WEBCAM Read Free Page A

her mad?”
    “I can deal with mad. I can’t deal with paying off five hundred dollar boots at 14.9% interest.”
    Tom paid 22.2% on his card, but didn’t say anything. They approached a uniform standing guard in front of the apartment. He looked queasy. Nametag said Wheeler.
    “What we got?” Roy asked.
    “The apartment belongs to Kendal Hefferton, twenty years old.”
    “Her name is Kendal?” Tom asked.
    The uniform nodded.
    “She’s the vic?”
    “Could be. It’s, uh, tough to make a positive ID. She’s… it’s…” Wheeler took a big breath. “It’s pretty bad.”
    “You first on scene?”
    “My partner and I took the call.” He raised his eyebrows. “You’re Detective Mankowski, aren’t you?”
    Tom nodded.
    “And you’re Detective Lewis?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I heard about that thing in South Carolina. That was some heavy shit.”
    “Neighbors? Wits?” Tom asked. He didn’t want to discuss South Carolina , and he knew Roy didn’t either.
    “Doing a door-to-door now. No witnesses so far. But no marks on the outside door or on this one. It was open when we arrived.”
    The previous victim’s locks hadn’t been disturbed, either. As if the killer had been allowed inside.
    Or could walk through walls.
    “Does the building have security cameras?”
    “No. But a few stores on the street do, and so do some TV stations. Live traffic cams. There’s a team getting copies.”
    “M.E. here yet?” Roy asked.
    “No. Just C.S.T.”
    Tom and Roy took disposable polypropylene shoe covers and nitrile rubber gloves from the boxes next to the door. There were also paper face masks and a jar of Vicks. Normally those weren’t needed until a corpse had begun to decompose, to cover the smell of rot. Tom raised an eyebrow at Wheeler.
    “The vic’s insides were… uh… you’ll see. It stinks. Bad.”
    Tom and Roy each took a mask and placed it over their mouths. Three steps into the apartment Tom realized he should have put some menthol gel under his nose. The smell of feces was so strong his eyes watered. Layered beneath it was urine, coppery blood, and acrid bile. The crime scene techies shooting video and ALS digital stills had full hazmat gear on, complete with their own breathing masks.
    “I’m grabbing the Vicks,” Roy said, scooting back outside.
    Tom took a deep, foul breath and held it, then ventured further into the abattoir. He took note of the laptop on the living room floor, open but with a dead screen. A woman’s shoe with an exceptionally high heel was next to it. He stuck his head in the open bathroom door; normal, but no shower curtain hung from the curtain rings. Then he walked slowly down the hallway, to where he assumed the murder scene was, based on all the techie activity. Still holding his breath, Tom’s eyes began to water from the stench hanging in the air. He came to the bedroom, peered through the doorway, and tried to make sense of what was on the bed.
    It was just as bad as the first. The media had dubbed the killer The Snipper because he cut off the eyelids of his first victim.. This made for a disturbing corpse; the fully exposed eyeballs, bulging and staring blankly into space, set into a face framed by horror and agony. But in this case, the eyeballs were only a fraction of the atrocities committed upon this poor girl. Her mouth and vagina were mutilated beyond recognition, and she’d been partially eviscerated, loops of intestines knotted around her naked torso.
    Smeared on the wall behind her, in blood or feces or both, was a single word.
    FURIE
    No shit.
    Tom had never seen a homicide with this much fury, and he’d seen some doozies.
    Someone touched Tom’s shoulder and he spun, coughing out his breath. It was Roy, offering Vicks VapoRub. Tom dug his finger in, smearing some under his nose, but not before he inhaled a stench straight from hell’s morgue.
    “It’s a bow,” Roy said.
    Tom gagged, spat into his own glove, and wiped it on his shirt rather than