TRACE EVIDENCE by Carla Cassidy Read Free Book Online

stumbled here, broken and bleeding?
    She bent down to get a better look, to try to discern what injuries the poor thing had sustained: Her blood chilled as she saw the claw marks that marred the tan hide of the doe's side. The claw marks looked like the ones that had marked her classroom walls. What was going on?
    Fear walked up her backbone with icy fingers as she looked around. The surrounding woods was beginning to take on the shadows of twilight, creating dark pockets of shadows that she recognized would make perfect hiding places.
    With trembling fingers, she unlocked her front door and stepped over the dead deer. She stood in the threshold of her home, listening for a sound that didn't belong, smelling the air for an alien scent, needing to be sure the sanctity of her home hadn't been breached before she entered farther.
    She heard nothing, smelled nothing, but was spooked beyond belief. She hurried across the living room, grabbed her cordless phone and punched in 911.

----
    Chapter 4
    « ^ »
    C lay had just left the lab and entered the police station when he heard Jason Sheller grumbling about having to go out to the Greystone residence because she'd found a dead animal on her property.
    "She lives out in the woods, for crying out loud," Jason complained. "There's always dead animals out in the woods."
    "I'll take it for you," Clay said.
    Jason looked at him in mock surprise. "Ah, I forgot you lab rats were actually real cops who could take a report."
    Clay eyed Jason with narrowed eyes. He'd never liked the man. He found him arrogant, self-centered and obnoxious. "You call me a lab rat again and I'll do an experiment on your face with my fists."
    " Geez , lighten up, James." Jason backed up with hands in the air, the smug smirk that had crossed his mouth vanished. "It was just a little joke."
    "I don't find your humor amusing," Clay replied. "Now, do you want me to take the call or not?"
    "Sure, knock yourself out," Jason replied. He sank down at his desk. "Anything new on our slasher murders?"
    "No." Clay gave his reports to the chief, not to individual officers. Glen would let the officers know what they needed to know when they needed to know it.
    Besides, Clay was eager to get to Tamara's place and find out what was going on. She hadn't struck him as the type of woman who would freak out over some critter dying on her property.
    Contrary to Jason Sheller's smart-ass remark, Clay and his team often worked as regular officers, filling in whenever necessary.
    In a town the size of Cherokee Corners and with their limited equipment, there wasn't enough forensic work to keep the CSI team busy all the time.
    He got into the van and took off for Tamara's place, his thoughts racing as he drove. After eating dinner with her and Alyssa, he'd gone back to the lab and had tried to make sense of the customer lists from quarries and landscaping services that had begun to come in.
    Most of the places had simply printed off customer lists without pulling the ones Clay was specifically looking for. He now knew the decorative rock he'd found both at his parents' home and at the Frazier murder scene was called Dalmatian mix because of the unusual black and white coloring. Thankfully it was a high-end decorative rock, so not many people sprang for it.
    From the lists he'd received so far he had a list of fifty-two names from Oklahoma City and its surrounding area. Who knew how many more names would be added when all was said and done.
    And even then, being armed with a list of every person in
Oklahoma
who'd ever bought the Dalmatian mix didn't mean he had the name of the person who had killed at least two people and stolen his mother away. For all he knew the killer could be from
Texas
, or
Kansas
, or forty-seven other states.
    As he turned down the dirt road that led to Tamara's cottage, he tried to put it all out of his head. Instead his thoughts were replaced with the memory of Alyssa telling him about the vision she'd