Evidence of Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

actor. Plus, Jillian’s picture hung on the wall with the others, but another girl’s partially overlapped it. That doesn’t speak of any elevated status.”
    “This guy isn’t about sentiment, Tess. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
    “What did Vangie say?”
    “She backs up her boss, says Georgie didn’t pay more attention to Jillian than to any of the other girls. And that this Drew’s last name is Fleming. He’s been calling Jillian for over a year. Vangie thinks they might have met at a ‘company function,’ as she puts it, but she’s not sure. She’s never met him. She thought he sounded sweet at first, but now hears his voice in her sleep and is damn sick of it.”
    “And what did Vangie think of the husband?”
    “That Evan is the catch of a lifetime. Not the politest guy on the phone, but his income made him worth it.” Frank let her ponder this through downtown Cleveland and out to University Circle. After maneuvering the Crown Vic through the tight parking lot behind the county medical examiner’s office, he paused behind the loading dock to let her out. “So where’s your money? On the husband or the stalker?”
    She stepped into the half-frozen air once more, pulling her camera bag from the passenger-seat floor. “My money is on Jillian getting tired of washing dishes and changing diapers. Girls who work for guys like Georgie don’t come from happy backgrounds and they don’t lead stable lives. You’ll find her crying on the shoulder of the persistent Drew.”
    “Then why would Drew be calling Georgie?”
    “Some other guy, then. Hey.” She leaned in and peered at her cousin. “Weren’t you going to buy me lunch?”
    He turned his watch toward her. “It’s already one thirty, cuz. I don’t want to get you in trouble with Leo.”
    She narrowed her eyes with a technique she had worked on until it flustered most men and some women. “I’m going to tell your mother you took me to visit a pimp.”
    “He’s not a pimp,” Frank corrected her before driving off. “He’s a businessman.”
     
     
     

Chapter 3
     
     
    Theresa didn’t wait to watch him leave, but merely pulled her coat closed long enough to get through the back door and into the loading dock area. The smell of the building greeted her along with its warmth, but she had long grown used to the mix: the tinny smell of blood, the sharp odor of formalin, and the month-old garbage tang of decomposing flesh. A white-coated deskman blocked her way as he helped two funeral-home transport men to zip the M.E.’s white plastic body bag into a plush burgundy one so that the dead could be dressed for the trip with a little more dignity. The deskman moved to let her pass with a quiet “good afternoon.” It occurred to her that it had been eight months and her coworkers still treated her gently. This was an unfair burden on them; M.E. staff members, who spent all day around the dead, were never solemn except in the presence of family members and news reporters, and not even the latter most of the time. Her mother was right. She had to get her life back to normal. Or at least learn to fake it more convincingly.
    One of these days.
    She took the elevator instead of the stairs and hung her coat up just before the trace department supervisor found her. Leo had two inches of height on her but thirty less pounds, as if his nervous system had taken over and sucked the juices from all other body tissue. He waved a sheaf of papers. “We have a problem.”
    This didn’t impress her coming from a man whose personal-threat assessment level remained permanently stuck on red. “I’m a little busy, Leo. I have to photo and tape the clothing from yesterday’s homicide—that woman they found in Rockefeller Park.”
    “She came in yesterday morning and you’re just now getting to her clothing?”
    “It was drying.”
    “Yeah, right. Richard Springer wrote the judge and said you refused to comply with the court order for defense