Gallagher Justice. Amanda Stevens

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      Twenty years later, that image was still with him, at every crime scene, in every investigation. The knowledge that her killer was out there, unpunished and unrepentant, still kept him awake at night.

      Maybe he was getting old, Doggett reflected. Dwelling on the past because his life hadn’t turned out the way he wanted. But to hell with it, because now he had another murder to worry about, another killer to find. That was one thing about being a cop. Always plenty of bad guys out there to occupy his mind.

      He pulled to the curb and parked behind one of the squad cars. The dense fog softened the flashing lights, and at such an early hour, the scene was still relatively quiet. No spectators to be kept at bay. No news cameras, yet. It was an almost surreal calm, as if he were still caught in one of his dreams, Doggett thought. But when he got out of his car, the scratchy transmission of a squad unit radio grounded him firmly back in reality.

      He followed voices down the alley, showing his identification to the young patrolman manning the perimeter. Then he stepped under the crime scene tape and glanced around.

      The buildings that rose on either side of the alley were several stories high, stark and graffiti-tagged, with only a few windows that overlooked the alley. Several blocks over on Rush Street, bars and clubs would still be rocking with the young and the hip who were looking to have a good time or score a few drugs, but the immediate crime scene vicinity was a no-man’s-land, an area trapped between the affluence and glamour of the Gold Coast and the misery and desperation of the projects.

      Most of the buildings housed small offices and mom-and-pop businesses that had closed up shop hours ago. Even the cleaning crews had long since gone home. The potential for witnesses was pretty much nil. Doggett wondered if the killer was familiar enough with the area to have planned it that way, or if he’d just gotten lucky.

      A few feet from where he stood, a crime scene tech photographed the body from several different angles while another narrated as he videotaped. Deeper inside the alley, flashlight beams bobbed up and down as officers searched the ground for evidence.

      The victim laying in front of a trash bin, but in the semicircle of officers and detectives that had formed around the dead woman, Doggett could see nothing but a spill of blond hair. He felt his gut tighten as he mentally braced himself for what else he might see.

      Meredith Sweeney, a petite, dark-haired assistant medical examiner, glanced up as he approached, and when she nodded, two detectives from Doggett’s unit, Jay Krychek and Skip Vreeland, glanced over their shoulders. Krychek immediately turned back to the body, but Skip nodded and spoke. He was a tall, thin man with a grim expression and stooped, narrow shoulders that made his rumpled suit jackets constantly ride up in the back.

      Krychek was partial to the gangster look—dark shirts, light ties, and in the daytime, he was never seen without his badass cop sunglasses.

      “Yo, Doggett, how’s it going?” Skip greeted him.

      “Not too bad.”

      Krychek turned back around to Doggett. “Took your sweet time getting here.”

      Doggett shrugged. “Fog’s a bitch out there.”

      “Tell me about it. Playing hell with Forensics. They won’t be able to find shit out here.” Krychek stepped back, making room for Doggett. “Take a look.”

       “It’s bad, kid. Blood all over the place. You don’t want to look.”

      The woman was lying on her back, eyes closed, her expression almost peaceful. To Doggett’s surprise, there really wasn’t much blood. On first glance, she appeared to be sleeping, but someone who looked like her wouldn’t be snoozing in an alley. She was beautiful, a real knockout. Blond. Young. No more than twenty, if that.

      Damn shame, Doggett thought.

      There was a dark stain on the pavement beneath her head, and her hair was matted with dried blood. She wore a light dusting of makeup—eye shadow, mascara, pale pink lip gloss—that didn’t detract from her natural beauty. The black dress she wore was short and slinky, her shoes spiked and sexy. Expensive and seductive clothing designed to attract the attention of the opposite sex.

      By contrast her jewelry was simple and unpretentious—tiny diamond studs in her earlobes and a pearl ring on the third finger of her right hand. The presence of the jewelry seemed to rule out robbery as a motive.

      “She was shot in the back of the head,” Krychek told him.

      “Do we know who she is?” Doggett asked.

      Krychek shook his head. “Not yet. CSU found an evening bag in the Dumpster that we think belonged to her. The wallet was missing, but they found a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper inside a gold compact. We’re checking the cross directory now to see if we can come up with a name.”

      Doggett’s gaze was still on the body. “Who found her?”

      “Wino by the name of Teddy Scranton. Says this alley is on his regular beat. He hangs around Restaurant Row until midnight or so, then heads over here where it’s quieter. When he spotted her, he walked down to the corner store and had the night clerk call 911. We’ve got him in one of the squads right now, trying to sober him up with coffee and food, but I don’t think he’s going to be much help. Claims he didn’t see anything.”

      “Could he have been the one who stole her wallet?” Meredith asked. “Somebody turned her over. Maybe he was looking for her purse.”

      “Don’t think so.” Krychek ran his hand down his tie. “If he lifted the wallet, why hang around and call 911? He would have hightailed it out of here ASAP. He got what he wanted for his good deed—a free meal and a little attention.”

      A cynical observation, but Doggett figured Krychek was probably right on the money.

      Doggett stood with his hands behind his back, a habit he’d picked up at the academy so as not to inadvertently contaminate the crime scene. When the tech gave him the go ahead, he donned surgical gloves and squatted beside the body, still careful not to touch anything as he examined the wound in her head.

      “Looks like a .45,” he murmured.

      “She was kneeling when he plugged her,” Meredith said.

      “Any other injuries?”

      “Ligature marks around her wrists. He had her tied up at some point.”

      “What about the exit wound?”

      Meredith shook her head. “The bullet’s still lodged somewhere in the body cavity. I’ll find it when I open her up.”

      “Any idea about time of death?”

      “Liver temp would be more accurate, but judging from the thermal scan, I’d say two hours, tops. But that’s just an educated guess.”

      It always was. Even with modern forensics, the most reliable way of pinpointing time of death was still to find the last person who’d seen the victim alive, other than the killer, of course, but that wasn’t always possible. Doggett glanced at his watch. If Meredith’s guess was accurate, that would put time of death around midnight.

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