Silent Scream Read Free Page B

talk to all of you.
     Especially Hunter, since he brought her out.”
    Homicide
. David’s throat closed as the word left the cop’s mouth and for a moment another thought scrambled to the top of his mind.
     There were lots of detectives in Homicide. Odds were it wouldn’t be her. And if it was?
I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
He cleared his throat harshly and nodded. “Of course. Whatever they need.”
    “As soon as we’re done,” Captain Casey added. “We’ve got to get the second floor under control. Hunter, you and Zell go back
     in. Search the upper floors. Find out if anyone else was where they shouldn’t have been, and make sure we got no fire in the
     walls.”
    “Will do,” Jeff said.
    David pushed homicide detectives from his mind and took a last look at the girl on the gurney. What the hell was she doing
     in there?
Why wasn’t someone taking care of you?
But he knew all too well that life wasn’t nearly that idyllic. “I’ll check where I found her, see if I can find some ID.
     She’s just a kid. She’s got to belong to somebody.”
    “Don’t touch anything,” the cop said and David fought the urge to roll his eyes. Cops treated them like damn kindergartners
     sometimes. “Got it?”
    “Don’t worry. I got it.”
    Monday, September 20, 1:15 a.m.
    Homicide detective Olivia Sutherland flashed her badge at the uniform guarding the condo’s construction entrance and drove
     through the gate, past the news vans and cameramen, acutely aware of all the flashing bulbs at her back. By the questions
     the press were shouting, they’d already correctly concluded it was arson.
    Her churning gut tightened further. Just by being here she’d stirred up their recent collective memory. Amid their shouted
     arson questions were targeted references to her last big case. It was inevitable, she knew. Didn’t mean she had to like it.
    “How’ve you been, Detective?” A reporter she knew and at one time hadn’t despised ran along side her car until the uniform
     stopped him cold. “Are you over the Body Pit yet?” the reporter shouted at her back. “Still seeing the department shrink?”
    Olivia gritted her teeth. She’d been to the shrink three department-mandated times and this guy made it sound like she had
     a standing appointment with a couch.
    With a cold glare Olivia raised her window, not slowing down until she reached the bank of parked official vehicles and rolled
     to a stop next to her partner’s Ford. A piece of her settled. Kane was here.
He’ll know what to do.
    The thought startled her. “And so do I,” she said aloud. Firmly. “Get a grip.” But she was afraid she couldn’t.Because her breathing was changing, hitching up in her lungs and her heart was racing. Because the three department-mandated
     visits to the shrink hadn’t helped. She still wasn’t over the body pit, the mass burial pit they’d discovered in the basement
     of a serial killer seven months before.
    In four years on the homicide squad she’d seen a lot of bodies, but nothing could compare to the serial killer they’d chased
     last February. Dubbed the “Red Dress Killer” by the press for the way he’d dressed his final victims, he’d been quietly murdering
     for thirty years and burying his victims in a lime pit in his basement. It wasn’t until he’d stepped up his pace that he’d
     made mistakes and they’d caught him, discovering his grisly secret.
    And it had fallen to Olivia and her partner, Kane, to process the dead. There had been blocks of days when she hadn’t slept,
     hadn’t eaten, hadn’t done anything but process the dead, inform their families, and return to the pit for more. Lime was not
     kind to human flesh. She didn’t need nightmares. The reality was plenty bad enough.
    The press could call him what they wished. In her mind he was “Pit-Guy,” because it was the pit that ruled her dreams—dark,
     bottomless, and filled with the dead.
    She kneaded her steering