Family Honor Read Free Page A

were the last thing I ever expected , but she held back.
    He inhaled and blew it out. "Okay, I'm surprised here. The Bureau has to be invited in on a case. Our arrival is not usually a surprise."
    "My captain said something about the chief, so maybe he invited you. The field workers are apparently the last to know."
    He nodded. "Apologies. I get a little overexcited at times. These cases really get under my skin. I've tracked more serial murderers killing hookers than I care to think about, you might say it's my area of expertise."
    "Sounds gruesome."
    His brow wrinkled into a furrow. "It happens every day, somewhere. Hookers are an easy target. Half the time no one reports them as being gone, because they were already missing from their regular life. The rest don't have anyone who gives a damn about them. Which makes them what? An easy target."
    "Easy target," Mel mouthed the words along with him. "Sad."
    "Yeah, it is sad. And when I get to a police department and find that not everything humanly possible has been done to find the killer, I get annoyed … and angry."
    "I assure you, that's not the case here. I have the information you need. Let's put whatever that was behind us and start over, shall we?"
    His eyes flickered interest.
    Before he could speak, Stone joined them.
    "I have the photos of vic number three. I called Martin with the CSI and he should have a detailed report to us by ten."
    "Good enough." Willis nodded. "If you'd like to have a seat, Detective Curtis was preparing to fill me in on vic number one, Rhonda Something."
    "Jensen," Stone supplied, and took a chair.
    A look of amusement passed between Mel and Willis. The tiniest hint of a smile creased the corner of his mouth. "I can see how you two complement each other."
    "We do." She sat and opened her folder. "Rhonda Jensen, age forty-four."
    Willis wrote what she told him on the whiteboard. "Last known location?" He glanced around. "Damn, we're going to need a map of the area."
    "Right here." Stone shuffled through one of the folders and produced a folded map. "We've marked the last knowns and body dumps on here."
    "Excellent!" Willis opened the map and pinned it up. He looked at Stone. "You know Wichita better than me, can you mark the last knowns with the red map tacks, and the dump sites with the blues?"
    "Sure." Stone did as instructed.
    Willis made notes on the board with all the information Mel offered him. "She was found wearing an old cheerleading uniform, white with red trim, with a small cardinal mascot on it?"
    "Yes." Mel read through sheets of information. "Polyester fabric popular in the seventies. The uniform was homemade, no tags of any kind."
    Willis nodded as he wrote. Finally satisfied, he moved on to victim number two.
    "Donna Leonard. Age forty-nine." Mel read statistics while Willis copied them down. "Blue and gold cheerleading uniform. Some type of tag in the skirt, but it was old and faded. Fabric seems to be from the same era. She was also found in an alley near Oldtown."
    Stone marked the location on the map.
    " Which brings us to victim three. " Mel rifled through the photos Stone set before her. "Obviously we don't have a name, yet. She's approximately the same age as the other two. Another white uniform, red trim, another cardinal mascot."
    "Mel's high school mascot was a cardinal," Stone commented as he added a push pin for the location they'd found the body last night.
    "We'll need to follow up on that." Willis said.
    Mel folded her arms across her chest. "Already done. There are currently two cardinal mascots in the city, one at a public elementary school and the other at a Catholic middle school."
    "Okay," Willis nodded. "But we aren't so interested in 'current' as we are past history. What schools had cardinal mascots when these uniforms were in vogue? Seventies era?"
    Mel shrugged. "That information is a little harder to come by."
    He snapped his fingers. "And that's exactly where I can help. We have one of the most