Trace (TraceWorld Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

in it.
    She felt as if she’d just stumbled into a dark back alley far from home.
    Mrs. Lafferty would never have just left a gift for her without knocking and seeing if she couldn’t chat awhile, and Nola couldn’t think of anyone else who would have left something for her like this. She thought fleetingly about calling Dalton, calling Mutt and Jeff, calling a bomb squad. Yeah, brilliant. That will really do wonders for the respect they give you downtown . The bag was most likely filled with dog turds, a prank played by kids. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with . . . what she was thinking about.
    She reached for the large umbrella she kept by the door and never managed to take with her when it rained. She stepped back and gently poked the bag with the umbrella’s tip. Whatever was in it was lightweight and made no sound. Good. No live snakes or severed heads. With the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel (an enormous one in beach-ball colors), she maneuvered the tip of the umbrella to gently unfold the crimp in the bag and open it for view.
    There was an ordinary piece of paper folded in half and lying on top of something she couldn’t see fully. She stared into the bag and then suddenly knocked it over hard with the umbrella and stepped forward.
    Out tumbled the body of a pigeon, the folded paper spiked through one of its claws.
    In ordinary Times New Roman 12 point, which had never seemed as ominous as now, the note read, “Get off the case or the next trace will be yours . ” That was all.
    Nola took in a breath and released it. Theatrical, Nola reflected, though for some reason she couldn’t picture Lynette Veesy being responsible. By all rights, it should have been her, since she was the only one who’d recognized Nola—or admitted to recognizing her, anyway. But something about this struck Nola as calculating, methodical. It was hard to take this threat seriously, yet it was impossible to ignore. Her first reaction had been gut-level horror at the weirdness of it all. Her second reaction had been, A pigeon? Really? They couldn’t have at least used a crow or a blood-red cardinal or something a little more dramatic? It was almost insulting.
    The manner of it was so absurd that she shuddered at the thought of mentioning it to Mutt and Jeff. She knew these guys; they would treat her like something fragile and damaged. The other detectives would certainly see no reason to change their view that she was more of a hindrance than a help. Scared by a pigeon. She could just picture the eye-rolling, the smirks, the jokes at her expense. None of that would exactly be an ordeal, but there was also the possibility that they would pull her from the case—and, if the case were solved without her help, they might decide never to use her again. On the other hand, this was, in a sense, evidence. Tossing it in the trash would be counterproductive.
    “Well, squab, I hope you enjoyed your life, because right now you are more trouble than you’re worth,” she muttered. Holding the bag open, she leaned over to push the small grey carcass back inside with the umbrella and then stopped and leaned closer.
    The bird’s tiny head was bent back as far as it could go. It was attached to the body by only a tiny bit of flesh. Its neck had been sliced cleanly open with a knife or a razor. The bird had either been caught and killed this way or found dead and its neck slit afterward. Nola wasn’t sure which was worse. It hardly mattered. Mission accomplished: she felt threatened.
     
    ___________
     
    The next morning, Nola fussed around the apartment, made lists of things to do, struggled through a workout DVD, and then made up her mind. She would keep the note (and, for no particular reason, the paper bag), but she picked up the pigeon with barbecue tongs, dropped it into a plastic bag, and flung the bag down the garbage chute. She felt a stab of sadness for the poor bird, having suffered such an undignified death, but