Past Will Haunt Read Online Free PDF Page B

It was going to be bad.
    Well, this was going to suck. Unfortunately, Elizabeth didn't have a choice in the matter. This was the job. Whether she liked it or not, the gold badge got her exclusive entrance to all the shitty clubs.
    Club Death was never fun.
    In fact, you had to be bat shit insane to hang out there. Only lunatics liked to party with death.
    While there were other departments, like drugs, vice, and accounting, Elizabeth always wanted to be a homicide investigator. They were the hardest cases, and she liked to use her brain.
    Not everyone thought she had one, and this was proof to her that her skill wasn’t some fluke. She wasn’t some backwoods hick from Salem who got lucky. They weren’t just scholarships to Cornell because she had ovaries.
    She had a brain.
    She had guts.
    She was badass.
    Well, she wanted to be. One day, she knew that would happen, but for now…she had to earn her place too. Chris wasn’t the only one struggling to fit in. She was just too stubborn to let the other agents win.
    “I understand, Chris. Can I persuade you? I did give you my candy bar, and I did teach you the trick to surviving a crime scene meltdown. What if you gave me something you saw when you looked at her? It might jumpstart this for me,” she offered, tapping her head.
    He smiled. “No. You’ll never be able to manipulate it out of me. There are rules, Elizabeth.”
    She patted his cheek, more to make sure he wasn’t still clammy. When he stared up at her, he looked better.
    “Okay, Chris. I hear you.”
    He was feeling better, and he didn't think it had anything to do with the candy.
    “Well, I’m going in. Can you sit here until my partner arrives? When Livy rolls up, point her in my direction, okay?”
    “I can do that.”
    As she walked away, he called her name.
    “Elizabeth?”
    “Yeah, Christopher?”
    “Thanks. I owe you one.”
    She smiled. “Hell no! We’re a team. We’ve got many years ahead of us, Doc. Who needs to keep score?”
    He watched her head into the building, the black suit fitting her perfectly. Chris sighed.
    He wanted her to keep score in the worst way.
    Better yet, he wanted her to see him— really see him —for a change. His hand went to the spot she touched on his cheek, and it tingled.
     
     
    Yeah, he wanted that more than anything.
     
     
     
     
     
    Inside, the stench of death nearly brought her to her knees. It was a mix of drying blood, spent bowel, and all the other nasty smells a body emitted when it was dying.
    Chris wasn’t kidding.
    It was bad.
    Since Elizabeth was still new at this, she felt the sick roll of her belly as she got closer to where the woman was left. It took everything she had to keep herself from pulling a Doctor Leonard. She didn't have any more candy, so she was going to have to suck it up.
    As she moved closer, she got her first look.
    Holy shit!
    Someone bled the poor woman out.
    “Jesus,” she muttered. “There has to be about ten pints of blood on the walls and floors,” she stated.
    The head tech glanced over.
    “You’d be about right. She’s empty,” Carol Spade stated. “She’s been bled dry, and it was probably when he began cutting into her.”
    Elizabeth stepped into the kitchen to get a better view. It nearly made her want to puke. She had an iron clad stomach, but this was even too gross for her.
    The whole thing was just wrong.
    Whoever did this was a total sicko, and they’d won the award in her book. This was true depravity, and she knew it.
    Elizabeth knew she’d never get used to this kind of killing. If she did, it was time to hand in her badge.
    As she approached the island, she could see the woman’s arms were tethered to the sides, and her body was bent over the top of the marble.
    It was sick.
    It was grotesque.
    She’d never forget it.
    “What do we have?” she asked, hoping someone would tell her something. Elizabeth wanted to get the hell out of there, and fast.
    “We have a white female age twenty