Gunning For Angels (Fallen Angels Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

visualize the person but saw only a shadow of a person wearing a cheap suit and tie.
    “Any thoughts?” Detective Jenson said as he walked to Bud’s side, smiling like they were at a Sunday ice cream social.
    Bud pushed back his Stetson that protected him from the Arizona sun. “How you doin’, Jenson?”
    “Never better. How’s Bunnie?”
    “Bunnie’s Bunnie.”
    Jenson laughed, a pleasant sound.
    Bud eyed him curiously. His stylish pairings were a constant fascination. He wore sharply creased khaki slacks, a pink polo shirt and a salmon-colored stitch fedora set at a jaunty angle that only Jenson could pull off without getting his behind kicked up and down a mean Phoenix street.
    Jenson was Bud’s partner and a shrewd detective. Underneath the silky exterior lay the heart of an expert marksman, an ex-Marine and a scathing intelligence that reveled in anyone who was blind enough to underestimate him.
    Bud had never been one of those people.
    A thought hit Bud and, with a sharp intake of breath, he bent to examine the skull.
    “What?” Jenson gave him a keen look.
    “Daniel Hargrove,” Bud said slowly, testing out the sound of it.
    Jenson let out a low whistle as he eyed the skull. “Mister heart-in-a-box finally shows up. They never found the rest of him?”
    “Found is an interesting choice of words,” Bud said wryly, thinking about the day the carefully wrapped cardboard box had arrived at the station. They hadn’t found anything. The evidence that Daniel Hargrove had been brutally murdered had been mailed to police headquarters.
    Daniel Hargrove had been a prominent Phoenix businessman and owner of a local bank who had gone missing over three years ago. It had graduated from a missing persons case to a homicide case when, three weeks after Daniel Hargrove’s family had reported him missing, someone had taken the liberty of mailing his heart, which had been meticulously cut out of his body, to the police. Bud was convinced the killer was a family member who stood to benefit from an unusually large life insurance policy.
    “They found his Masonic ring in the left ventricle of the heart. Is that the top or bottom?” Jenson asked.
    “Bottom.”
    Jenson said, “The killer mails the victim’s heart to the police, now we have a body, insurance has to pay out, but - I wonder what it means ? These things always mean something – even if the killer doesn’t realize it himself.”
    “It was a big ring shoved into the biggest hole in the heart. My money is on the fact it was the path of least resistance.”
    “After cutting a heart out of a man’s body, I find it hard to believe one would then take the path of least resistance,” Jenson said wryly.
    Bud gave a humorless smile.   
    Jenson continued, “As if that wasn’t enough, we also get the victim’s molar in the right atrium and his index finger in the right ventricle. Overkill, I’d say. Like the killer didn’t trust us to run DNA. Or thought we were idiots.”
    “Killers always think the police are idiots. It’s one of our main advantages – being underestimated.”
    “And our prime suspect still shacked up sweet as candy in a Scottsdale mansion.”
    Bud rubbed his jaw, which throbbed with a sudden dull ache.  He reminded himself that he needed to make an appointment with his dentist.
    They stood in silence, gazing at the skull. The sun was slipping low. A purple-pink glow was taking up residence in the west.
    “I think it’s time to pay a visit to our favorite prime suspect,” Bud said as he turned and headed toward his truck.
    “I’d wait till we get a firm I.D. on the body. You really want to stir up that hornet’s nest?” Jenson said, giving him a knowing look.  
    “That bloodsu cker is probably waiting for me,” Bud said, surprised at the emotion in his voice.
    Driving towards North Scottsdale, Bud’s thoughts turned to his last meeting with the person that he was convinced had mailed him the package containing Daniel