Free Bare Bones by Debra Dunbar

placed one hand under Amanda’s shoulder. She cautiously turned the body over and we all leaned in. There, on the back of Amanda’s neck, was a large puncture wound.
    “But I thought you said she died from having her neck broken?” I stared at the puncture wound, knowing that it would have killed someone within seconds.
    “I did. This was postmortem. Very soon postmortem. Soon enough that a few heartbeats pushed out a good bit of blood. Gravity did the rest.”
    I didn’t get it. “They must have happened almost simultaneously. Maybe the killer intended to stab her and broke her neck in the process?”
    She shrugged. “Maybe. I get the odd feeling that he was trying to drain as much blood out of her as possible after her death.”
    “Like a deer?” Norwicki choked out. His face was full of horror. “Like draining a deer to prep for butchering?”
    “Well, he didn’t eviscerate her or hang her upside down. Unless he was interrupted before he could get to that, I doubt he was treating her as a trophy kill or potential dinner.”
    How these detectives went about their jobs every day, I had no idea. Actually I had no idea how this M.E. woman managed. I’d seen a man who had been skinned, and now this? There really were some sickos out there in the world.
    There was something nagging at the back of my mind about this whole thing, but I just couldn’t grasp it. “Do you think the killers were interrupted?” I asked the woman. “I’m assuming she died this morning and was found pretty soon after she died?”
    She nodded. “She couldn’t have been dead long. The boyfriend had spent the night and gone to work, but had to come back before he was more than a few miles away to grab some papers he’d forgotten. When he found her, she was still warm. He says he heard a door slam, then looked out to see a man running through the backyard and over the fence.”
    I couldn’t imagine running home to retrieve papers and finding my lover dead on the floor. For a brief second I envisioned Dario’s reaction to me naked and murdered in my bedroom. He wouldn’t have called 911. No, the vampire would have taken it upon himself to find my killer and deliver a very slow and painful death. Of course, he wouldn’t have found my body until nightfall. And he wasn’t my boyfriend.
    What a weird fantasy to be having at a crime scene. I shook my head and tried to rid my mind of all thoughts of Dario. “And the boyfriend thinks the brother did it?”
    Tremelay cleared his throat. I jumped, giving him an apologetic glance. Crap. When did I take over the investigation? I was along for the ride. This was a human-on-human crime. Not my thing.
    “We’re searching for the backpack,” he told me. “The boyfriend says that the brother had been living here for the last two years ever since their parents died in a car accident. Seems the stereotypical parasite of a younger sibling, sponging off his business-savvy and successful older sister. They had a lot of arguments. Amanda asked him to move out last night. Boyfriend says he was relieved because the brother was a constant source of tension in the house.”
    I could imagine. I headed for the bedroom door. “Mind if I check his bedroom?”
    Tremelay put out a hand. “No, the techs are in there now. If you want to nose around, it needs to wait until we’re done.”
    “Detective!” A voice shouted up from downstairs. “In the garage. We’ve found something.”
    Tremelay ran, me right after him. Norwicki had done a moment of indecisive back and forth, then stayed with the body. As we tore through the kitchen and into the garage we saw two officers. One held a backpack, what appeared to be bloody untanned leather spilling from the top. The other stood by a giant white cooler. I craned my neck and saw what appeared to be a side of beef inside the cooler, packed with ice and water.
    What the heck? I was seriously having a déjà vu moment here.
    “Is that…is that a human skin?”