Free The Thrill of the Chase (Mystery & Adventure) by Jack Parker Page B

cops were taking pictures. Someone had traced a chalk outline of the woman on the floor beneath her, and plastic numbered tags were all around the room, labeling evidence. A sheet covered the lower half of the body, but left one blue–veined leg uncovered. A pillow lay next to her head, along with the shredded remains of a nightgown.
     
    Photographers were snapping photos – two from the press ( How the hell did they get here? I thought, both annoyed and impressed) and one from the Swedesboro CSI unit. Several officers were taking notes in a corner, two more were conversing out in the hall; another man was kneeling next to the body beside a paramedic, and a woman CSI lieutenant was looking over the bed behind them.
     
    When Slyder and I entered the room, she came over to greet us.
     
    "Detective Stikup," I said, shaking her hand and doing my best to sound professional. "What can you give me?"
     
    "The house is under the name Daniels," the lieutenant answered with a sigh; she didn't bother introducing herself, but I didn't really notice. "She's got a ring on her left hand, so she's married as far as we can tell, but her husband is not home. We're going to try and find him ASAP. He'll need to identify the body."
     
    "Yeah," I said softly, not really listening. "Yeah, you do that."
     
    The Daniels woman appeared perfectly normal. In fact, if I hadn't known beforehand that she was dead, I would have assumed she was just sleeping. There was no blood, no bullet–entry wounds, no marks on her neck to suggest strangulation – nothing but a few cuts and scrapes on her arms, plus severe bruising on her wrists and legs and above her left eye. If the perps had beaten her to death, there would be a lot of blood, not to mention a caved–in skull. That left suffocation or internal symptoms as the cause of death, but after my quick observation, I had already formulated my hypothesis.
     
    I blew out a breath through my nostrils and crossed my arms over my chest. "Rape."
     
    Slyder and the lieutenant looked over at me. "How do you figure?" the Chief asked me, although he seemed to have come to the same conclusion. "Maybe she just slept nude."
     
    "Little cold for that," I said pointedly. "Look at the bathrobe – and check out the bruising. You think she had some sort of self–mutilating fit? If they had just wanted her dead, they would have plugged her without a struggle and she'd still be in bed, lying in a pool of blood."
     
    I growled low in my throat, against the lump that was rising there. "They wanted some fun, so they held her arms and legs while they did their thing. Looks like she wouldn't cooperate."
     
    A man in a CSI uniform – one of the Glassboro team – nodded in agreement to what I had said. He pointed at the pillow. "We think that they suffocated her with this pillow to cover up her screams, but we'll need to investigate further back at the lab."
     
    "At our lab," I heard the lieutenant mutter.
     
    "Think they were stupid enough not to use protection?" Slyder ventured, eliciting chuckles from the other cops in the room.
     
    Ignoring them all, I crossed the room, scooped up one of the bed sheets, and dumped it on top of the dead woman, hiding her female parts from view.
     
    "We're not done the examination yet, Detective," the Glassboro cop snapped. The name on his chest read Cready, which I recognized immediately. He was their staff sergeant – probably the highest ranking officer from Chauncey's team on–site.
     
    But rank meant nothing to me, because I was a PI. I was above and beyond ranking.
     
    "You are now," I said loudly as I began looking around the room, indifferent to his protest. " I'm here. That means all activity stops and you all bow down and worship me." I turned to face Slyder. "You said that neighbors made the call?"
     
    "Yeah," he replied, hooking his thumbs in his belt. He was sending pointedly apologetic looks to the other cops in the room, and the gaze he gave me was anything but