Trail of Echoes Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Maybe there’s a name or a tag or a company…”
    â€œThink it’s a random drop?” Luke asked.
    I readjusted the baseball cap, bristling from the combined stink of my wet hair and the sweat from the cap’s original owner. “Doubt it.”
    Truly random crimes were rare. John Wayne Gacy, for instance, had hired many of his victims to work for his construction company. And some of Wayne Williams’s kills had been prostitutes he’d known.
    â€œThis monster knows her,” I said. “And I need to find him before L.T. makes me push her to the back burner. Anyway. Pepe, what’s up with the guy in the suck-you-thin suit?”
    â€œA bullshitter. He nearly pissed his pants when I badged him. He was nowhere near this trail. Just wanted his fifteen minutes. And the park ranger—name’s Jimmy Boulard—he’s coming in to give an official—”
    â€œLou!” Brooks was calling.
    Dread settled on my heart like a raven on a bare tree limb.
    â€œHere we go,” Pepe said, killing his cigarette between his fingers.
    Brooks swiped at his cinnamon-colored nose with the sleeve of his Tyvek suit. His eyes had disappeared behind the fogged lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.
    â€œWell?” I asked.
    â€œShe’s cold but not stiff,” Brooks said. “Dead maybe forty-eight hours. The cold weather and the low number of bugs makes it hard to tell right now.” He gazed at the girl who was decomposing even as we stood over her. He pointed at her darkened left side. “See that?” Then, he pointed to the tops of her thighs, which were darker than her side. “And there? And that?” The right side of her face was mottled. “Differing lividity.”
    â€œWhich means what to us?” Luke asked.
    â€œWhen she died,” Brooks said, “the blood pooled in different patterns. If she had died on her back and had been left in that position—”
    â€œThe blood would’ve settled in her back,” I said. “She was moved.”
    â€œA couple of times,” Brooks said.
    Didn’t want to hear that. Processing one crime scene was difficult enough, but another scene that you didn’t even know about?
    A crack of thunder boomed.
    Pepe and Luke glanced at the sky.
    My breathing had already quickened. Where did she die? If not here, where?
    Brooks aimed his flashlight beam at the girl’s left hand, assaulted now by blowflies. “Flies are here now when they weren’t just an hour ago.”
    And more flies, in just that moment, found the girl. The tarp now buzzed.
    Brooks pointed to abrasions on her arms and cuts on her leg. “Don’t know yet who or what made those.”
    â€œHe didn’t bury her,” Luke said. “How come?”
    â€œNo time,” I said. “Digging a grave is hard work. And in this case, the shrubs and leaves worked just as well.”
    â€œUntil the rain came,” Brooks added.
    Another crack of thunder.
    My scalp crawled as I counted. One … two … three … four  … And the sky flashed.
    â€œAs far as getting latent prints off of her…” Brooks shook his head. “Maybe we’ll have a better chance in a controlled environment.”
    â€œAnd the probability that we’ll find the monster’s prints on her body?” I asked.
    He gave a one-shouldered shrug, then clicked off his flashlight. “We should get going before we’re caught in a landslide. Before any evidence she has left on her washes away, making your job all that more difficult.”
    Usually, we spent three days at a crime scene. This park was the worst crime scene possible. Clues were now washing away and dissolving because of rain and wind, while the rest of it was being buried in mud or had been stolen by animals. Bits of evidence, from Jane Doe, from the monster, were being lost every second, and there was nothing I could do