Prodigal Son Read Online Free

important and that justice mattered.
    Just past the yellow tape, Carson stopped and surveyed the scene.
    A female corpse floated facedown in the scummy water. Her blond hair fanned out like a nimbus, radiant where tree-filtered Louisiana sunlight dappled it.
    Because the sleeves of her dress trapped air, the dead woman’s arms floated in full sight, too. They ended in stumps.
    “New Orleans,” Michael said, quoting a current tourist bureau come-on, “the romance of the bayou.”
    Waiting for instruction, the CSI techs had not yet entered the scene. They had followed Carson and stood now just the other side of the marked perimeter.
    As the investigating detectives, Carson and Michael had to formulate a systematic plan: determine the proper geometry of the search, the subjects and angles of photographs, possible sources of clues….
    In this matter, Michael usually deferred to Carson because she had an intuition that, just to annoy her, he called witchy vision.
    To the nearest uniform on the crime line, Carson said, “Who was the responding officer?”
    “Ned Lohman.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Over there behind those trees.”
    “Why the hell’s he tramping the scene?” she demanded.
    As if in answer, Lohman appeared from behind the oaks with two homicide detectives, older models, Jonathan Harker and Dwight Frye.
    “Dork and Dink,” Michael groaned.
    Although too far away to have heard, Harker glowered at them. Frye waved.
    “This blows,” Carson said.
    “Big time,” Michael agreed.
    She didn’t bluster into the scene but waited for the detectives to come to her.
    How nice it would have been to shoot the bastards in the knees to spare the site from their blundering. So much more satisfying than a shout or a warning shot.
    By the time Harker and Frye reached her, both were smiling and smug.
    Ned Lohman, the uniformed officer, had the good sense to avoid her eyes.
    Carson held her temper. “This is our baby, let us burp it.”
    “We were in the area,” Frye said, “caught the call.”
    “Chased the call,” Carson suggested.
    Frye was a beefy man with an oily look, as if his surname came not from family lineage but from his preferred method of preparing every food he ate.
    “O’Connor,” he said, “you’re the first Irish person I’ve ever known who wasn’t fun to be around.”
    In a situation like this, which had grown from one bizarre homicide to six killings in a matter of weeks, Carson and her partner would not be the only ones in the department assigned to research particular aspects of the case.
    They had caught the first murder, however, and therefore had proprietary interest in associated homicides if and until the killer piled up enough victims to force the establishment of an emergency task force. And at that point, she and Michael would most likely be designated to head that undertaking.
    Harker tended to burn easily—from sunshine, from envy, from imagined slights to his competence, from just about anything. The Southern sun had bleached his blond hair nearly white; it lent his face a perpetually parboiled look.
    His eyes, as blue as a gas flame, as hard as gemstones, revealed the truth of him that he attempted to disguise with a soft smile. “We needed to move fast, before evidence was lost. In this climate, bodies decompose quickly.”
    “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Michael said. “With a gym membership and a little determination, you’ll be looking good again.”
    Carson drew Ned Lohman aside. Michael joined them as she took out her notebook and said, “Gimme the TPO from your involvement.”
    “Listen, Detectives, I know you’re the whips on this. I told Frye and Harker as much, but they have rank.”
    “Not your fault,” she assured him. “I should know by now that vultures always get to dead meat first. Let’s start with the time.”
    He checked his watch. “Call came in at seven forty-two, which makes it thirty-eight minutes ago. Jogger saw the body, called it