Free Dead Lies by Cybele Loening Page A

evidence where no one will find it?’ ” She paused and her forehead furled in thought. “I’d have done it at a rest stop on I-95. Easy in, easy out. Plus, garbage must get hauled out of those places daily. Nobody would ever have found the stuff.”
    “Right, Anna,” said Kreeger. “I’d have done the same thing. This guy could be local.” He looked around, as if looking for a giant arrow in the sky pointing to the killer’s house. If only it was that easy.
    “All right then, let’s get a team out here,” he said, feeling just a bit guilty that the Crime Scene Unit would have to put in a few more hours of work before they could get home to their families. Merry f-ing Christmas. “Hopefully we’ll get some prints off those dumpsters,” he added.
    “I’ll call it in,” said De Luca, heading back to the car.
    A picture of the killer was beginning to form in Kreeger’s head. Wearing an extra-large jacket and a size 12 shoe, he’d be a big guy, six feet or taller. From the way he’d cased the Vance’s’ house and not been seen by the neighbors, he was both careful and unobtrusive. He was also smart enough to use a suppressor to muffle the sound of his gun and to wear gloves so as not to leave prints. Yet he wasn’t quite smart enough to turn off Serena’s cell phone before he dumped it.
    He was also a sociopath. You’d have to be to murder two people with precision and impunity.
    Was this a contract killing, Kreeger wondered, or was the guy a lone wolf with a psychotic fixation—or personal grudge?
    Anything was possible at this point.
    Pulling off his gloves one finger at a time, Kreeger widened his visual sweep beyond the parking lot. He found what he was looking for about a hundred yards south of Nickel’s. It was an Apple Saving’s Bank with a drive-through window, and from this distance he could just about make out a pair of security cameras on either side of the glass.
    The veteran cop felt like a man poised to crank the lever of a fifty-dollar slot machine seconds before the matching lemons fell into place. He’d won sixteen hundred bucks in Atlantic City last year, and the feeling had been the same as those moments throughout his career when he realized he’d cracked a case. If their luck continued to hold out, that grainy piece of video footage would reveal the killer at work.

CHAPTER 7

    I N THE STILL-DARK, EARLY MORNING HOURS OF DECEMBER 26TH, ANNA finally exited the station house and headed for her car. She couldn’t wait to get home and take off her shoes. Her bunions were aching. All she wanted to do right now was change into her P.J.s and soak her feet in Epsom salts. A hot bath always seemed to help.
    Settling onto the icy cold seat, she fumbled for her keys and thought about how, this time yesterday, kids everywhere were waking their parents up so they could open presents. They’d have torn into brightly colored boxes, leaving piles of wrapping paper and ribbons everywhere. Her thoughts turned to the family she’d met last night and wondered if they’d gotten to sleep at all. She felt a pang of sympathy. She knew what the first morning after a loss felt like.
    Spotting Paul heading to his car, she rolled down the window and stuck out her head. “You doing okay, Paul?” she called, referring to the ass-kicking the Chief had given him for his earlier screw-up. But at least Paul had kept his job.
    Her young colleague didn’t want to talk about it. “I think I’m gonna crash at my parents’ house,” he said. “I’m so tired I don’t think I can make it home.”
    “Say hi to them for me.” The Fishers were warm people who’d invited her to dinner when she’d moved to town and assured her she was welcome in their home any time.
    “I will.”
    She started to close the window but stopped. “Say, Paul, how about we go out for beers this weekend? I hear there’s a good cover band playing at McMurphy’s.”
    “Sounds great, Anna,” he said enthusiastically.
    She had a