Cavanaugh Cold Case Read Free Page B

not a lover. And there were a great many willing women out there to choose from.
    But, on the other hand, there was a certain appeal to the concept of “feisty,” especially when it was coupled with someone who looked the way this woman did.
    Exactly who was she?
    What was her official position in the department, and how did he get her to open up to him?
    â€œYou’re new,” he said, hoping to initiate a conversation.
    Kristin spared him just the minutest of glances before she went back to her work. “Actually, I’m not,” she told him.
    â€œI haven’t seen you around,” he told her. “And I always notice beautiful women.”
    â€œWell, I guess you missed one this time,” she responded, carefully separating two bones that looked as if they had been fused together by grit and time.
    Rather than annoying him, the flippant way she’d answered what was clearly a line—he hadn’t been trying to be subtle—seemed to oddly attract him to an even greater extent.
    Crouching down beside the woman, he said, “Let’s start over.”
    The look she gave him would have withered a lesser man.
    â€œMaybe later. I’m working now.” Her expression turned impatient. “And you’re in my light again.”
    â€œRight.”
    To accommodate her, Malloy rose to his feet, taking care to allow the sunlight to stream over and bathe the bones laid out before her.
    This one, he told himself, was going to be a tough nut to crack.
    And he couldn’t wait to get started.

Chapter 2
    B ut for now, as tantalizing as the woman kneeling over the boneyard was, Malloy knew he had to place his private plans on the back burner.
    A really distant back burner.
    For now, he had a crime to begin to unravel and, from the looks of it, a number of dead people to identify.
    Growing up, Malloy had always loved puzzles, both the mental kind and the kind that came inside boxes that were labeled with intentionally daunting numbers like “1000 pieces.”
    The older he got, the higher the number of pieces stuffed into the box became. But back then, no matter how many parts the puzzle came in, with enough tenacity on his part, they always wound up fitting into one another to form a unified whole.
    He had come to learn years ago that life didn’t always imitate art. If he were being honest with himself, “hardly ever” was more the case. But each of these bones now spread out on the cloth went into forming a whole person. All he needed to do was find out who that whole person was, so that he or she could be laid to rest.
    All he needed to do .
    The words echoed in his head, mocking him. There was no “all” about this job, unless the word referred strictly to the number of bones that were even now piling up next to the medical examiner.
    As he watched, the pile just kept growing.
    It was like trying to look away from a train wreck. Horrific though it was, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Not because he didn’t want to, but because identifying the deceased was his job.
    So he watched as the CSI team members continued to find more and more body parts, carefully laying each part on the long, unfurled rectangular cloth beside the somber medical examiner. From all appearances—at least to his limited range of expertise in this particular field—time had been the butcher rather than some overzealous serial killer trying to bolster his sagging self-esteem by hacking apart people.
    Rather than walk away and get back to the owner as he’d intended, Malloy retraced his steps to the medical examiner.
    â€œAny chance that those overly observant construction workers ogling you over there might have stumbled across some old Native American burial ground while plowing up the ground with their bulldozer?” he asked her.
    Kristin looked up to see if the cocky detective was joking. But the expression on his face, while exceedingly friendly, was