Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

murder—and no one laughs at my jokes anyway. Except for Kendra. She thinks I’m hilarious. Focus.
    Captain Zaworski passes crime scene photos around the room. A very pretty girl in the alive photos; a very disfigured girl in the dead shots. No details were given on the radio. Good thing. She died at the hands of someone very nasty and very good with a knife. Nope, no jokes today.
    “How long have we been on the scene?” Konkade asks.
    “Detectives from the Third got there at five or so,” Zaworski answers, nodding at Blackshear and Martinez. Don and I look at each other in surprise. Konkade purses his lips and runs a hand over his “bald scalp.
    “Why aren’t we all there now?” Don asks for both of us. “Time’s wasting and the bugs are eating our clues.”
    For detectives, rule number one in investigating a murder is that you get to the scene of the crime as quickly as possible to see things as they really are with your own eyes. Even though you can practically guarantee the first officer on the scene will be diligent in protecting evidence—everything from segregating witnesses to establishing a noninvasive traffic pattern to the victim—you know there is going to be corruption. If every criminal leaves a trace of his activity—so does every investigator looking for him. Or her.
    “Soon enough,” Zaworski answers. “Everything will still be in place, including the body, when you get there. I know that on one hand, we’re not doing this exactly by the book, but on the other hand, we’re going to make sure the book is followed to the letter of the law. So we’ve decided to go slow on this one. Blackshear and Martinez got the first call and they got to look around a couple minutes before we pulled them out for this briefing. They’ll share initial impressions in a moment. The deed was done right on jurisdictional lines.” Zaworski pauses and continues, “We’re not sure if the Second or Third Precinct owns it, so you’ll be working together.”
    Uh oh. Sharing and police work rarely go hand in hand.
    “We’re not sweating the politics,” he adds, looking pointedly at me. “This one gets even more complicated.” He looks around to make sure he has our undivided attention. “The second our initial report hit the data ports, a red flag went up in DC at FBI headquarters. They’ve tagged a guy with a very sophisticated and extensive crime pattern. He’s been killing lots of people and moving to new cities for a number of years now. They think he’s been a member of our community for the past six months, getting ready for his first victim in Chicago and a good number to follow. Sandra Reed may have been first, not last.”
    Oh man. What’s a “good number”?
    The captain goes on. “Major Reynolds was flown in specially by the US Army this morning in order to assist us in our investigation. He’s going to fill you in on what the FBI knows about our perp and help us apprehend him. Not only are we going to work well between the Second and Third precincts but also across agency lines. That order has been jointly issued from the director of the FBI and the CPD commissioner. Mayor Doyle’s office strongly endorses it. I do too.”
    He nods to Reynolds.
    “Actually, I wish we knew more about who the perp is and how we’re going to apprehend him, but we don’t,” Reynolds begins, clearing his throat. “About six years ago we received some software programming money from the Department of Homeland Security. We hired some geniuses from Silicon Valley to create a specialized search engine to cross-collateralize and correlate a number of local, state, and federal databases. The purpose was tracking terrorist activity, but some other good things came out of Project Vigilance.”
    Reynolds pauses dramatically for a sip of water and I whisper to Don, “Wow, it’s got a name—Project Vigilance, just like a spy novel.” Don leans away, frowns, and arches his eyebrows to let me know I need to keep my