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over. “Why? What’s to see out there?”
    ***

Oz Park – After Midnight
     
    “What kind of sick loser kills in a city park with Dorothy and Toto looking on? This’ll be a damned circus,” Cronan said over his shoulder to Angel as he walked past a statue of the Scarecrow. “Keep your eyes open for flying monkeys. At night they’re damned hard to see.”
    “ Just so you know,” Angel said. “There are times when I’m convinced you’re a total nut job.”
    He pursed his lips and nodded. “I can live with that.”
    They headed for a crowd of gawkers in a park located at the intersection of Halsted and Webster. He hated working a crime scene as exposed as this one. Parked at the curb, the Mobile Crime Lab had flashing police cruisers around it. That should’ve been a deterrent. Instead it attracted the lunatic fringe. Yellow tape didn’t make much of a barrier in a wide-open park. Beat cops would have a hard time keeping intruders out, especially with news crews huddled along the perimeter.
    Camera floodlights cast eerie shadows into the dark as reporters used the backdrop of the crime scene to broadcast live. With the odd looking Scarecrow statue in the damned shot, the TV coverage made the murder seem like an absurd joke.
    “ I’ve got a theory about reporters,” he muttered to his partner as they walked.
    “ Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
    “ Whenever there’s more than one, they mutate and multiply. It ain’t pretty. They leave a slime trail.”
    “ Detective Cronan,” A blonde female TV reporter shoved a mic in his face and kept pace with her camera crew in tow. “Can I have a word with you about the murder?”
    Without breaking stride, he said, “Yeah, have two. No comment.”
    Cronan flashed his detective’s badge to the uniformed cop at the tape and saw Angel do the same. That’s when the reporter called it quits. The woman waved a hand across her throat, telling her camera crew to cut the live feed. Cronan saw more lights deeper into the park and knew the forensics investigators and evidence technicians were hard at work.
    A shadow crossed his path before he caught a glimpse of the body.
    “ Well, if it ain’t Angel Gabriel, come to show us the light and grace us with their presence,” a gravelly voice called out. “How did you two get lead without even being on call? One of them immaculate receptions?”
    Cronan grimaced when he heard the nickname given to him and Angel after they’d first been assigned together. Few said it to his face anymore and before that, no one had called him Gabriel since his days in foster care. Although the name had gotten him into more than his share of fights as a boy, he was stubborn enough not to change it. His name had been given to him—the last connection to his family. Fighting over it had been worth every busted lip.
    “This assignment keeps getting better,” he said to Angel.
    A man’s face, backlit in floodlights, got swallowed by shadows, but Cronan recognized the voice and the shiny bald head under wisps of a gray comb over. Larry Schumacher had the job of senior forensics investigator with the ET-North mobile unit. His short stout body looked the polar opposite to that of his number two man, the guy standing next to him. Tall and lanky, Sam O’Brien looked more like a human coat hanger.
    “Lay off the angel crap, Schumacher,” Cronan said. “If this were my slice of heaven, you wouldn’t be here, and Jessica Biel would have the hots for me.”
    “ Not with that face, she wouldn’t. What the hell happened to you?” O’Brien asked. “Your mug looks like it’s been through a meat grinder.”
    “ Try a chainsaw.” Cronan walked past the two forensic guys and focused on the corpse.
    A woman’s dead body lay sprawled on the grass. A flowerbed near the base of a gnarled tree almost hid the body. Only her legs were visible from the sidewalk. She wore a dark skirt, pale top, and dress shoes. With her blouse open and skirt hiked up, the