Her Final Breath (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Williams had set the interior perimeter with red tape, and a patrol officer stood outside the door holding the scene log. Anyone crossing that line had to sign the log and file a written statement. The brass liked to make appearances at high-profile crime scenes, but they really hated writing statements.
    “Were you the responding officer?” Tracy asked, signing the log.
    “Yeah.”
    “Fire department been in?”
    “Left about ten minutes ago.”
    “You note the engine number?”
    The officer pulled out a small notepad. “Engine 24.”
    Tracy would follow up and get the crew’s report. It was ludicrous, but the fire department always responded to homicides, ostensibly in case the victim was still alive, and if not, to declare the victim dead. That was more often than not the case, and in many instances easily discernible, but the firefighters stormed the crime scene anyway, screwing up forensic evidence by leaving multiple bootprints that had to be considered and eliminated, stepping on shell casings, and sometimes repositioning the body.
    Tracy looked to the edge of the parking lot where the patrol sergeant had set the exterior perimeter with yellow-and-black crime scene tape. “Let’s run that tape across the driveway entrance,” she said.
    “Owner’s going to squawk about it.”
    She wasn’t in the mood. “Arrest him if he gets in your way.”
    The officer departed.
    “Bad night?” Kins asked, giving her a look.
    “Bad month,” she said. “Got a feeling it’s about to get a whole lot worse.”
    She stepped inside the room. Angela Schreiber had toppled onto her side at the foot of the bed, her naked body bound and contorted, head back, neck craning, eyes open. A rope extended through a slipknot and ran down her spine, binding her wrists and ankles. Her legs were bent so severely her heels nearly touched her buttocks.
    “Hog-tied,” Kins said, standing at the threshold, “like an animal at some sadistic rodeo.”
    “They don’t kill the animals at the rodeo, Kins,” Tracy said.
    Kins ran a hand through his hair and let out a sigh. “Yeah, well, looks like we got ourselves a cowboy.”
     

     
    Angela Schreiber’s pupils had turned gray, and her corneas had filmed over. Petechiae, tiny red dots from burst blood vessels caused by excess pressure, spotted her face, a telltale indication of strangulation, though the noose had pretty much ended that debate. As with Nicole Hansen, Tracy estimated Schreiber to be early- to mid-twenties. She was an attractive young woman with a blonde ponytail and a petite figure.
    “Was she on her side?” Tracy asked the patrol officer who’d returned. “Or did Fire move her?”
    “She was like that,” the officer said.
    Tracy bent to a knee to look more closely at the soles of Schreiber’s feet. “What are those? Are those cigarette burns?”
    Kins stepped closer, snapping photographs with his cell phone. CSI would photograph the crap out of the room, but he liked to have his own. Sometimes the camera captured things the eyes didn’t see. “I don’t recall those on Hansen.”
    “They weren’t there,” Tracy said. She looked again to the noose and the rope running down Schreiber’s back, then considered the room, typical of the motels on the strip—a double bed with a thin floral bedspread, pressboard furniture, and wallpaper yellowed from cigarette smoke that fouled the air. She did not see any cigarette butts or spent matches.
    “Guess we’ll be getting Hansen back,” Kins said.
    Nolasco’s decision to send the Hansen investigation to the Cold Case Unit just a month into the investigation was rare, but it was exactly the type of passive-aggressive move Tracy had come to expect from him. It meant that Tracy had an unsolved homicide on her record and indicated that her boss had no confidence she’d solve it. The move backfired, however, when the family protested and the women’s rights groups went ballistic. What had been a strangulation of an