The Wrong Girl Read Online Free PDF

clacking away the snow. “Sucks to be a freelancer at fifty-five. Sucks to be old.”
    They’d hit the jackpot on parking, even found a semilegal spot. Smoky exhaust plumed from three TV live trucks double-parked along Callaberry Street, their rear doors open, news crews huddling inside. Jane remembered those cramped quarters, never enough room, the flickering monitors and squawking radios and snaking cables, empty coffee cups and discarded potato chip bags, the editing panic to crash a story on the air before deadline. She’d always made it. Always.
    “You miss video?” Hec slung a battered leather camera case across one shoulder and opened the car door, then turned back to her, brows furrowing under his green Celtics cap. “Hope that’s not stepping on toes.”
    “All good,” Jane said. Everyone knew she’d been fired from Channel 11 last year for protecting a source. Truth be told, she wasn’t completely over it. Jerks . But no reason to dwell. She knew how Tuck felt, though, with the rug being pulled out from under her. She hoped Tuck was okay.
    She sure didn’t seem okay.
    Jane had promised to call her tomorrow. No time to think about that . “It’s all in my rearview. I’m all about the Register. Now I don’t have to worry about my hair, right?”
    “I hear ya.” Hec slapped a laminated press placard onto the dashboard and pointed to a gray triple-decker across the street. “I’m betting it’s that house.”
    “That’s why you get the big bucks.” Jane dug out her notebook and cell phone, stashed them in her parka pockets. “Leaving my purse in here, okay?”
    She checked the digital clock on the dashboard, then joined the media crush on Callaberry Street. Two and a half hours till deadline. Piece of cake.

9
    Jane’s voice. Downstairs. Though Jake couldn’t make out the words, he recognized it. Arguing with Hennessey—that much he could make out through the open apartment door, probably trying to convince him to let her upstairs to the crime scene. Which she knew, and Hennessey knew she knew, wouldn’t happen. Though that would never stop Jane from giving it her best shot.
    Jake smiled, imagining that tilt of her hips in those ratty jeans she loved, the way she planted her fists on her waist when she was trying to make a point, how she was just the right amount shorter than he was. How terrific she smelled. What was she doing here? He yanked on his jacket zipper, then tried to focus on what Kat McMahan was saying.
    “In summary, preliminary findings pending autopsy indicate subdural hematoma, suggesting intracranial bleeding, severe concentric damage to the right occipital cranium originating in a stellate fracture.” McMahan held a tiny silver recorder to her lips. She’d unbuttoned her white lab coat, revealing a black I HEART L.A. T-shirt underneath. “Suspected massive blunt trauma. Severe lacerations to the upper right forehead, evidence of protracted external bleeding. Why? No obvious defensive wounds, fingers are…”
    McMahan stopped, crouched, then encircled one of the woman’s wrists with a gloved thumb and forefinger, leaving the victim’s pale hand dangling. “… undamaged. No bleeding of the cuticles, no broken fingernails. Place of death, kitchen, is heated and all windows are closed.”
    She looked up at DeLuca, narrowing her eyes. “Hey. You guys didn’t close the…”
    “No, sir. Ma’am. Doctor,” DeLuca said.
    “Kat,” she said.
    “We didn’t touch a thing,” DeLuca continued. “It’s exactly like it was when we arrived. Kat.”
    Jake couldn’t believe it. Jane downstairs. DeLuca up here. Never a dull moment. He should have gone into finance with his dad, or law school, like his mother always pressured him to. Did Jane know he was here? Jake half-listened for her footsteps on the stairs.
    “Time of death approximately one P.M .” McMahan sniffed, nostrils flaring. “Odor of—unknown. No signs of other injury, no broken bones, no external sign of