Snow Blind Read Online Free PDF Page A

destruction of a crime scene, or getting beaten to a pulp by well-meaning citizens.
    He stepped away from the boy and held his badge high, showing it to the crowd. It slowed them down a little, but neither his nor Gino’s furious shouts stopped them until they were close enough to see the boy unharmed and in his father’s arms. Unfortunately, that also put them close enough to see the exposed, cookie-dough face and cloudy eyes that had been concealed by the skiing snowman’s Elvis sunglasses. That was the sight that finally stopped them in their tracks and dropped every mouth into a horrified gape. But more were coming in from all directions, including a few park police, who rushed past them, probably expecting a fistfight or a heart attack and getting a lot more than they bargained for. They were as stunned as the rest of the gawkers, and any crowd-control training they might have had went out the window.
    Magozzi called it in on his cell while Gino stomped around like an asylum escapee, flailing his arms, waving people back, screaming “MPD! Keep clear!” until he was red-faced and hoarse. The crowd ebbed a little, but not far enough, and Gino felt like he was sticking his finger in a bursting dam. Frankenstein and the angry mob came to mind.
    Fortunately half a dozen MPD patrols had been trolling the Winter Fest area and got to the scene fast. The uniforms took charge immediately, clearing the area around Gino and Magozzi within a minute.
    â€œDamn it anyway,” Gino grumbled, watching the suddenly obedient citizens nodding respectfully to the patrols and backing off as they were told. “This is the kind of thing that makes you want to put on the blues again. I’m waving my badge all over the place and it didn’t mean crap. Those guys show up in brass buttons and, bingo, everybody listens.”
    Magozzi was looking over the cops holding the line, hoping for someone he knew well enough to work. “You should have lost the hat. Earflaps diminish authority.”
    â€œYeah, well, you weren’t doing so hot either, Mr. Topcoat.”
    The two of them were silent for a moment as they stared at the snowman, thinking and feeling things they would never talk about, not even to each other.
    â€œThat couldn’t have been easy,” Gino finally said, shaking his head.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œYou ever think about how hard it would be to get a body inside a snowman?”
    â€œNot until this minute.”
    â€œI mean, how do you get a floppy dead guy to stand up while you pack snow around him?”
    Magozzi thought about that. “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t floppy.”
    â€œYou mean, like rigor or something?”
    â€œYeah. Or something. The killer could have had help.”
    Gino thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. “I don’t know. This is so damn weird, and the really weird stuff is usually a solo job. I’ll bet you a million bucks we plug this into NCIC and won’t get a match.”
    â€œNo bet.”
    â€œDamn. And I had you pegged for easy money.” Gino backed up a few feet and continued his scrutiny. “He could be propped up with something, I suppose.”
    â€œWe don’t even know if there’s a body under there. It could just be a head.”
    â€œJesus, Leo.”
    â€œHey, you’re the one who’s obsessed with the logistics, I’m just sharing some possibilities. But I think a better question is why you’d want to put a dead guy in a snowman in the first place. That’s not exactly a body dump of convenience. This guy took some serious risks, doing something like this in a public park the night before an event like this.”
    Gino went through three stages at every homicide scene. The first stage was that single moment when he saw the victim as a person. He usually moved out of that one pretty fast, before it weighed him down too much. The second stage was the