Craving Vengeance Read Online Free PDF

someone else’s mouth. Spinelli shook
the vision from his head.
    “Yeah, what’s up?”
    “You’re not going to believe this, but we’ve
got another one.”
    “Another dead cupid?”
    “Yep, downtown at the Morgan Bank
building.”
    Spinelli was already headed downstairs by the
time he and Walker finished their conversation. He and Walker
headed to the crime scene.
    They took the elevator up to the sixth floor
of the bank building to find several uniformed officers securing
the area. Nearly the entire sixth floor had been gutted and was
under major reconstruction. At least twenty somber looking
construction workers milled about the site.
    The Police Sergeant stood off in the corner
talking to a large man wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. His
white hardhat looked squeaky clean, and his boots looked new,
probably the job Foreman. The Sergeant waved them over. He gestured
toward the beefy construction guy. “This is the project supervisor,
John Buhr. He found the vic when they returned from their lunch
break.”
    Buhr’s head turned in the direction of the
EMTs and the ME who’d just arrived. Spinelli could see a blurry
rendition of them through the heavy sheet of plastic lining a small
framed out room. Piles of sheetrock were stacked between where he
stood and the room, preventing him from seeing anything below their
shoulders. He and Walker headed in that direction with the sergeant
and Buhr in tow.
    They stepped around the sheetrock and peeked
through the opening in the plastic. There he laid, cupid number
three, naked as a jaybird with the exception of his white
transparent wings. They looked like they were made out of a wedding
veil and molded with large pipe cleaners. Spinelli had seen better
wings.
    The vic’s stiff body rested up against bags
of plaster powder. His bow and quiver of arrows lay next to him on
the floor. Dried puke crusted in a line from the corner of his
mouth, over his chin, down his neck, and onto his chest.
    “Poisoned?” Spinelli asked Debra, the ME.
    “Yeah, if I had to guess. The distinct smell
of almonds kind of gives it away. Maybe by the time I get back I’ll
have the pathologist’s report from Bethany for the first two
cupids. I’ll go see her right away. This is turning out to be quite
the Valentine’s Day.”
    Spinelli shifted his gaze to the floor. “You
can say that again.” Visions of Shannon kissing the strange man
played through his mind. This is what I get for letting my guard
down. I knew there was no such thing as true love, and this just
proved it. What in the hell was I thinking? Never again. He
glanced at the dead cupid. And look at you lying there on the
floor. What in the hell happened to you? A woman? Had to
be.
    Buhr shuffled his feet, snapping Spinelli
back into reality.
    Spinelli shifted his gaze to meet Buhr’s.
“How and when did you find the victim?”
    Buhr’s eyes shifted from Spinelli to the
victim and then back to Spinelli. He ran his hand over his large
round face. “It was after lunch—about 1:00.” He pointed toward the
opposite corner of the large gutted room. “We’d been working over
there since we got here this morning. There was no need to come
over here. Anyhow, we broke for lunch at noon. We ate at the diner
across the street. When we got back, I came over here to get some
supplies, and I found poor Chad just lying here. I thought it was a
joke at first, but it didn’t take long to realize it wasn’t.”
    Did Buhr really just call the victim by
his first name? “You know the victim?”
    “Yeah, it’s Chad Williams, the city building
inspector. He’s been on the site several times already, and I’ve
worked with him on other jobs.”
    “The building inspector,” Walker
repeated.
    Buhr nodded.
    “Did you all leave for lunch?” Spinelli
questioned.
    “Yeah. We don’t usually eat on the work
site.”
    “Did you all eat together?”
    “All of us except for O’Neil and Crass,” Buhr
said as he pointed in the