Free Sympathy For The Devil by Asha King Page B

involved tended to be made of real people with families and loved ones. She slowly approached as the metal tray was tugged out to reveal a body covered in a sheet.
    The redheaded woman looked up, her eyes wide and owl-like behind her oversized glasses. “You okay?”
    Tash nodded as she stepped up to the body, watching as the sheet was drawn back.
    Deborah Ann Walker didn’t look familiar. Her hair was paler now that it was dry, more strawberry blonde, and hung in tangled curls around her head. Her pale skin was freckled beneath the heavy bruising. Cuts ran across her cheekbone, a wound by her temple, her shoulders, and there was the start of a stitched-up Y-incision just above where the sheet stopped over her breasts. And ugly bruise cut around her throat.
    “She’d been tied,” the morgue assistant began. “There were definitely rope burns but something else as well, possibly a cuff of some sort that was less damaging. Some traces of leather under her fingernails, so that’s what the police are leaning toward.”
    Tash cleared her throat, her gaze locked on the woman’s closed eyelids. “Sexual assault?”
    “Yes. No trace of semen. She was possibly penetrated with a foreign object in addition.”
    Though her stomach flopped around and bile rose, Tash took deep breaths and held it together. “And she was beaten.”
    “Repeatedly. And choked, possibly to the point of unconsciousness. No prints, possibly gloves, but the killer has large hands. Definitely male. Cause of death wasn’t the water, but blunt force trauma. Lacerations and puncture wounds on her abdomen were post-mortem. Overkill, rage-like. He might not have realized she was dead before he started stabbing her.”
    It didn’t take a TV profiler to put this one together. Crime committed by a man, probably a sadist. Extreme hatred for both this woman and possibly women in general. And from what she gleaned from Harry’s notes on the Cooper-Archer murder years ago, this one was a match.
    “Any idea where the body was dumped from?” she asked, pleased that her voice didn’t shake as badly as she expected it to.
    “Not that I’ve heard, but unless they bring in samples of things to be tested, I wouldn’t know what the police are thinking.” The morgue assistant reached for the white sheet again, pausing.
    Tash nodded her agreement and glanced away as the body was covered again. She’d definitely seen enough. Ice ran through her veins, sobering her completely from anything else she’d been thinking. Guilt over upsetting Devin Archer? Screw that.
    She was going to nail this bastard with the murders once and for all.

 
     
     
    Chapter Nine
     
     
    Natasha sat in her office Monday afternoon with just the womp womp of the ceiling fan punctuating the silence. She’d had another call from a potential client that morning but put it off, scheduling him for later in the week. Malone’s old files still sat on the floor untouched—she had a million things to do but no desire to work on any of them.
    Before her sat phone logs she’d pleaded for from over in Hastings County. It turned out the phone company representative knew Malone from way back and though it required enduring forty minutes on the phone with the guy, eventually she got what she wanted: Deborah Ann Walker’s cell phone records.
    The local police likely had them as well and probably hadn’t found anything more than she did—no obvious link to Devin Archer. She was working with the theory that Walker hadn’t been randomly chosen but targeted. Archer, after all, had to know he’d be the prime suspect. He wouldn’t take a risk—he’d watch her, stalk her, and only make a move at the right time. First step was finding Walker’s routine; next was seeing how Archer intersected with it.
    Tracking down the owners of the various numbers she called, however, was turning into a nuisance. People paying to be unlisted made it really difficult to be a snoop.
    The bell over the front door