Spectrum (The Karen Vail Series) Read Online Free Page A

regurgitating the textbook, aren’t you?”
    Borelli chuckled. Finkelstein appeared to ignore them and go about his business, recording his findings on a form attached to his clipboard.
    Vail felt her face flush in embarrassment. She tucked her chin down and knelt beside the body. Hiding.
    “Cause of death?” Russo asked.
    “COD looks to be suffocation,” Finkelstein said. “Strangulation, to be precise. Can’t evaluate the ocular capillaries for microbleeding because the eyeballs are, well, destroyed. But the marks on her neck are quite severe and traumatic. Excuse me.” With a gloved hand he pushed aside Manos’s auburn hair, revealing red abrasions and purple bruises.
    A low groan emerged from Russo’s throat. “Yes, indeed. And the cut marks?”
    “Sharp object. What kind, I don’t know yet. The hunk of glass protruding from her carotid is an obvious possibility, but I can’t say at the moment.”
    “Stray hairs or fibers?”
    “None,” Borelli said. “At least, none we found. So far.”
    “What do you make of the way she’s posed?” Vail asked. She gestured at the woman’s left hand, which was palm up and fisted, with the index finger curled slightly.
    Russo pursed his lips. “No idea. Never seen anything like that before.”
    “Looks like she’s saying, ‘Come here.’” Vail stood, then leaned in a bit while maintaining a careful distance from the body. “How’d the killer make the hand stay like that?”
    “You’re just chock full of questions,” Finkelstein said, not bothering to take his gaze off his work. “What we need are answers.”
    “Questions are good,” Russo said. “Sometimes you gotta ask the questions to know what you need to know. You know?”
    Finkelstein looked up. He squinted at Russo and said, “Yeah. I think.”
    “What about the time line?” Vail asked. “When was she last seen?”
    “Now that ain’t my job,” Finkelstein said.
    Russo pulled out his pad. “That’s for us to put together. You, Vail, will help talk to neighbors, do a canvass, write up a background on who Carole Manos was. Did anyone have a beef with her? Was she dating anyone? Is there an angry boyfriend? Who was the last person to see her alive? Did she owe anyone money? Was she involved in any shady stuff that made her path cross known criminals? Ask around, see if the neighbors saw anything.”
    “Should I do that now?”
    “Not just yet,” Russo said. “Tox screen?”
    Finkelstein readjusted his glasses. “I’ll get you the results ASAP.”
    “Was she raped?” Vail asked.
    “Good question,” Finkelstein said, pointing an index finger at her. “We’ll know more once we get her on the table, get a good look. But there doesn’t appear to be any bruising.”
    “Not much to go on,” Russo said.
    Vail nodded slowly. “I told you it wouldn’t be a walk in the park.”
    VAIL STEPPED INTO her rented “apartment,” the basement of a house in Rosedale, Queens. Rosedale had been marsh and farmland before the area was developed with basic duplex houses that shared a common wall. For some three decades, it was an Italian and Jewish middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood that bordered Long Island’s higher income Valley Stream on one end and the racially depressed Laurelton and Springfield Gardens on the other.
    Vail was aware that during the past dozen years Rosedale had been experiencing white flight; once blacks began buying in the neighborhood, whites started selling—all out of fear that their home values would drop precipitously.
    It now had a large Jamaican population. A friend had recommended the area, and as long as it was safe and uneventful, it would serve as an address where she could throw her stuff, a short-term, very affordable arrangement until she made enough money to get her own place, even buy something. Doing it this way, she would be able to put cash in the bank and have a cushion if the need arose. A rookie New York City cop’s salary barely covered the