Painkiller Read Online Free PDF Page A

to meetcha.” He had an accent that I would describe as Chicago by way of cop. “You taken a look at the scene yet?”
    “I’ve seen that this man is dead,” I said with a nod at the body. “Also, that this dumpster stinks, and that this night is dark. Everything else, you can feel free to explain to me.”
    Detective Maclean pursed his lips with an utter lack of amusement. “Fine,” he said, and I knew it wasn’t. “Victim is one Dr. Carlton Jacobs, a professor at a nearby college—”
    “Which one?” Reed asked, barely stifling a yawn as he spoke.
    “Northern Illinois Technical University,” Maclean said, looking down at the file to read it off. “It’s up Lakeshore drive a little. Medical school, science and tech research—looks like it’s only been around a few years now.”
    “Uh huh,” I said, “what was the victim a doctor of?”
    “Philosophy for all I care,” Detective Maclean said, holding off exasperation by a thin effort. “Will you just let me finish my bit and then ask?” He gave me a steady gaze until I nodded almost imperceptibly. “All right. Vic is age 45, he’s a professor at NITU, lives in a condo up on the Gold Coast—”
    “What’s—” I started to ask, drawing an irritable look from Detective Maclean.
    “It’s a neighborhood north of here on the lake, lots of condos and mansions and whatnot, really ritzy,” Reed said, and I turned to look at him. “I used to come down here a lot on assignment when I worked for Alpha.”
    “If I may?” Maclean asked. “Dr. Jacobs’s wallet was left on his person, along with a roll of cash in his front pocket in the amount of $4,000—”
    “Whoa,” I said, my eyebrows lurching up. “I guess robbery wasn’t the motive.”
    “We have no idea where he came from,” Maclean said icily, “and no idea where he was going, other than to State Street.” He flipped the folder closed. “Death, as you may have guessed, was probably the result of traumatic brain injury, either from the initial impact or when his head hit the wall. Either way, no sign of a weapon used. Preliminary forensics says the impact sight on the jaw shows hints of knuckles being the weapon, and so …” He extended the folder toward me. “Looks like it’s one of yours.”
    “Thanks,” I said and stepped up to take the folder from him. I opened it and skimmed; he’d done a pretty good job of summarizing what they had so far. “Does the professor have a car registered to him?”
    Maclean shrugged. “I can check if you want. Central’s pretty backed up, though, so it might take a while.”
    I sighed. “I miss J.J. already.”
    “Never thought you’d say that,” Reed chuckled.
    J.J. was my own personal tech geek. Well, maybe not my personal one, but he’d worked for our agency and had been instrumental in solving more cases than I could count. I looked around, hoping for an obvious surveillance camera. There wasn’t one. If there had been, J.J. could have cracked it in like two seconds and just given us our murderer on a silver platter. “Any chance you’ve got some uniforms digging up surveillance footage from the area?” I asked Detective Maclean.
    “Yeah, they’re canvassing, too,” Maclean said with a frown. “Probably be a few days on that, though.”
    “So …” I said, glancing down the file as I reached the end, “robbery’s not the motive, probably—”
    “Probably?” Reed looked at me like I was an idiot. “There’s like four grand on the guy, plus his wallet.”
    “That doesn’t mean something else wasn’t taken,” I said, staring at the folder, “or that the murderer wasn’t interrupted or scared off before he could do his thieving.”
    “Fair point,” Reed said with the air of a man who didn’t quite let go of his skepticism. “But unlikely.”
    “Agreed,” I said, closing the folder. “We’ll need to go to his place of work, and his home.” I looked around the alley, trying to reconstruct the event in my