Frozen Heat (2012) Read Free Page A

it off.
    Lauren stood so Nikki could squeeze by to get a view of the corpse. “I see what you mean,” Heat said.
    The woman’s body was frozen. Ice crystals like the ones shimmering on nearby boxes of ground beef, chicken, and fish sticks glistened on her face. Clothed in a pale gray suit, she had been folded into the fetal position and fit into the suitcase, where she now lay on her side. Lauren gestured with the cap of her pen to the frosty bloodstain covering the back of the suit. “Obviously, this here is our best guess for cause of death. It’s a significant puncture delivered laterally to the posterior of the rib cage. Judging from the amount of blood, the knife entered sideways between the ribs and found the heart.” Heat experienced that uneasy deja vu she felt every time she saw one of those wounds. She made no comment though, just nodded and folded her arms to warm the gooseflesh the refrigeration had no doubt raised on them, even through the blazer. “With her frozen like this, I can’t do my usual field prelim for you. I can’t even unfold her limbs to check for other wounds, trauma, defense marks, lividity, and so forth. I can do all that, of course, just not yet.”
    Nikki kept her gaze fixed on the stab wound and said, “Even time of death is going to be a challenge, I suppose.”
    “Oh, for sure, but not to worry. We can still come close when I get a chance to work on her down at Thirtieth Street,” said the medical examiner. And then she added, “Assuming I don’t get back there to a major situation following the quake.”
    “From what I hear, it’s mostly a small number of treat-and-release injuries.”
    “That’s good.” Lauren studied her. “You all right?”
    “Fine. Just didn’t know I’d need a sweater today.”
    “Guess I’m more used to the cold, right?” She uncapped her pen. “Why don’t I stand aside and make some notes while you do your beginn-y thing?” Parry and Heat had worked enough cases together that they knew each other’s moves and needs. For instance, Lauren knew that Nikki had an initial task she performed at each crime scene, which was to survey everything from every possible angle with what Heat called beginner’s eyes. The problem with veteran detectives, Heat believed, was that after years and years of cases, even the best investigators became numbed by habit; counterintuitively, experience worked against them by blunting observation skills. Ask a refinery worker how he deals with the stink, and he’ll say, “What stink?” But Detective Heat remembered how it felt on her first homicides. How she saw everything and then looked for more. Every bit of input held potential significance. Nothing could be overlooked. Just as the experience of her mother’s killing ritualized her empathic approach to the crime scene, her belief in keeping it fresh prevented her survey of it from lapsing into ritual. As she often reminded her squad, it’s all about being present in the moment and noticing what you notice.
    Detective Heat’s eyes told her this truck was not likely the murder scene. Walking the tight area of the cargo section, flashing the beam of her Stinger on the floor between boxes and on the walls, she saw no signs of any blood spatter. Later, after the body removal, the Evidence Collection Unit would offload all the cartons for a thorough inspection, but Nikki was satisfied in her mind that the suitcase had been brought aboard with the victim in it and, possibly, dead already. Time of death and a timeline of the truck’s loading and unloading would help button that down. She turned her attention to the victim.
    ME Parry’s pick of early sixties seemed right. Her hair was flatteringly cut to a shorter business length correct for a woman of that age and, from the roots that were starting to show some gray and dark brown in the part, her honey blond do, subtly streaked with caramel, indicated two things. First, she was a woman with some money who cared