Free Beg for Mercy by Jami Alden

over a year ago, and now they were expecting their first child. Like any cop’s wife, Karen got nervous every time Petersen walked out the door. As they walked back to the abandoned trailer, Cole listened to Petersen’s side of the conversation, the way she tried to keep the frustration out of her voice as she assured her wife she’d be home as soon as humanly possible.
    Cole didn’t envy his partner. The few relationships he’d sustained over the course of his career had been full of similar complaints about how much he worked and angry phone calls demanding he come home.
    Unlike Petersen, who believed she could have some kind of work/life balance in this job, Cole had acknowledged early on that he was more committed to his job than he ever could be to a woman, and that being the case, it was probably best to keep himself unattached. It sure as hell made long nights like this easier to endure. It was no big deal to work till 4:00 a.m. when you had nothing but an empty house to go home to.
    The crime scene buzzed with activity. In the time he’d been questioning Devany, the coroner’s truck had arrived, joining the ambulance and paramedics who’d been dispatched before it was clear their presence was unnecessary. Cole donned latex gloves and slipped disposable booties over his shoes and entered the trailer. A flash of light came from down the hall. The crime scene technician was in there taking pictures.
    He and Petersen entered the bedroom and were greeted by the coroner, Dr. Mark Pineta. “Based on the core temperature and the tackiness of the blood, I’d say she waskilled sometime after ten p.m.,” Pineta said, not wasting any time on small talk.
    “Devany didn’t miss it by much,” he murmured.
    Pineta nodded curtly. He was a short man in his early fifties, his Filipino heritage evident in his complexion and dark, almond-shaped eyes. Pineta had been the King County coroner for over fifteen years. As such, he’d seen just about every type of dead body imaginable, and now he delivered the preliminary facts of the woman’s death with the same level of emotion he would have given to reading a laundry list.
    “The victim died of exsanguination, caused by the cutting of her jugular and carotid.”
    Another flash popped, illuminating the savage slice the killer had made along the right side of the girl’s spine. “That wound was made antemortem, as were the cigarette burns on her breasts and stomach. The ones on the buttocks, however,” he said, “were delivered postmortem. I’m confident the autopsy will reveal other pertinent details,” he said meaningfully.
    Cole nodded. He felt only a mild sense of revulsion. His first dead body had made him puke and haunted him for days. The years had toughened him, and now he was able to take the facts, the sights, even the smells of death, and file them away. Rather than dwelling on the horror, he’d learned to use them as tools to help solve the case. To an outsider, he knew he looked callous, jaded.
Robocop,
Megan had once teased him. But he knew the hardening was part of becoming a better cop.
    Still, it was never easy to see a vic close up. Particularly one who had been so savagely brutalized.
    “And this wasn’t the first time someone cut her,” Pinetacontinued, indicating a set of marks across the woman’s right shoulder blade. There was a pattern of raised, pale scars—several years old by his guess—and on closer look, Cole could see that it was a crescent moon surrounded by four tiny stars.
    “Intentional scarification,” Cole said, making a note. While tattoos were now as common as pierced ears, the average tattoo parlor didn’t offer the more extreme alternative. If they could pin down the artist who did this, maybe that would lead to something.
    Cole did a quick sketch of the mark in his notebook and continued his examination of the victim. She hadn’t been moved from the bed. She was on her knees, her legs spread at an awkward angle. Her chest