Disconnection Read Free Page A

he stepped out of his Tahoe, his bad mood temporarily forgotten.
The world needs more women like Tabitha
, he thought.
    Lewis worked hard to walk normally, trying his best not expose the condition of his colon. He made his way to the Riverfront, past the railroad tracks and the candy shops emitting the smell of fudge and vanilla ice cream. As he expected, the moment the Mississippi River came into view, so did twenty or so reporters waiting near the riverbed, all of them, armed and ready with their cameras and microphones. Lewis let out a disgruntled sigh.
Nothing like having a crime scene in a public place, in full view of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a camera and a curiosity
, he thought.
    Lewis muttered a curse as he ducked under the yellow police tape. A familiar blonde reporter with large rabbit teeth held her microphone out for Lewis. “Detective Kline, is this latest body connected to the Fishhook murders?”
    “No comment.” He pointed at uniformed cop nearby. “Get rid of them,” he ordered. The cop nodded and opened his arms wide, creating a barrier between Lewis and the press.
    “Back off!” the cop ordered.
    “Is it true this is the third murder?” a reporter yelled at Lewis from a short distance.
    The detective ignored him and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his partner, Jacek Sawicki, standing nearby, motioning for Lewis.
    “What do you got for me?” he asked as he approached the heavyset man.
    Sawicki shook his head, drawing one hand through his shortly cropped red hair. “You won’t believe this shit. There’s a good chance that this is the woman that went missing two days ago. Dee Nilsson.” He looked at his clipboard. “Age thirty-two. From Oakland, California.” He handed Lewis the findings. “Take a good look.”
    Lewis nodded and took the paperwork. “A load of bullshit.”
    “Yep. Killing visitors is bad for tourism, don’t you think?”
    Lewis frowned. “I meant, murder in general, Sawicki.”
    Sawicki nodded. “Right.”
    “Is the CSI here?”
    “They’re on their way. The deputy coroner’s here though.”
    “How long?”
    “He just arrived. He’s over by the body.”
    “Witnesses?”
    “A daughter-father team found this one, Lew.”
    Lewis looked up and saw a man leaning against a police car with a young blonde-haired girl hugging his knee. “What happened?” he asked.
    Sawicki cleared his throat. “They were taking a stroll this morning, about oh-seven-hundred hours. The girl pointed out what she thought was a turtle head in the water. The dad got a closer look and called 911. Police got here at oh-seven-eighteen hours. Officer Reginald Tyler was the first on the scene. He called in the divers. They pulled the vic out at oh-seven-fifty-seven hours.”
    “Okay. Get Nancy Drew and her dad to the station.”
    “Yep.”
    “And take some photos of these assholes standing around the crime scene.”
    Sawicki called over two uniformed officers. “Is that all?” he asked Lewis.
    “For now.” He approached the area where a deputy coroner was leaning over the victim. The limp body lay out on the riverbed like a leftover fleshy party favor from the night before. Her skin was the color of dried paste. A fresh head wound rested just below her hairline. Her lifeless eyes stared out into a sky of lavender clouds. A police photographer snapped the corpse from every angle. With each flash of his strobe unit, the dead woman’s face lit up in an illusion of life.
    Lewis sniffed in the fishy, raw smell of the Mississippi River as he turned to look at the coroner. “Tell me what you know,” he ordered.
    The coroner glanced up. “Asphyxiation.”
    “Shocker,” Lewis said with a sarcastic tone in his voice. He shook his head. “Can I bet a million dollars that she died in a bathtub and was later dumped in the river?”
    “You could, only you better hand over half the prize money to me. And now, behind door number two.” The deputy coroner reached down and pulled the