An Image of Death Read Online Free PDF

creamy complexion, and an hourglass figure, she made the boxy blue uniform look like designer fashion. Only a crooked nose kept her from being a beauty.
    I motioned toward her clothes. “You’re not a youth officer anymore?” When I’d met her last fall, she was in civvies.
    “Been back on patrol since New Year’s.”
    I couldn’t tell from her tone whether that was good or bad. “You like it?”
    “Sure. More action.”
    I wondered what kind of action that might be. We live in a small bedroom community twenty miles north of Chicago where policing tends toward stolen bikes and drunk drivers, and the most exciting event of the past three years was a drive-by shooting on Happ Road. No one was hurt.
    She ushered me into a windowless room. A conference table and chairs took up most of the space. A VCR and monitor stood at one end. Three of the walls were cinderblock, and if it hadn’t been for the large mirror covering the fourth, we might have been in any suburban office.
    “Have a seat.” She went to a phone on the wall and punched in three numbers. “She’s here,” she said into the phone.
    A minute later a big man in uniform with a fringe of gray hair and weathered skin sailed into the room.
    “Morning,” he said brightly. “Deputy Chief Brad Olson.” He offered me a meaty hand. A gold eagle was pinned to his collar.
    I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
    “Likewise. Detective O’Malley has kept us up to date about your…you.” His smile was so elliptical, I couldn’t tell if he was being tongue in cheek. Still, I was struck by his cheery manner. He’d probably been a cop forever. Where was the hard-bitten cynic? The “I’ve seen it all” disdain?
    He waved a hand. “Please, sit down.” He sat at the end of the table and folded his hands. The top of his head gleamed in the fluorescent light. “Officer Davis says you have a show for us.”
    I took a seat on the side of the table. “I guess you’ll be the judge of that, sir.” Sir? Was this former all-cops-are-pigs-activist really calling a police officer “sir”?
    His smile deepened, as if he had read my thoughts.
    Davis sat down across from me, tore off a blank form from a pad, and attached it to her clipboard. “Tell us what happened,” she said.
    I explained.
    “You say Rachel brought it in.” She tapped a pen against the table. “Did she see the color or make of the vehicle? Or the plate?”
    “No. And she doesn’t know what’s on the tape.” I told them about the long lead-in at the head end and how she’d gone upstairs without seeing anything. “I told her it was blank. A practical joke. Are you going to have to talk to her?”
    Davis and Olson exchanged glances. “Why don’t we come back to that,” Olson said.
    “What about the people on the tape?” Davis asked. “The gunmen. Did they look familiar?”
    “Do you mean, do I know them?”
    She nodded.
    I stiffened. “Of course not.”
    “Never saw them before?”
    “Never.” I fidgeted in my seat. It never occurred to me the police would think I knew the killers. “But they were wearing ski masks.”
    “What about the woman? You ever see her?”
    “No.”
    “Are you sure? Not even casually—in the store, the dry cleaner’s, someplace like that?”
    “I’ve never seen her,” I said firmly.
    “And there was no note or explanation why you were receiving the tape?” Olson interjected.
    “Nothing.”
    Davis made a note on her report, then slid the tape out of the cardboard sleeve. She put the tape in the deck and hit Play.
    I cut in. “What you’re about to see was recorded in time-lapse. To conserve tape. Which means everything will be speeded up. Like an old-time movie. You may not be able to catch it all. I had to screen it twice.”
    “We’re familiar with surveillance tapes,” Olson said.
    I felt heat on my cheeks. Of course they were.
    Both officers focused on the screen. When the woman crumpled to the floor, Olson’s expression didn’t