Free Predator by Patricia Cornwell

the real case, the trigger-happy daughter is facedown in a pool of blood on the living-room floor. She was shot three times, once in the abdomen, twice in the chest, and he thinks about the way she was dressed when she killed her daddy while he was on the toilet and then put on an act in front of the police before pulling out her pistol again. She died barefoot, in a pair of cutoff blue jeans and a T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing panties or a bra. He clicks to her autopsy photographs, not as interested in what she looked like with a Y incision as in how she looked naked on the cold, steel table. She was only fifteen when the police shot her dead, and he thinks of Jenny.
         He looks up, smiles at her from the other side of his desk. She has been sitting patiently, waiting for instructions. He opens a desk drawer and pulls out a Glock nine-millimeter, pulls back the slide to make sure the chamber is clear, drops out the magazine and pushes the pistol across the desk to her.
         “You ever shot a gun before?” he asks his newest teacher’s pet.
         She has the cutest turned-up nose and huge eyes the color of milk chocolate, and he imagines her naked and dead like the girl in the scene photograph on his screen.
         “I grew up with guns,” she says. “What’s that you’re looking at, if you don’t mind my asking.”
         “E-mail,” he says, and not telling the truth has never bothered him.
         He rather likes not telling the truth, likes it far more than dislikes it. Truth isn’t always truth. What is true? What is true is what he decides is true. It’s all a matter of interpretation. Jenny cranes her head to get a better look at what’s on his screen.
         “Cool. People e-mail entire case files to you.”
         “Sometimes,” he says, clicking to a different photograph, and the color printer behind his desk starts up. “What we’re doing is classified,” he then says. “Can I trust you?”
         “Of course, Dr. Amos. I completely understand classified. If I didn’t, I’m training for the wrong profession.”
         A color photograph of the dead girl in a pool of blood on the living-room floor slides into the printer tray. Joe turns around to get it, looks it over, hands it to her.
         “That’s going to be you this afternoon,” he says.
         “I hope not literally,” she teases.
         “And this is your gun.” He looks at the Glock in front of her on the desk. “Where do you propose you hide it?”
         She looks at the photograph, not fazed by it, and asks, “Where did she hide it?”
         “You can’t see it in the photograph,” he replies. “A pocketbook, which, by the way, should have cued somebody. She finds her father dead, supposedly, calls nine-one-one, opens the door when the cops get there and has her pocketbook. She’s hysterical, never left the house, so why’s she walking around with her pocketbook?”
         “That’s what you want me to do.”
         “The pistol goes in your pocketbook. At some point, you reach in for tissues because you’re boo-hooing, and you pull the gun and start shooting.”
         “Anything else?”
         “Then you’re going to get killed. Try to look pretty.”
         She smiles. “Anything else?”
         “The way she’s dressed.” He looks at her, tries to show it in his eyes, what he wants.
         She knows.
         “I don’t have the exact same thing,” she replies, playing him a little, acting naïve.
         She’s anything but, probably been fucking since kindergarten.
         “Well, Jenny, see if you can approximate. Shorts, T-shirt, no shoes or socks.”
         “She doesn’t have on underwear, looks to me.”
         “Then there’s that.”
         “She looks like a slut.”
         “Okay. Then look like a slut,” he says.
         Jenny thinks this is very funny.
         “I mean, you are a