CUTTING ROOM -THE- Read Online Free PDF Page B

your murdered kid’s enough,’ so he’d taken the whole box. Inside were pictures that started with Holly’s birth and ended with her opening presents next to the Christmas tree the last time she’d come home for winter-break. They didn’t exactly match up with the micro-miniskirts and mesh tops he’d seen Holly sporting on her Facebook page.
    Although she’d been found more than a week after disappearing, unfortunately, Holly hadn’t been dead that long. In fact, her body had likely been in the dumpster only a matter of hours, and according to the Medical Examiner, rigor mortis — a condition of joint and muscle stiffening that a body goes through in the first seventy-two hours after death occurs — was still in effect. That meant Holly hadn’t been dead very long at all when she was found. And
that
meant someone had kept her somewhere for a long while before finally putting her out of her misery …
    She had chemical burns on her feet, hands, and face, bind marks on her wrists, and a strange burn wound on the nape of her neck. Toxicology reports indicated that she’d been injected with copious amounts of diphenhydramine and dextromethorphan — the active ingredients in Benadryl and Nyquil, respectively — both of which, Manny knew, induced hallucinations when given in high enough doses. She’d been raped and sexually abused with an object or objects. The cause of death was asphyxiation. The most disturbing injury for Manny was the smile. Or lack thereof. Her lips had been melted with sulfuric acid, exposing her teeth and gums, so that it looked, from a distance, like she was grinning. As Manny figured it, Holly’s killer had actually
wanted
her to be found. He’d wanted everyone to see the Joker smile he’d put on her face before it could be blamed on hungry rats or decomposition had taken the rest of her flesh with it. No wonder poor Papi had dropped right after he opened that lid on the dumpster — he’d peered down into hell, only to find it grinning back up at him.
    Twenty-three years as a cop in Miami — eighteen of them spent working homicides — and some things unfortunately still shocked even Manny Alvarez, on rare occasions leaving the usually unflappable, physically intimidating six-foot-five, 280-pound detective unnerved. Because the way he saw it, murder usually had a point. You got mad at someone and you lost your temper and you pulled the trigger, or lashed out with a knife, or hit the gas pedal. Or maybe you exacted revenge on someone who’d wronged you, or stole from you, or cheated on you, or failed to fork over all the dope you’d arranged to pick up. Or you needed money and the gun went off while you were trying to take it. Or you didn’t want to leave witnesses. Even with gang shootings that were committed solely to intimidate others, or gain initiation into a gang — as perverted as those reasons might be, slayings committed in their name had a point. But every once in a rare while a case landed on Manny’s desk that defied reason.
Any
reason. A life taken by someone simply for the purpose of taking it. Perhaps to satisfy a morbid, primal curiosity, or worse — for sheer amusement. Manny stared at the final picture of the coed’s abused body, taken on a steel gurney at the ME’s office. The macabre smile, bind marks, burns, chemical injections — all were obvious signs of sadistic torture. And her killer had held her captive for several days, undoubtedly to play with her, experiment on her, terrify her, before finally strangling the life out of her.
    The suspect in custody whose bond hearing he was preparing for was not a boyfriend or an ex-lover, or a co-worker or a frenemy of Holly. He was not related to her, or mad at her, from what Manny could tell. In fact, it appeared that Holly had only met her murderer that night, as fate would have it, while she was trying to have a