Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

doc,’ Kennedy said. ‘So our angel didn’t jump or get pushed out of a moving vehicle then.’ 
    ‘Definitely not. Such a scenario would cause a completely different injury pattern.’
    Reilly scanned the array of cones that were laid out across the road.  A single set of spray-paint marks suggested that Colin O’Dea’s car had been the only vehicle in the immediate area that had recently tried to slow down. 
    So was the collision that killed the girl accidental or intentional?
    She slipped the iSPI device out of her kitbag. Although she still preferred time-honored forensic skills for much of her work, she was always willing to use new technology when it might be deemed useful.
    3D crime-scene reconstruction using CAD software was nothing new – it had been around since the mid-1980s – but it had always been something carried out after the event, in the lab. The beauty of this new software app was that it worked on a portable device such as an iPhone, and thus could now be used in the field.
    She input some basic parameters into the program – the victim’s gender, direction she’d been facing, nature and physical location of injuries. Then, using the integrated camera, she filmed the road, the exact location of the body and the injuries themselves. Once she had done that, the pathologist’s office  was given the green light to remove the girl.
    Although she had seen it dozens of times, Reilly still found the finality of a corpse being zipped up in a body bag emotional – the lifeless limbs, the pale skin, the cold staring eyes.
    She understood why they closed the victim’s eyes in movies.  The majority died with them open, and Reilly always found it disconcerting, almost accusative, the way those dead eyes almost seemed to follow her around. She wondered how many sets of lifeless eyes she had already seen, and how many more were to come. She knew if she thought long and hard enough she could remember them all. But she tried only to forget, not remember –  especially not the pair that haunted her the most; the cold dead eyes of her own mother. Reilly remembered that day like it was yesterday, her first crime scene –  except she wasn’t working it; she was part of it.
    She watched them lift the body bag onto a stretcher. As there was minimal damage to the girl’s face, at least her family would be able to say goodbye, something she’d never had the chance to do with her mother.
    Small mercies.
    Once the corpse had been removed, Reilly was ready to let the software do its job. Standing over the site in the exact location where the girl had been found, she held the iSPI device up.  After a moment of processing, it projected a re-enaction of the accident, using GPS data to show where on the road the actual collision was likely to have occurred.
    Chris and Kennedy crowded round,  and the younger techs came over for a look too – and not just for the gimmick of it. Knowing where the impact was likely to have taken place would enable them to more effectively target their search for relevant forensic trace.
    Reilly extended the device at arm’s length so everybody gathered could see. The screen was blank with a small circular arrow rotating in an anti-clockwise direction indicating that the sequence was loading. She tilted the screen slightly downwards to stop the heavy mist landing on it as the wind started to pick up. Finally the 3D re-enactment started to play, showing first a lone female figure walking along a road,  then a vehicle coming round the corner and hitting her from behind.
    Her body sailed through the air, limbs flailing, before finally landing in a similar position to the one they had found the girl in, her skull hitting the surface of the road violently with what seemed like a heavy thud, even though the device emitted no sound.  Finally, the screen flashed ‘Estimated Impact Speed: 43 MPH.’
    Nobody said a word. The simulation was almost too good,  rendering the events that had