Red Light Read Online Free PDF

weapon had been used in a narcotics-related crime.
This didn't smell like drugs to Merci, but it was worth a try.
    Merci helped one of
the lab techs develop and dry the last of the crime-scene photos, which she
would need for the walk-through. One set for her, one for Zamorra. Thank God
for her college photography courses. As she stood in the twilight of the
darkroom with the blow dryer roaring she watched Aubrey Whittaker's body take
shape on the photographic paper, appearing slowly and steadily, as if conjured
by a medium.
    Aubrey Whittaker, she
thought: servicer of men, sermon critic, home entertainer, Christian Single.
Change your name, leave your home, begin again.
    Who are you?
    She
burned two copies of the Responding Deputy Report, the lab data and the CSI
sheets.
    She
didn't read any of it because she wanted to learn it fresh, there where it
happened, when she was there with just her partner. A crime scene was always
different in daylight.
    She
spent a few minutes down in the impound yard, talking with Ike Sumich, a young
tech that she considered to be a real up-and-comer. Like Evan, Ike was one of
her people. Merci liked the idea of tribe; was forming one, collecting members
because they could help her and because she liked them.
    Sometimes
she would look at them and imagine what they'd like thirty years from now.
    Sumich
looked good in her future-vision, but he had a gut he'd need to get to the gym
to avoid.
    Ike had helped her out in the case that almost got
her killed a couple of years ago. She had no pending business with him; she
just wanted to check in, let him know he had a friend in Homicide.
    When
Zamorra finally came into the detective pen it was almost 3 p.m . He was freshly shaven and his hair
was still wet from a shower, but his eyes looked empty and red.
    "Are we ready
for the walk-through?" he asked.
    "We're
ready."
    "I'll
drive."

CHAPTER
THREE
    Merci unlocked the door and pushed it open, calling
on her memory.
    "Coates heard
the noises and made the call at ten forty-five. Deputies Burns and Sungaila
arrived ten minutes later. This porch light was on and the door was ajar about
four inches. All three of them saw the blood."
    She gently swung the
door inward again and watched it come back toward her. It once more stopped
four inches short of the frame. Standing in the shade of the building, she
shivered once in the cold December air. She found the CSI sheets, scanned down
the typewritten copy.
    "CSIs examined
the porch for shoe prints, but between the old paint and all the foot traffic,
they couldn't find anything useful. That, from Lynda Coiner. If we believe
Alexander Coates, Aubrey's first visitor wore hard-soled shoes or boots, her
second wore soft ones. What do you make of Coates's ear-work, Paul?"
    "Sixty-forty.
Sixty he's right."
    "I gave him
better than that. I think we should consider two men. Were they working
together is the question. Working on what is the next question."
    Zamorra said nothing.
He faced the door with a bloodshot stare. He pointed to a small,
crescent-shaped cut in the gray door paint. It was deep enough to reveal wood,
just to the right of the blood spray, heart-high.
    He
looked at his copy. "O'Brien says that was where the casing bounced off,
on its way to the dinner table. Coiner found the brass the flower vase. That
was good work."
    "She
had the bounce to go from."
    Zamorra slowly shook his
head. "He shot her from right here, didn’t even come through the door. She
opened it and zip, all she wrote.
    There was something
mechanical in his voice, Merci thought, something distanced: He's still in the
hospital with his wife.
    They stepped inside.
The front door swung almost shut again. Bright afternoon light shot through the
sliding glass door and the windows. The day was clear and cool and the sun was
already low out over the ocean. Merci felt the heat coming through the glass.
She noted the bullet hole in the upper left corner of the slider, the one she
hadn't noticed the