Shaken Read Online Free PDF Page B

wrists against the concrete anchor, her eyes wide and glowing in the night vision camera.
    Her expression is one he recognizes well.
    Fear. She’s afraid.
    And she has good reason to be.
    Their little dance has been going on for a long time. For the better part of both their careers. The ex-cop had gotten closer than anyone else ever had.
    He taps the screen, bringing up the control dial. Twirling his finger, he adjusts the camera angle and zooms in to Jack’s hands.
    She’s bleeding. The rope and the concrete are causing abrasions on her wrists. It will sting like crazy because he dusted the rope in salt before tying her up.
    That’s only the first taste, Jack. There will be more pain to come. Much more.
    Mr. K sets the iPhone up on a stand, so the image faces him. Then he picks the filet knife off the table.
    It’s a tool he’s used on countless occasions, bought at a live bait store on Chicago’s South Side almost three decades ago. He’s sharpened it so many times, the blade is less than a centimeter wide. It looks more like an ice pick than a knife.
    Mr. K tests the blade’s sharpness, touching it lightly to the back of his thumbnail. He’s able to draw a line across the lunula—the bottom of the nail—with barely any pressure. The knife is honed to a razor’s edge, so he puts it in its sheath and sets it aside.
    Next he checks the propane torch. After a quick shake, he determines the handheld tank to be half full. That’s not enough fuel for what he has planned, so he unscrews the pencil-flame top from the canister and attaches it to a fresh tank.
    The final tool on his workbench is a two-pound ball-peen hammer with a plastic composite shank extending from the stainless steel head down through the handle. This requires no fine tuning, so he lets it be.
    Over the years, he’s used just about every device imaginable to inflict pain. He had a phase where he preferred power tools. A phase where he only used his gloved hands. For a two-year stretch, every murder he committed was done with a car jack; with wire ties it could be used to easily detach joints from sockets.
    But after a lifetime of trial and error, he decided the simplest ways were ultimately the best. Cutting. Burning. Breaking. Everything beyond that was just showing off.
    He glances at his iPhone again. Jack’s eyes are squeezed shut, her jaw muscles clenching down on the ball gag.
    Think that hurts, Lieutenant? Just wait until tonight.
    Because tonight, Mr. K will show off.

Twenty-one years ago

    1989, August 16

    T he Cook County Morgue smelled like a butcher shop from Dante’s seventh circle of hell.
    Underneath the acrid stench of bleach and spray disinfectant, there was the unmistakable odor of meat. But it was meat on the verge of going bad—the beginning stages of rot that all the chemicals in the world couldn’t completely mask.
    I was standing in one of the autopsy rooms, staring down at the headless corpse of a naked Caucasian woman—the one we’d discovered in the Dumpster while chasing that bald john the night before. Her arms and legs were severed, but Medical Examiner Phil Blasky—a balding man with an egg-shaped head—had placed them in the appropriate spots along her torso.
    I wondered if they would be sewn back on before burial, or if it didn’t matter, since she didn’t have a head.
    I’d traded my hooker outfit for plainclothes—a gray, off-the-rack pantsuit I bought at Sears. It was too loose in the butt and too tight in the chest, and with my hair pulled back I looked somewhat like an effeminate man. Especially since I’d forsaken makeup, having had enough of the gunk caked on me yesterday. In the car ride over to the morgue, I spent five solid minutes trying to convince my partner, Harry McGlade, that I wasn’t a lesbian.
    Harry nudged me with his elbow, then pointed to the dead woman’s chest.
    “Look how perky they are, even in death. Think they’re even paid for yet?”
    The corpse’s implants stuck out