Killing Fear Read Online Free PDF

they parted friends.” He put up a picture of her dead body. Glenn had cut her skin more than forty times, feet to face, one-to two-inch-long shallow cuts that would have scarred and defaced her. Painful, but not fatal. When he’d finally tired of torturing Bethany, he’d slit her throat.
    “Was Glenn a suspect from the beginning?”
    “Way down on the list. Bethany had seven former boyfriends the year before she was murdered, and Glenn hadn’t been the most recent. There was some evidence at the scene and it was being processed by the crime lab when Brandi Bell was murdered fourteen days after Bethany.”
    Will put up Brandi’s photograph. She was an unnatural platinum blonde with another winning smile and huge brown eyes. “There was a witness in Brandi’s homicide. An elderly woman across the street gave a description of a man leaving Brandi’s duplex to canvassing officers. From that, Robin McKenna, a friend and colleague of the victim, identified Theodore Glenn, a regular patron of the club who had dated both Bethany and Brandi.”
    “The wounds on the bodies look different,” Carina interjected. “The cuts on Bethany’s body are a mess, blood smeared. On Brandi they look like they were cleaned. Did he wash the victims after killing them?”
    “Good guess, but no,” Will said. His jaw tensed as he imagined what Brandi had suffered in the final minutes before Glenn slit her throat. “He poured bleach over her body.”
    “To destroy evidence?”
    “Possibly.” He paused. “The bleach was poured over the wounds while his victims were still alive.”
    Carina shivered as if she’d heard nails scratch on a chalkboard. It would have felt like being burned alive to the victims. It had the added benefit of destroying potential evidence.
    Will continued. “We pulled Glenn in for an interview and court-ordered DNA test, based on Robin McKenna’s identification. The killer had left DNA at the scene of the first murder—three strands of hair, pulled from Glenn’s scalp as Bethany struggled.” He took a deep breath. This was the part that was totally fucked. “We had him. We had him in custody and we had the DNA test. We handed the case to the D.A.’s office. Immediately, the case was thrown out.”
    “Why?” one of the newer cops asked.
    “The criminalists had come directly from another homicide. The DNA collected at the scene was contaminated: the hair samples got mixed with hair samples from the other crime. Descario tossed out both cases. Without the DNA, we had nothing to tie Theodore Glenn to the murders.”
    “What about the witness?” Carina asked.
    “The D.A. didn’t feel she was reliable.” Will shook his head. “And as much as I hate to admit it, Descario was right on that point. The woman was eighty and in a lineup she couldn’t pick out Glenn. Going from a secondhand identification off the sketch—no jury would have convicted him. We had to let him go.” That had been one of the worst days of Will’s life: knowing he had a killer behind bars and having to let him out. He’d never forget the smug expression of victory on that bastard’s face.
    “How did you connect the two killings? If you couldn’t use the DNA from the first murder, and bleach was used in the second, how did you make the connection?” Carina asked, curious.
    “A similar M.O. The multitude of small, painful cuts with the same type of knife. The way the hands and feet were bound. The slit throat with a double-edged blade. And the victims were dancers at the same club.” Will paused. “Glenn must have realized he’d screwed up with Bethany Coleman, and that’s why he used the bleach at Brandi Bell’s crime scene. Even if he left trace evidence there, the bleach would have corrupted any DNA samples.”
    One of the cops in the back shook his head and lamented, “Because of all those forensics shows, killers are becoming smarter.”
    Will shrugged. “Perhaps, but remember this was seven years ago. Those