You Belong to Me by Karen Rose Read Free Book Online Page A

why he took the heart,’ Stevie mused. ‘Maybe it was traceable too.’
    ‘I wondered that,’ Trask said. ‘We’ll know when we get the victim’s name.’
    ‘How did he cut out the heart?’ Stevie asked. ‘That’s not an easy thing to do.’
    ‘No, it’s not. Determining that will take more time than I’ve had so far, but whatever he used was powerful enough to cut through all the muscle and the bone. The lines of the cut are pretty smooth. He didn’t hack his way through.’
    ‘There’s a surprising lack of blood,’ Stevie noted.
    ‘That’s because the body was washed before being re-dressed.’
    ‘And the hole in his chest?’ Stevie asked.
    ‘Stuffed with a hand towel, your basic white cotton blend.’
    ‘Anything else?’ JD asked.
    She lifted her brows. ‘Oh, I’m just getting started, Detective. I took his core temp. Fourteen degrees Celsius. That’s about fifty-eight Fahrenheit.’
    JD and Stevie shared a confused glance. ‘He was frozen?’ JD asked.
    Trask nodded. ‘Yes, he was.’
    ‘Well that shoots time of death to hell,’ Stevie grumbled. ‘How did he get the guy in the chair if he was frozen?’
    ‘He thawed his extremities out. Maybe in water. Kind of like when you thaw a frozen turkey in the sink and the wings and legs thaw first. That made him poseable. It would explain how the blood below his neck was washed away, because the blood on his face and scalp is still here, just dried.’
    ‘How long was he frozen?’ JD asked and watched Trask’s eyes grow troubled.
    ‘To freeze and partially thaw? A week. Maybe longer.’
    ‘Maybe two weeks?’ he asked quietly.
    She looked down at the body, then back up again. ‘Maybe.’
    Stevie sighed. ‘The length of time you were gone. You get back last night, and this morning this dead guy just happens to end up in the park along your jogging route.’
    ‘Dressed like your friend,’ JD added, ‘who you often found sitting in the same spot and often returned to his home.’
    ‘Not good,’ Stevie murmured. ‘Not good at all. Lucy, you said you were just getting started. What else?’
    Carefully Trask lifted the body, just enough for them to glimpse the victim’s back, and JD squinted. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
    ‘Cigarette burns,’ she said, ‘in a very definite pattern. Done pre-mortem. Tap the top of that computer monitor on the counter. I took a digital before you got here.’
    JD did as she asked and the screen saver disappeared, revealing the photo. A single thought hit him hard as he absorbed what he saw. Maybe I haven’t seen worse .
    Stevie bent to study the screen. ‘It’s a letter I.’ She looked over her shoulder at JD, her mouth tight. ‘Or a Roman numeral I. We could be looking at more.’
    He looked at Trask, saw that she’d already come to the same conclusion. ‘Get those implants out of his cheeks, Doc. We need to know who this guy is.’

Monday, May 3, 9.55 A.M.
    ‘Not what I wanted to hear, people.’ Lieutenant Peter Hyatt stood at the window in his office, glaring down at the street. He was a burly man who rarely smiled and seemed to get a charge from making the clerks in the office jump at his commands.
    Stevie had told him that Hyatt’s bark was worse than his bite. Still, JD didn’t think he liked his new CO. Of course, liking the man had nothing to do with anything. What mattered was whether the big guy would support them when they needed it.
    JD thought about the victim. I. They would need all the support they could get.
    Hyatt turned from the window, worry etching lines around his mouth. ‘But then again, I don’t want to hear about ninety-eight per cent of what’s said to me. So you think the ME was supposed to find this guy? Why?’
    ‘We don’t know,’ Stevie said. ‘Yet.’
    ‘This Trask . . .’ Hyatt perched on the corner of his desk, folding his arms across his massive chest. ‘Tell me about her.’
    ‘She’s good,’ Stevie said. ‘She’s got an eye for detail and a