The Killing Vision Read Free

like to have some of that?”
    Joel looked away, feeling his face turn hot.  “She’s
pretty.”
    Wade shook his head.  “Pretty.  Yeah.”  He slugged
Joel in the arm.  “You fuckin’ faggot.  You could probably go out with her if
you wanted to.”
    Joel snorted.  “Right.  I’m every woman’s dream
date.”
    “You could clean up a little better, you know.  Get
a decent haircut.  Shave off that fuckin’ goatee.”  He grabbed Joel’s dark
whiskers and tugged.  Joel shoved Wade’s arm away, catching a fragment of
thought from Wade’s head.
    (fat ugly)
    Joel started the truck and pulled out of the parking
lot.  He hated Wade when he got on these personal trainer kicks.  It was bad
enough knowing how unattractive you were without having your own brother
reiterate it.  Besides, Joel knew better than to try to get involved with
anyone; he understood that when he touched someone, when he was able see them,
they ceased to be appealing to him.  There was something both sickening and
frightening about being in another person’s head.  But of course, that was not
anything he could tell Wade.
    * * *
    8:23 PM
    Lieutenant Mike Halloran was standing in the city
hospital morgue, watching with sickening fascination as the county medical
examiner unzipped the black bag containing what remained of Sarah Jo McElvoy. 
Her face, the color of rotten egg yolk, was framed with matted, dirty blonde
hair that brushed against the gaping, puckered tear in her throat.  One eye was
gone, its socket sunken and shriveled; the other gazed blankly at the ceiling,
white and clouded.  Her lips hung open to reveal a mouth blackened inside with
river silt.  But it was the stench that got him, the smell of putrefying flesh
and the fishy smell of the river.  The smell of death.
    Halloran pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and
covered his nose and mouth.  He glanced across the table at his partner,
Detective John Chapman, a big strapping guy with short red hair and freckled
skin.  Together the two of them made up the tiny investigations unit of the
Cedar Hill police department.  Right now Chapman looked pale and grim as he
watched the preparations for the autopsy. 
    The examiner, Carl Scott, whom everyone referred to
as “Scotty,” was a grizzled little butterball with a gray mustache, and
Halloran had dealt with him often. Scotty was cutting away the remnants of
Sarah Jo’s t-shirt, purple with a pink cat on it, what she had been wearing
when she disappeared.  He pulled the cloth back to reveal the blotchy skin
beneath.  “She’s quite bruised up,” he said.  He turned and scribbled some
notes on a pad beside the table.  “Lots of decay.”
    Halloran looked away.  “Well, she’s probably been
dead three months, Scotty.”
    The examiner looked at him over the rims of his
glasses.  “Not that long.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yep.”  He continued to strip away the cloth,
revealing Sarah Jo’s pitiful, barely developed breasts.  “If she had, she’d
look worse than this.”
    “How long, then, you think?” asked Halloran.
    Scotty shrugged.  “A few days.  Hard to say.”
    Below the scraps of the t-shirt, Sarah Jo was
naked.  When the body had been pulled from the river, there was no sign of her
jeans or underwear.  Her vulva was purple and swollen, sagging open.  Scotty
was bent over her now, probing with his instruments and speaking into a
ceiling-mounted microphone attached to a recording device.  “Some bruising and
tearing around the vaginal opening,” he announced.  “Some massive trauma to the
whole area.”  He placed his scalpel gently on the side of the table.  “She was
raped,” he said without emotion.  “Very violently.”
    Halloran looked from Scotty to the body splayed out
before them.  He pressed the handkerchief tighter across his nose and blew out
a disgusted breath.  He had had all he could stand.  He motioned to Chapman. 
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.