon, but his neighbor, a retiree, said he had taken “his girl” up to the mountains for skiing on Sunday and he didn’t expect him back for a couple days.
    Carina had showed a picture of Angie to the neighbor. “Is this Masterson’s girl?”
    “One of them. Not the one he took skiing, though. Don’t know her name, she’s a new one. He goes through those pretty little things like candy.” He grinned, revealing crooked teeth. The smell of cheap alcohol wafted toward the officers. “Yep, Doug