Free Set the Dark on Fire by Jill Sorenson

once, good had prevailed over evil, and the most innocent explanation would turn out to be the right one.
    The county medical examiner was long gone, so he had to deal with Barry Snell, the funeral home director. In addition to being Garrett’s father, Barry was the mayor of Tenaja Falls and its coroner when no suspicious circumstances were evident. Having already been introduced to him, Luke knew that unlike his son, Barry had an upbeat temperament and perpetual smile. Luke wasn’t sure which man he trusted less.
    “Official ruling is accidental death,” Barry said as he opened the door to the morgue’s side entrance, his gentle grin belying the seriousness of his words. Luke wondered if Barry was capable of a suitably grim expression. “But Dr. Hoyt remarked upon a few anomalies.”
    Luke followed him to the autopsy room. “Like what?”
    “Take a look,” Barry said, ushering him inside.
    Luke had seen his share of dead bodies, mostly drunks and vagrants, old men who had succumbed to illness, drug and alcohol abuse, or the elements. He wasn’t a homicide detective, however, and the only time he’d been in this particular situation, standing over the corpse of a young woman in a morgue, he’d been identifying her body.
    The memory was painful, to say the least, and carried with it a thousand regrets. Though he’d tried to, he hadn’t been able to save her. Leticia Nuñez had been another casualty of Vegas, the city that chewed up beautiful women and spit them out.
    Luke pushed the disturbing recollection aside, because the victim before him deserved his full attention. He vowed not to fail her, too.
    Yesenia Montes was lying on her stomach on a stainless steel table, her head turned to the side, sightless eyes staring forward. Under the light of the high-powered lamp above her, he could see a number of broad, vertical lines on her naked back, shoulders, and buttocks.
    “They’re lividity marks,” Barry explained, thumbing through a three-ring binder.
    Luke was no forensic expert, but he knew such marks were common postmortem artifacts. A body often bore signs of whatever it had been resting against, or upon, in the moments or hours after death.
    Stepping forward, he studied the darkened bands of flesh. They were widely spaced and evenly distributed, obviously not a result of the lion’s attack or caused by the soft dirt she’d been stretched out on. He frowned, guessing such marks couldn’t be found anywhere in nature, and feeling as though he should recognize their origin.
    “What else?” he asked, his pulse accelerating.
    Barry gave a good-natured shrug. “The doctor said he’d never viewed a victim of a lion before, but the wounds were consistent with what he’d researched. Trauma to the spinal cord and cardiac arrest were the primary causes of death.”
    “Hmm,” Luke replied, wondering about the lack of blood.
    “Says here the lion had a broken tooth,” Barry added, flashing his own pearly whites.
    “Really?”
    “One of the punctures left less of an impression than the others,” he said, closing the binder. “Dr. Hoyt made a dentistry mold.”
    “What about DNA?”
    “He took a sample from the bite area, in case there was saliva. And several swabs from …” He cleared his throat. “Other places.”
    Luke glanced at the body on the table. With so many cuts and scrapes on her battered form, it was difficult to determine whether the woman had also been the victim of sexual assault in the days or hours before her death. Noting the pink stains on Barry’s rounded cheeks, Luke decided to discuss that possibility with the medical examiner. “When will Dr. Hoyt be available for a phone consultation?”
    “Tomorrow morning.”
    Luke sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. There was one more thing he had to do before he went off duty, and it was the worst job imaginable. “Who’s her next of kin?”
    Her house was unnaturally dark, quiet, and empty.
    It was also stiflingly hot, so Shay made