Retribution ("M" Mystery) Read Online Free

pre-test tonight?”
    He joined her. “Don’t count on it. I’ve got to interview half the hotel staff, probably chasing down statements late into the night.”
    They walked in silence to his cruiser, climbed in and buckled up.
    “If you’ve got an hour I could squeeze in your lesson right now, it would give us a chance to discuss the murders. I think I’ve got a couple ideas about why the Greens were killed the way they were,” M said.
    “One hour, and I want to hear more about the character on the fridge, too.”

     Chapter Six

    Amy pulled her VW bug up the driveway and parked under the carport. Gathering up her purse, she extracted her key as she walked up to the front door–it fit both the knob and the dead bolt.
    She glanced at her watch. “Better print these out,” she muttered to herself.
    She dropped her purse on the kitchen table next to the computer, extracted the camera, and plugged it into the USB port and punched up picture preview. She rocked back in the captain’s chair letting her long hair hang over the back, listening to the computer click and whir. When all was silent she rocked forward and looked at the screen, it was filled with five horizontal rows of photos from the crime scene, but her eye was drawn to the homeless man in the last row at the bottom of the screen. Wearing filthy, ragged clothes and a five o’clock shadow, he looked the part, if not perhaps a little young. She then noticed that in the last photo of the last row, the one where he’d thrown up his hand to cover his face, his fingernails were clean and trimmed.
    Amy printed out each photo on an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper. When the last one came out of the printer she pulled it aside and through a magnifying class scanned the homeless man’s fingers.
    “How about that? Clean as a whistle.”
    She scanned the prints as she gathered them into a stack, surprised as a tear rolled down her check. She’d been so careful not to focus on the victims, using her camera to keep the gruesome nature of the murders at arm’s length. When she gave a sniffle, all the odors of the murder scene flooded her senses, and in that moment she was overwhelmed with the horror of it all.
    Feeling her stomach lurch, Amy leapt from the chair and ran to the bathroom, collapsing into sobs and dry heaves. Fully five minutes passed before she pushed up from the floor and gazed into the mirror above the sink. Pulling her long hair to one side she examined the circles under her eyes, took a deep breath and smiled.
    “All work and no play makes Amy a dull girl,” she told her reflection.
       She laughed, pulled the shower curtain aside, and turned on the shower. She dropped her clothes in the hamper and would have stepped in front of the full length mirror on the back of the bathroom door but the shower had already steamed it up. Twenty minutes later she was in front of her chest of drawers, pulling on pink panties and a pair of white tennis shorts. Standing topless she turned sideways to the mirror on the back of the door, pulled her shoulders back and watched her breasts thrust out.
    “Now what am I going to do with you?”
    Rummaging around she finally decided on a jogging bra and top. All ready for a day at the beach.
    She threw together her favorite lunch, stuffed the crime scene photos in an envelope without looking at them, scribbled Detective Buck Shore on one side and dropped it in the basket with her lunch. She’d make a detour by the Bay County Sheriff’s office before she headed to the beach. When she backed out of her driveway into the street she never noticed the rusted Gremlin at the curb two doors down.
    The Gremlin drove past Amy as she turned into the Bay County Sheriff’s parking lot, pulling to the side of the road until she drove back into traffic, heading toward Dungeness Bay. When she turned onto Beach road he knew she was headed to Whaler’s Cove, the road dead-ended there. He hung a U-turn and headed for