The Killing Vision Read Online Free Page B

lightning
continued to flash, brilliant bursts of light that showed the sky to be a
whirling, boiling gray mass.
    * * *
    10:45 AM
    “All right, so explain this to me again.”
    Scotty swiped a sweaty fan of gray hair off his
forehead and laid a computer-printed photograph on top of the clutter on his
desk.  “This is a microscopic picture of the McElvoy girl’s skin cells.  The
tissue is damaged.  Not in a normal way.  This is how cells look after a body
has been subjected to extremely cold temperatures.  The kind of cells we find
when somebody’s frozen to death, after the cells have died and then thawed.”
    Halloran shot a glance at Chapman, then looked back
at Scotty.  “But the temperature hasn’t been below sixty probably since she
disappeared.”
    “I know.”
    Chapman took the picture of the cells from Halloran
and studied it.  The reddish-pink ovals were ringed with rough brown outlines. 
“So are you saying that somebody killed this girl, kept her body frozen, and
then just dumped her in the river a couple of days ago?”
    “So it would seem.”
    “For what purpose?”
    Scott shrugged.  “Who knows?”
    Halloran blew out a breath and reached for his
cigarettes.
    “You know you can’t smoke in here, Mike,” said
Scotty.
    “Come on,” Halloran said, cramming the pack back
into his shirt pocket, “you’re stressing me out here.  Don’t you have anything else
that might help us?”
    Scotty shook his head.  “I wish I had more.  There’s
not even anything under her fingernails.  They’ve been scraped.  Probably by
whoever killed her.”
    Chapman leaned forward.  “Any prints from where she
was strangled?”
    “No.  Perp wore gloves, apparently.  I tried to
determine the size of his hands from the bruises, but that was inconclusive.”
    “What about DNA?” asked Halloran.  “Any saliva? 
Surely there’s blood or semen.”
    “Nothing.”  He stopped.
    “What?”
    Scotty cleared his throat.  “She was violated with
some object.  Something blunt and wooden.  There were splinters in the vaginal
walls.  It was done after she was dead.”
    Chapman blew out a sigh.  Halloran glanced at him,
then stared above Scotty’s head at the anatomical charts on the wall.  “Do you
think that this guy kept her for a while so he could…”  He couldn’t bring
himself to say what he was imagining.
    “Yes,” Scotty said without hesitation.  “That’s
exactly what I think.”
    Halloran rubbed his dry lips, wanting— needing —a
smoke.  “Holy Christ.”
    * * *
    11:35 AM
    Marla sat at the kitchen table, staring out the
screen door to the back yard, across the overgrown field, to the woods beyond. 
Before her sat a full, untouched cup of lukewarm coffee.  Beside it a small
piece of notepaper lay unfolded displaying a penciled phone number.  On top of
the paper, holding it flat, was Wade’s Smith & Wesson thirty-eight
revolver, fully loaded.
    She had found the paper accidentally this morning
while doing the laundry, routinely checking pockets as she always did.  She had
pulled out the note and laid it in the stack with the coins and other objects
she had found in Wade’s and Derek’s clothes, not really paying attention to it
until after she had started the washer and began sorting through the discarded
items.  There was almost a dollar in change, some wadded gum wrappers, a
crumpled pack of cigarettes, Wade’s container of Skoal he was always
misplacing, and the note.
    She unfolded the note and stared at it for a
second.  555-8344 Missy.  A girl’s writing.  At first, she thought she
must be confused, that the note had come from one of Derek’s pockets.  But she
remembered pulling it from Wade’s work pants.  She smoothed it out on top of
the dryer.  Missy. 
    At first she was numb, trying to decipher it like it
was some secret code.  And when she realized it was a phone number, she felt
the first sparks of hurt and anger.  But not surprise.
    She carried the