The 9th Girl by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online

Sergeant Liska. Happy New Year.”
    Liska gave him the stink eye.
    Kovac had the grace to feel guilty. He dropped his smoke and ground it out in the snow that had accumulated on the sidewalk overnight. He picked up the butt and discarded it properly. She could accuse him of being a fool, but at least he had some common courtesy.
    Liska shot him her mother’s look of utter disgust nevertheless and headed into the building. Kovac looked at Möller and shrugged.
    The ME’s mouth curved up on one side in amusement. “You make such a lovely couple.”
    “The hell,” Kovac grumbled as they fell in step behind his partner. “She’d eat me alive.”
    “And not in the good way,” Liska tossed back over her shoulder. Typical Tinks. Always with the smart mouth.
    Kovac had to admit, the two of them had been partners longer than he had stayed married to either of his wives. He doubted there was much one of them didn’t know about the other. Liska delighted in embarrassing him with the details of her dating life. He weighed in routinely on her ex-husband and had learned to read and assess her moods with sharp accuracy.
    She was pissed now, but his smoking a cigarette had little to do with it. Quick and tense, her every movement was reminiscent of an angry cat snapping its tail.
    “Speed?” he guessed as they hung up their coats and grabbed yellow gowns.
    “Isn’t answering his phone,” she said curtly.
    “How is that a problem? It’s not as much fun to call him a lazy-ass selfish dick on his voice mail?”
    She stood still and looked up at him with grave meaning. “Kyle got into a fight last night.”
    “Kyle?”
    “I know. Right? Kyle doesn’t get into fights.”
    “Does he have an explanation?”
    “Sure. It’s bullshit. He claims he and his friends went skating on the lake last night, that he crashed into some kid and got into a fight with him.”
    “You don’t believe him.”
    “It was seventeen below zero last night,” she reminded him. “Nobody was skating on Lake Calhoun. The knuckles of his right hand are scraped. He wasn’t wearing gloves when he hit whoever he hit. They weren’t outside,” she concluded. “He’s lying to me.”
    “And you think he’ll tell Speed the truth?” Kovac asked. “Speed is more apt to give him pointers. How to Sell a Lie 101 by Speed Hatcher. The asshole ought to do a video series. Maybe he could pay his back child support with the proceeds.”
    “I don’t know what good he would do,” she admitted. “I just know I want him to suffer through this too.”
    Kovac held his tongue and bent over to pull on the yellow paper booties over his shoes. Suffering was not on the Speed Hatcher agenda any more than shouldering his share of the responsibility for parenting two teenage boys.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” Liska said.
    “Well, that’s going to save on conversation, then.”
    “I’m worried,” she admitted.
    “I know.”
    He put a hand on her shoulder and gave a little squeeze at the rock-hard tension there. “Kyle’s a great kid, Tinks. You’re doing a great job raising him and R.J. But they’re boys. Boys do stupid things. Boys get into scrapes. It’s a wonder half of the male population even makes it to maturity.”
    “That’s a fact.” She tried without much success to muster her usual smartass smirk.
    “Hey, it could be worse,” Kovac pointed out. “He could be a zombie.”
    •   •   •
    W ATCHING U LF M ÖLLER conduct an autopsy was like watching performance art. Classical music played softly in the background, with bone saws and oscillating saws and the clank of surgical instruments against stainless steel overlaying the orchestral score. The white background of the room was like the white of a blank canvas, clean and austere. Möller and his assistant glided around the table like a pair of ballroom dancers in blue surgical gowns, elegant and smooth and perfectly in step with each other.
    The autopsy of Zombie Doe would have