Cut to the Quick Read Online Free

burbled into a shallow bed of smooth white pebbles.
    Vining’s eyes flashed on the bodies and quickly moved to the fountain, unable to process the mound of body parts at once, as if easing into a cold swimming pool.
    Kissick cannonballed in and moved closer.
    She steeled herself and took a good look. She was relieved. Thank God I can’t see their faces .
    Once she had looked, it was impossible to tear her eyes away. It was like trying to figure out an optical illusion. Was she looking at a goblet or two women in profile facing each other?
    In the background, the fountain sounded like a babbling brook.
    Kissick broke his trance and marched across the room, flicking off a switch on the wall, taking a guess. The water stopped. The room fell into a suitable silence.
    He returned to the bodies and dabbed on more Vicks. He held the container out to her and she did the same.
    “There’s just one word for this. Sick .”
    She was surprised that she felt slightly light-headed. The menthol aroma of the Vicks didn’t help. Talking did. “When I rolled out to my first homicide, Bill Gavigan told me, ‘Think of them like dolls. They’re just dolls.’ ”
    “That work for you?”
    “No.”
    “Me neither.”
    “But I have to say, I’m having a hard time processing that these are people.”
    The bodies had been arranged with childlike whimsy, the combinations displaying adolescent prurience.
    Lauren Richards still wore tight jeans. Her blouse and brassiere had been cut open, exposing her breasts. One foot was bare. A high-heeled sandal matching the shoe lost in the entryway dangled from one foot. Her body was intact, resting on its back against Mercer. Her head and neck were twisted at unnatural angles. Her face was pressed into his crotch.
    Mercer was nude. His clothes had been cut off and strewn around the floor and atop the furniture. His limbs had been hacked into pieces. Nothing was where it was supposed to be or logically oriented. His severed head was laid into the V of her crotch. One of his legs, dissected at the knee, was bunkered up to his left shoulder. His right hand was butted against the ankle and rested atop her head, as if holding it against his genitals.
    “Female’s neck looks broken,” Vining said. “The M.O. between the two victims is completely different.”
    Not using the victims’ names was a way for the detectives to keep emotional distance.
    “There was rage against the male,” Kissick said. “Overkill. The mutilation probably took place postmortem. No surgical precision. The way the skin’s chewed up, I’d guess he used a chain saw. But the female’s murder looks efficient.More like an execution. I don’t know who he did first, but I don’t think she was the target.”
    “Where’s the dog?” Vining pointed at a thick braid of multicolored string on one of the white couches. “He’s a big one, based on the size of that toy.”
    She picked up a woman’s wallet, lying open on the floor. She read the driver’s license. “Lauren Richards. Caribeth Avenue, South Pasadena. Credit cards are here. Cash is gone.”
    She looked through photographs encased in plastic sleeves, stopping at one of Lauren with a boy of about ten and his younger sister, who looked to be seven or eight. The three of them were wearing red sweaters and were posed in front of a Christmas tree. She slipped it from the sleeve and shook her head.
    “She’s got two kids. They’re wondering where she is.” Vining hoped they never found out the details, how the psycho had snapped Lauren’s neck like vermin that had invaded his party. At some point, when they were adults, they would seek the truth, wrongly assuming that knowing would bring peace.
    There was evil in the world. It left young children motherless and with grief that time would numb but never obliterate. Thinking time healed all was a feel-good delusion. A fantasy of those who’d never endured profound tragedy.
    Vining returned the wallet to where she’d