Read Blood on the Sun (CSI: NY) for Free Online Page A

clearing beyond the bushes, Sylvester saw the bicycle, front wheel twisted, handlebars turned almost around. He walked carefully for a few steps and then stopped, not wanting to contaminate the scene.
    Beyond the bicycle lay a crumpled bloody white shirt next to a scattering of clothes—underwear, denim jeans, socks and a single sneaker. He scanned the ground looking for a second sneaker, but couldn’t see it. Nor could he see the boy’s body, but that could have been carried deeper into the trees or buried and covered with leaves.
    Sylvester backed away, took his phone from his hip and called in what he had found. He was told, though he didn’t have to be, to cordon off the crime scene.
     
    Mac, who was still at the Vorhees residence when the call came in, arrived at the scene less than ten minutes later. Danny had already headed back to the lab with the samples they had taken.
    “We start searching for the body?” asked Detective Defenzo at his side.
    Defenzo felt the warm moist sweat under his arms and on his forehead. It wasn’t even noon and his underpants were clinging and itching against his groin.
    Mac didn’t answer. He scanned the scene—bike, scattered clothes, shoe, ground. What he didn’t yet see was the boy’s second shoe and the glasses he always wore.
    Mac opened his kit, pulled on his gloves and handed a second pair to Defenzo. Find the body, find the blood, find footprints, fingerprints, hair, anything.
    But there was something else to look for. Mac was not ready to give it a name. The ground cover of leaves, hundreds, perhaps thousands, would make the search more difficult, but Mac was always suspicious when it was too easy.
    He stepped forward and began his search, watching where he stepped, carefully reaching back to remove an insect from his neck, imagining a frightened, pale, skinny twelve-year-old boy standing nude in this dark tiny clearing.
    “Look for the boy,” said Mac. “Watch where you step. Touch nothing.”
    Defenzo nodded and headed into the trees to his left.
    Mac took photographs, knelt at each piece of evidence and examined it with a portable microscope that looked nothing like the one Sherlock Holmes used. The one in Mac’s hand looked like a small metallic pocket-sized eyeglass case. He went from item to item, sometimes focusing the built-in tilting light on something he enlarged by almost one hundred times.
    For the next fifteen minutes, Mac gently picked up leaves, examined them, and bagged them.

3
    T HE LARGE, DARKLY TINTED WINDOWS were emblazoned with the words T HE J EWISH L IGHT OF C HRIST in neatly printed large gold letters. On the door were the words E NTER . A LL A RE W ELCOME .
    On the awning, down in front of both windows, were the faint remnants of the words G OLDMAN’S D RY C LEANING AND P ROFESSIONAL T AILORING . The awning provided little relief from the angry sun.
    Aiden and Stella had entered hoping to find air-conditioning. They found only a tired ceiling fan grinding away. Meanwhile, Flack had gone with Yosele Glick to her home to see if he could find names, leads, something to go on.
    Inside the store fourteen chairs were in a half circle facing the door. All of the chairs were occupied. Seven men, seven women. The clean-shaven men in black all wore yarmulkes. The women all had their heads covered.
    It struck both Aiden and Stella that these people were young, the oldest a man seated in the middle who might have been forty at the most.
    The room was late-morning hot. The ancient ceiling fan turned slowly, making a tired scratchy sound.
    “We’ve been expecting you,” said the older man.
    He was dark, lean, with thinning hair, a slightly pitted face and deep blue eyes that stayed focused on the two CSIs.
    “Joshua?” asked Stella.
    “I am,” the man said. “And this is our congregation.”
    “All of it?” Stella asked.
    “We will grow in numbers, faith and determination,” he said. “There are fourteen million Jews in the