At Close Range Read Free Page A

Maya’s conference, Cassie hadn’t found the time.
    No, she corrected herself with brutal honesty. She hadn’t made the time. So she squared her shoulders and said, “I ruled out some local missing person reports, but haven’t taken it any further than that. My bad.”
    But Varitek didn’t respond to the apology. His attention was fixed on the severed index finger. Cassie saw that a thin trail of blood had leaked onto the upholstery beneath, but the larger wound area was sealed over.
    “Looks like it was cauterized premortem,” Varitek said, so quietly he was nearly speaking to himself. “Souvenir, maybe?”
    Disgust and a low-level horror twisted in her gut. Every now and then during the course of her work it hit her. This was real. It wasn’t a movie set or a scene playing out on TV. The body belonged to a real person. Someone’s son. Maybe someone’s lover.
    Cassie swallowed a quick bubble of nausea, while a fragment of a half remembered conversation surfaced in her brain. Face it, you’re not tough enough to hack it in the field, Lee Adams had said. You’re a chemist, not a cop.

    Lee had been five years older than she, an instructor at the master’s level forensics program she’d attended outside of Chicago. He’d been handsome and a little bit mysterious, and for a while, she’d bought into everything he said. Years later, some of his comments still snuck up on her when she least expected it.
    Like now.
    She set her teeth, swallowed the weakness and forced herself to think about the corpse at its most basic—as a piece of evidence in a case they’d thought was closed.
    “If this body is connected to the skeleton in the canyon, then Alissa was right. She did hear someone else when Croft was holding her captive. There was another man.”
    “Maybe, maybe not.” Varitek stepped back so they were shoulder-to-shoulder, staring down at the body. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
    She felt the warmth of him and wished she didn’t notice such things. He was attractive, yes, but he already had three strikes against him in her book. He was in law enforcement. He was controlling. And he was impossible to get along with. The first was a fact. The other points she’d discovered months earlier, when she’d been forced to let him into the kidnapping case and he’d taken over, brought in his own people and shoved her to the edges of the investigation, claiming she’d be safer there.
    Well forget him. She wasn’t looking to stay safe at the expense of the job.
    She scowled. “I’m not jumping to conclusions, I’m using my version of the razor theorem—the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We’ve got a body tied to a crime scene from the kidnappings. The kidnapper is dead, so we know he didn’t kill this guy. Other lines of evidence have already suggested Croft had an accomplice. Ergo, we’re looking at a partner.”

    “We’re not looking at anything but the evidence,” Varitek said bluntly. He turned away and reached for his bigger, meaner-looking crime-scene kit, which Cassie knew from experience contained everything hers did, and then some. He said, “Let’s get to work. The sooner we release the body to the ME, the better. We’re going to need a cause of death, time of death, ID…anything we can get. The chief said that based on our findings, he’ll decide whether to recall the task force.”
    And that quickly, that easily, he took over her crime scene.
    Again.
    Cassie fisted her hands at her sides, so tightly that her blunt nails dug into her palms. She thought about going for her weapon. Instead, she said, “Agent Varitek?”
    He didn’t even turn around when he answered, “Technically, it’s Special Agent.”
    “Yeah, you’re special all right,” she muttered loud enough that he could damn well hear. Then she raised her voice, but fought to keep it level. Businesslike. “Until the task force has been officially reopened and your assistance has been requested by the