The Shoulders of Giants Read Online Free PDF

on. My suit was crumpled and my mouth felt like a cat had gone to sleep in it. I reached for the phone, more to stop its noise than to speak to anyone. The voice I heard was Scott’s.
    “I’m in a parking garage on Dearborn. Think you should get down here.”
    “Scott, it’s not even six o’clock yet.”
    “We’ve found your girl. She’s dead.”
     
     

Chapter 6
     
    My bathroom light seemed brighter than usual, and at first I didn’t recognize my face in the mirror. My left eye had almost swelled shut, and the puffy area around it was already turning a dark shade of blue. Standing in front of the mirror, I eased myself out of my shirt and pants and examined the bruise on my hip. It matched the one on my face. Although I’d only been hit a couple of times, my whole body ached, and I moved towards the shower, shuffling like an old man.
    As I drove to the address Scott had given me, my mind was reeling. I was feeling guilty, disappointed, excited, selfish and angry all at once. I wondered if Susan Patterson would still be alive if I had found the right people to speak to or asked the right questions. I wondered if anything I had discovered so far might help lead the police to her killer. And I wondered if I would have to give three days pay back to her father, or if perhaps I should give him a full refund. It was one hell of a first case. Less than two days after I start looking for the girl, she turns up dead. This would not look good on my résumé.
    It wasn’t until I arrived that it occurred to me I might be looking at a dead body. My first. I was glad I hadn’t had time for breakfast. The stench hit me as soon as I got near to the Medical Examiner’s black van.
    “Jesus Christ, how long has she been here?” I yelled in Scott’s general direction. “She’s only been missing three days.”
    A uniformed officer saw me approach the yellow crime scene tape, and held one hand out to suggest I stop, while the other hand went to rest on his gun.
    “Can I help you sir?” He asked, forcefully.
    By this time, Scott was beside the officer, holding the tape up, for me to walk under. “That’s alright, Marquez,” he said.
    “Do they always smell like this?” I asked.
    “Holy crap, what happened to you?” he countered. I think he’d noticed my eye and hand, and the fact I was still walking like I had lead trousers on.
    “You should see the other guy,” I bluffed.
    “Why? Did you break his fist with your nose?”
    “It’s a long story,” I said, not wanting to distract from the moment. “What are you even doing here? You aren’t on duty for another two hours.”
    “I was on call. It’s our guy again.” Scott hung his head. It took me a moment to process this.
    “You mean the drowning thing?”
    Scott nodded. I turned to see Susan laid out on a plastic sheet on the floor, the EMTs getting ready to put her in the body bag. She looked gray and there were flies all around her, but otherwise she was recognizable from the photo her father had given me. Her feet were bare and, even from this distance, I noticed something else. On the sole of her left foot was a cut in the shape of a Z. I turned to Scott, and he knew what I was going to ask before I did.
    “Yeah,” he said, “that was on the others too. It’s why we think it’s the same guy. This is confidential information, OK? You can’t tell anybody.”
    “No problem” I said. Who was I going to tell? “You got any suspects yet?”
    “Yeah, Don Diego De La Vega. Unfortunately, he’s fictional, so officially we’re still looking. Has your investigation turned up anyone with that initial?”
    “No. I’ve got a mystery W, but no Z. Has her father been told?” I was hoping the job wouldn’t fall on me, although in a way I felt I had a responsibility to break the news myself.
    “Not yet. We’re going to head over there when we finish up here.”
    “So, what’s the story?”
    “How much do you want to know?”
    I was itching to use