River of Glass Read Online Free

said, “That woman ought to come with a warning label,” and pointed me toward the office.
    A forensic tech squatted on the entrance walk and snapped a photo of something on the concrete while two more techs stretched a plastic tarp above her head and affixed it to metal poles, creating a makeshift tent. A drop of rain splatted against the plastic, and the woman swore softly and snapped another picture.
    We skirted the photographer, and I knew why Frank had asked me if I’d been to the office. If I’d come in, I’d have seen the drunken line of small bloody footprints that led toward the front steps and ended abruptly in a cluster of smears and droplets. I’d have known they meant bad news.
    On the front porch, an earnest-looking detective interviewed a young blonde woman in jeans and a clingy white tank top. One of the Strip-o-Gram girls. Bridget something-or-other. Probably the one who’d found the body. She fidgeted with her necklace. Shifted her weight. Dropped her hands and toyed with the string of plastic shamrocks someone had wrapped around the porch railings. Yesterday, they’d looked kitschy and hip. Today, they just looked cheap.
    “Around back,” Frank said, and I followed him along the side of the building and into the alley behind, where more tarps flapped in the breeze and a team of forensic detectives worked the scene with a sense of urgency heightened by the threat of rain.
    Frank nodded toward one of the techs, who handed me a paper jumpsuit, cap, and booties sealed in a clear plastic bag. We suited up and went to join Harry beside the dumpster.
    The dumpster had a sliding door on each side, and Harry Kominsky stood at the near opening, pointing a Nikon digital camera inside. On the other side, a forensic technician in a paper suit bagged a soiled disposable diaper and labeled it with a Sharpie, while another photographed a tattered leather shoe with a ruler beside it for comparison.
    Measure, photograph, bag, label . . . Processing a crime scene is tedious work. It’s done in layers, each item and its relative position documented in such a way that, years from now, an investigator could take the stand and tell how many quarters had been in the victim’s purse. If the girl had been alive, it would have been different. Saving her would have trumped preserving evidence. But she wasn’t alive, and they could take their time with the scene.
    The technicians looked grim, and I couldn’t blame them. I was none too happy myself, and I wasn’t the one who was going to have to tag and bag a half ton of garbage.
    Harry glanced up as Frank and I rounded the corner. “You gonna ID our victim for us?”
    “Probably not,” I said. “But move over and I’ll take a look.”
    Harry edged to his left, and I stepped into the space he’d left behind. The stench of sour milk, soiled diapers, and rotting vegetation rolled over me. No smell of decomposing flesh. It was too soon and the weather too cool for that.
    I realized I was already detaching, preparing myself for what was in the dumpster.
    “He killed her quick at the end,” Harry said. “But before he did . . .” He shook his head.
    I put my hands in my pockets and leaned forward to look inside, feeling Frank’s solid presence at my back.
    “Jesus,” I said.
    She was a small woman. Thin legs. Small breasts. Her collarbone stood out against her skin as if she’d been starved. She lay curled on her side in a pile of bulging garbage bags, the dark plastic a stark contrast to her magenta hair and the stained white slip that had ridden up her thighs. Bruises in various stages of healing patterned her body in purple, yellow, and a sickly green.
    Looking closely, I could distinguish flat facial features and epicanthal folds over the eyes, but the face was too swollen to tell how old she was or how pretty she might have been. Young, I thought, from the smoothness of her skin. Something past puberty, not more than twenty. Too young to be either of the