Bait Read Online Free PDF Page B

They’d spent the last week searching the country for the dead woman, desperately dissecting every clue as the asshole had called it in. The second one, Peyton, had turned out to be part of the name of the street on which the hotel stood. The third clue, Fitzgerald, proved to be the woman’s last name. The fourth was the link to the hotel: holiday. The fifth, called in just hours before the victim was killed, was no. As in New Orleans.
    Figuring that out had been enough to allow them to finally put the puzzle pieces together and find the woman. But it had not been enough to allow them to find her while she was still alive.
    Sam gritted his teeth against the curse words that crowded onto his tongue, and likewise battled an urge to rest his forehead against the sure-to-be-cool Plexiglas. A muffled version of “Satisfaction,” courtesy of a local goldenoldies station, played on the sound system. Pity he wasn’t getting any, in any shape, form, or fashion, he reflected. At the very least, he needed about six hours of uninterrupted sleep and a decent meal to feel halfway normal again. Sex would be good, too, but the way things were going that probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. A real, honest-to-God lead—now what he wouldn’t give for that.
    A lead would be the best pick-me-up of all.
    â€œHer ex-husband check out?” Wynne asked, clearly without much hope.
    â€œSo far.” Working off background information on the victim given in the police report, Gardner had done the preliminary work, and Sam had gone over her report in the car on the way over. “At least, as far as anybody can tell at this point, he was where he said he was last night. Anyway, he’s a shift worker at GE. He might or might not have had reason to murder his ex-wife, but for the life of me I can’t see him roaming around the country, knocking random people off.”
    Wynne made a sound signifying disgust under his breath. “So what we got, basically, is nothing.”
    â€œPretty much.”
    Beyond the transparent barrier, Deland was folding back the skin surrounding the incision. Turning the facts of the case over in his head for what must have been the millionth time, Sam watched without seeing as her hands in their thin, white surgical gloves wielded a pair of gardening shears to snip through the ribs. Below them, the internal organs glistened, still pristine.
    The only real damage had been to the victim’s head. Sam had watched as the coroner’s first, careful inspection of the victim’s scalp, skin, and body surfaces had all but confirmed this. Like the others, she’d been dispatched with two neat gunshots to the temple. A jar holding a single, deformed shard of lead that had failed to penetrate the skull waited on the wheeled metal cart at the coroner’s elbow. Later, as more fragments were recovered from the brain, they would be added to the jar.
    The pieced-together bullets would tell them nothing, Sam already knew. Every killing so far had been done using a different weapon. The killer was smart enough to prefer his guns, like his phones, disposable.
    Who the hell was this guy?
    Deland made a delicate movement with her scalpel, then lifted a bloody organ from the body with her two gloved hands and deposited it on a scale on the cart.
    â€œI need some air,” Wynne said.
    Sam glanced over at him to find that Wynne was now watching the autopsy in progress. His eyes were squinched half shut, his face had blanched at least two shades, and his lips were tightly compressed. Before Sam could reply, the big guy turned on his heel and strode back down the corridor. His sandals went slap-slap-slap on the slick tile floor.
    He was moving like he feared not making it to the john in time.
    Sam glanced back at the body on the tilted metal table, followed the proceedings for a few more minutes, and gave it up. There was no absolution to be gained by watching, and no new