Judging Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    "Gunshot wound?" he said.
    "Naw, take a look at her neck."
    "Jesus."
    Saul frowned at the precise placement of a small hole above the woman's jugular vein, which must have been pierced in one blow.
    "Any other wounds?"
    "Might be. Can't tell."
    Mike cocked his head, looking sideways at the male lying faceup but not bloody like the other victim. Head wound? he wondered. Two attackers, maybe, one with an ice pick, the other with a blunt instrument. He straightened up and heard some bones crack. "What do you think we have here?"
    "A mess, a real mess." The skinny criminologist had finished the bread and was blowing on his bare fingers. A beaver hat with flaps came down low on his forehead and covered his ears. His nose was running and he needed a shave.
    "Another weird one," he added. "There's something . . . intimate about this hit, know what I mean? Doesn't have the feeling of a stranger thing. Ice pick killing, maybe only one strike—" Saul shook his head, activating the beaver flaps around his ears. "Usually a guy that works with a pick, he'll choose an isolated location, then stab the victim more than once. It's a rage weapon, know what I mean? I saw one once— female resisted a rape, guy stabbed her with a screwdriver sixty times, maybe more. It was hard for the ME to count because the guy was in such a frenzy he hit in the same place over and over. One strike just right, that's not something you see every day, especially when there are two victims. Doesn't look like either one fought back. . . . Stinking weather, too," he mused. "Someone had to want to hit her pretty bad, wouldn't you say?"
    Mike shrugged. It was too early for speculation.
    Saul pointed to the door of the restaurant. "Your girlfriend's in there." He moved away from two guys with a body bag and stretcher.
    "Huh?"
    "Woo, April, is the OIC. Didn't anyone tell you?" Saul pulled a grimy handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his nose.
    "No. No one told me a thing." Mike shook off the snow collected all over him and slicked back his hair. He stamped his feet and headed for the door, thinking this was indeed his lucky day. He'd asked for relief from the piles of boring paperwork due on his last case, cleared a few days ago, and here he was, getting it. He'd wanted to see April and here he was seeing her. April was always talking about luck and how it could be changed by a person's behavior. He must be living right.
    Inside the restaurant most of the lights were off, but Mike could make out a kind of Caribbean theme. Palm trees, whitewashed boards, crudely carved, brightly painted fish on the walls. Fan-backed chairs around tables with wicker bases. Overhead a dozen ceiling fans were ghostly still. The large bar was dark and the room was empty except for April, a black man who wasn't Liberty, and an ADA Mike had once worked with named Dean Kiang. The three of them were in deep conversation that stopped abruptly when he came out of the shadows.
    "Hi," he said. "Mind if I join you?"
    He had the satisfaction of seeing the young assistant district attorney freeze into one of those Chinese masks of wariness he'd seen so often on April. And April clearly hadn't been expecting him. The woman of his dreams almost fell off her chair at the sound of his voice.
    An hour later they sat in the red Camaro in front of the now locked and dark Liberty's Restaurant, waiting for the car to warm up. The crime scene tapes were still up around the garden, but the plastic tent and the bodies of the victims were gone. So was Hagedorn with the green unit and the Chinese ADA, who had not seemed happy when Mike sat down at the table uninvited. April finished telling Mike everything she'd found out about the case before he'd arrived. She closed her notebook with a cold smile that tried to cover a bad taste she couldn't deny was bitterness. She wasn't even three hours into this difficult investigation and already the cavalry had galloped in to take it away from her. Mike