The Kill Read Online Free

the autopsy. Appears that she bled to death, looks like one went directly into her heart chamber. Gil can give you an exact accounting of the wounds.” Gil Sparks was the coroner.
    Cohn lifted her skirt. She wore no panties. “External evidence of sexual assault.”
    He turned her head to the side. “What’s this?” he said, almost to himself.
    “What?” Against his will, Zack leaned closer.
    “It appears that a section of her hair has been cut. A good inch, right up against the scalp, with scissors.”
    “He took her hair?” Zack’s gut clenched. Sick bastard. And sick bastards didn’t stop with one victim.
    “Looks like it, unless her parents have something else to say. Maybe she cut it herself, or a friend did it . . . “ Cohn’s voice trailed off. He didn’t believe what he was saying any more than Zack did.
    “Shit,” Zack said, rubbing a hand over his face. He was about to ask another question when Cohn mumbled, “What’s this?”
    “What?” Zack asked, thankful that Cohn had closed the girl’s eyes.
Rest in peace
.
    “See these marks?”
    Cohn was pointing to the girl’s forearm. At first, Zack couldn’t see anything. Then a few small dots, like odd-shaped commas, became evident under the light. “I have no idea what made these marks,” Cohn said. “I’ll talk to Gil about it. There’s at least a dozen small punctures, but they were definitely made postmortem. Perhaps from something used to transport her, but I’m only guessing.”
    At least it was something that could tie the killer to his victim.
    “Anything else you can tell me before I go see her parents?”
    “Only what you’re thinking.”
    Serial killer
. One victim, and already Zack feared the worst. But it was the manner of display, the stab wounds, and the missing hair that told him the killer would strike again. “I hope we’re wrong.”
    “We’re not.”
    Zack walked away from the scene, leaving the victim in Doug Cohn’s sensitive and capable hands.
    Nine-year-old Jenny Benedict had been missing for three days and her mother had feared her ex-husband had taken her. They’d found Paul Benedict yesterday, working in a steel mill in Pennsylvania, unaware that his daughter was even missing. He’d been avoiding his wife’s calls because he was late on his child support.
    Zack called for a counselor to meet him at the Benedict house. A kid was dead. He thought it couldn’t get worse.
    He was wrong.
    Three weeks later another blonde girl went missing, and Zack knew for certain he had a serial killer on his hands.
     
CHAPTER 3
     
    Freedom. At last. His idiot lawyer, Miles Bledsoe, actually did what he said he was going to do, and Brian was now a free man.
    Brian Harrison Hall—shit, he
hated
his middle name, but that’s what the dumb-asses in the press repeated in every article about him. And the judge at his sentencing.
    Brian Harrison Hall, you’ve been found guilty by a jury of your peers and are sentenced to death in the electric chair, pursuant to
. . . some stupid law.
    He thought he’d never feel as good as he did three months after he was locked up. Because three months after he went in, the California court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. Fucking
cruel and unusual punishment
. Damn straight. Especially since he was innocent.
    Innocent, dammit!
    But no one believed him. They believed that little bitch, that little girl who said she saw him.
    And that fascist cop, the one who came to each of his parole hearings and went over how he “found” the evidence in his truck. Bull-fucking-shit. The cop couldn’t have found anything in his truck unless he put it there himself. Brian hadn’t killed that girl.
    Brian had been at home when the girl was killed. He had nothing to do with it. And now the bitch who squealed and the cop who lied were being shown for the fucking
hypocrite liars
they were.
    It felt so damn good to breathe free air.
    Then why did his heart hammer so hard? Why did his hands tremble?