The Cruelest Cut Read Online Free PDF

Dr. Lewis? And don’t bullshit me.”
    Â 
    James Kuhlenschmidt hated his nickname. “Kooky” wasn’t exactly a confidence-inspiring moniker. Why couldn’t I have gotten a cool nickname, like “Gunner” or “Robo” or something? Why do I always get the shit jobs?
    He made his way through the large riprap and head-high brush along the shoreline, where his training officer had sent him on a fool’s errand. He was supposed to be looking for evidence. The body is way back there. It’s obvious there’s nothing down here.
    But he had seen one interesting thing when that newswoman had gone down on her keister in the rocks. Man, that will give me some stories to tell at the FOP Club later. And then he’d watched from behind the bushes as she and her cameraman scurried down the shore with her yelling orders at the poor guy like he was some kind of pissant. He wondered briefly if he should stop them from sneaking into the crime scene, but then he remembered that he, Officer James Kuhlenschmidt, was also being treated like a pissant. Let one of the hotshot cops down there do something about that pair.
    His mind was still occupied with these thoughts when his feet tangled up in something and he went sprawling onto the hard rocks and sharp brush. As he struggled to his feet, he noticed that his pants leg was torn and there was blood all over his hands. “What the fuck?” he said out loud and wiped at his hands. The blood wasn’t his. Then he noticed the clear, plastic line twisted around his boots. And there was something else.
    Â 
    Maddy Brooks had just about made up her mind to call Deputy Chief Richard Dick and insist that she be allowed to do her job, when she saw a young, uniformed officer running toward the crime scene. He was screaming something over and over, but she couldn’t quite make the words out. It sounded like “Buckets of blood!” She turned to order Dex to film the scene unfolding below them, but he had already shouldered the camera and was getting it all.

C HAPTER S IX
    Eddie watched from a distance as the skinny cop ran up to Murphy and tossed his cookies.
    â€œMust’ve found the stuff we left behind,” Eddie said to Bobby. “Took ’em long enough.”
    He watched Murphy pull something out of his back pocket and hand it to the skinny cop. It was a handkerchief.
    â€œOh, ain’t that special? He’s helping that young cop clean hisself,” Eddie said.
    â€œBetter get some rest,” Bobby said. “We got a lot to do tonight.”
    Eddie turned toward the parking lot where he’d left the van. Murphy’s one cold son of a bitch . He had expected a stronger reaction when Murphy saw the kid’s body, but instead of getting angry, or crying or getting excited in any way, Murphy had just squatted down and checked the kid out. Like he was looking at a dead dog. It was very disappointing. Bobby’d said that killing the kid would get to Murphy. And this particular kid should have been special.
    â€œI know what you’re thinking, Eddie,” Bobby said. “But before we’re done, we’ll get that bastard’s attention.”
    â€œYeah, whatever.”

C HAPTER S EVEN
    The room smelled of bleach and formaldehyde and something more unpleasant. Death could not be scrubbed away or covered up, and Jack had learned over the years that the smell of a violent death was as much in the mind as in the air. He knew he’d smell the corpse of this poor kid every time he closed his eyes for the next week. Or at least until the next corpse came along.
    â€œNeed this?” Carmodi asked, holding out a small glass container of mentholated cream. Carmodi had dabbed some under his own nostrils.
    Jack shook his head. “Let’s just get to it. The longer you try to fight the smell off, the longer it takes to get used to it.”
    â€œYour partner’s a little testy today,”