Killer Heat Read Online Free PDF Page B

proceedings for two
    weeks back in the seventies. Now, the powerful addition of DNA to
    the prosecution case would change the focus-and pace-radically.
    “So by this time Thursday evening, Ms. Cooper, Floyd Warren will
    be one more notch on your belt and you'll be looking for something
    to take your mind off the much more important fact that you've got
    no social life. I can fill all those empty hours for you, kid,”
    Mike added. “Me and my rapidly growing summer-in-the-city body
    count.”
    Mercer knew why Mike wanted my company. Mercer and I spent
    countless hours handholding survivors of violence who needed
    emotional support to get through the unfamiliar clinical steps that
    marked their introduction to the criminal justice system. It took
    as much time, sometimes more, than working the investigation.
    Mike was impatient in that role. He was at his best when he set
    himself up against an unknown predator, teasing secrets from the
    dead to offer up cold, hard evidence that would lead him to the
    suspect.
    “You want Alex to take charge of Janet Bristol tonight?” Mercer
    said. “And if the little black book has some dynamite in it, you
    want her to sit right on top of that keg?”
    “Or stick it in her pocket. Give me a curfew, man. I'll have her
    tucked in. She's so overwired for this trial, you can't be worried
    about it.”
    “You want to go with them, Alex?” Mercer asked.
    “Sure.”
    “See you here at seven thirty. You get some sleep.”
    I straightened up my desk and, when Janet Bristol returned, went
    with her and Mike to his car. The ride to the six-story blue brick
    building that housed the morgue took only fifteen minutes. The
    deputy medical examiner assigned to the case, Jeff Kestenbaum, met
    us at reception and took us into his office. A lanky man with the
    serious mien of a scholar, he was always gentle with family
    members, who usually came to his office for terrible news.
    Kestenbaum explained to Janet how the viewing would occur. He
    tried to tell her, more graphically than Mike had done, how the
    skin and soft tissue of the woman he now believed to be Amber had
    been devoured by insects after her death. He confirmed that the
    dental records matched the work in those teeth that had not been
    kicked out of Amber's mouth by her killer.
    “Do I-do I have to look?”
    The office required that at least one person known to the
    deceased attempt a physical identification. Stories were legion
    about people with similar characteristics-build, coloring, crowned
    wisdom teeth or abdominal surgical scars-who were mistakenly
    identified because of confusion about these traits.
    “Before we release the body to you, yes, you must.”
    We took the short walk to the window that separated Janet from
    the corpse. It would be cleaner now, after the autopsy, with some
    of the facial wounds stitched together, than when Mike had called
    me in the night before.
    The green curtain was drawn back and Janet reacted
    immediately.
    “Oh, my God,” she said, pressing her face against the glass.
    “Yes, it's my sister. Oh, my God, yes.”
    Now the resemblance was even more obvious, with Janet's cheek in
    profile to us, matching the outline of the bone structure of
    Amber's face. Her knees buckled and Mike picked her up in his arms
    before she could hit the floor.
    We followed Kestenbaum down the hall and Mike rested Janet on
    the sofa in the small lounge that was set aside for grieving
    families. She was alert almost at once, and the men left the room
    while I sat beside her, stroking her hand and trying to calm her
    for the tasks ahead.
    “Is there someone you'd like to have here with you?”
    “No. There's no one. It's my mother I've got to call.” She took
    a deep breath and leaned her head back against the arm of the
    sofa.
    “Any friends who can keep you company?”
    “I don't want anyone to know, don't you see?”
    “To know that Amber's been killed?”
    “That'll be news soon enough. I don't need them to