Read Blown Away for Free Online

he’d noticed the exchange. “I’m back,” she said. “I saw—”
    â€œNot yet,” Branch said, eyes everywhere, planting his shoes in others’ footprints. “The victim isn’t going anywhere. So go slow. Weigh everything. Weather, for instance. It hasn’t rained in weeks. What does that tell you about, say, tire tracks? Then tell me what you see.”
    Emily nodded, resumed scanning.
    The sky was azure. The breeze smelled sweet as towels from the dryer. The cheerful chirps of robins and cardinals were undercut by the eerie moan from the galvanized steel fence. The chain-link aria rose and fell with the breeze, prickling the hairs on her neck. Purple shadows from the links formed a quilt of triangles on the crime scene investigators swarming the weedy ground inside. The fence line was clogged with a winter’s worth of debris—yellow newspapers, blown tires, cracked transmissions, trash bags, beer cans, lumps of desiccated somethings, paper plates, a harvest gold refrigerator door, two sump pumps, and a Michael Jordan Space Jam cup so faded from the sun Michael was white. Tire ruts in the surrounding cornfield indicated the convertible had left the road, circled through the crushed stalks of last fall’s harvest, and freight-trained through the back fence. The impact ripped a jagged hole in the links, and the car came to rest atop the black granite tombstone. The ruts, she noted, were shallow because the ground was hard from lack of rain.
    Twenty minutes later she’d absorbed everything she could and rejoined Branch. They traded observations as they ducked into the cemetery, careful not to cut themselves on the broken links. “Helluva desecration,” he murmured.
    Emily nodded. The cemetery contained the remains of the shovel-faced farmers who fled Vermont after the American Revolution to wrest life from the wilderness. The plants she was now trampling were the great-great-great-grandchildren of a vast heartland prairie tamed into row crops and, now, subdivisions. Pioneer cemeteries were scattered like diamonds around Naperville. This one was the most isolated. Where she’d been with Jack, the most prominent. She swung her attention to the car with the cops with the corpse with the flies.
    â€œWatch out,” Branch warned.
    Emily froze, looked down. She’d nearly stepped on the tiny boot peeking from the animal burrow in the milkweeds. “Sorry,” she said, guiding her foot to a less harmful spot.
    â€œMurder scenes are overwhelming,” he said, waving it off. “Easy to get distracted.”
    Emily stuck the cold cigar in her mouth. “You don’t,” she said, relighting as several deputies walked past. “Why? Experience?”
    Branch smiled. “Fear. When I was at my first murder scene as a new detective, I roamed that ground like a full-back. Gonna find me a clue, yessir, gonna make me a big name. I did all right. I stepped on a shard of glass. It was hidden in the weeds, just like that boot.” He rolled his eyes. “Turned out to be the murder weapon—the guy’s throat was slashed—and I’d crunched it into a jillion pieces. Destroyed its value as evidence.”
    â€œOw. What happened?”
    â€œThe killer confessed, so I didn’t get busted back to patrol for my mistake. I treated the next crime scene like a mine-field, where one little misstep could make me a soprano. Still do.” He flagged a CSI. “My keen police instincts tell me this boot’s too new to be garbage. Is our corpus delicti missing one?”
    â€œNah, it’s wearing both shoes,” the CSI grunted as she walked over. “Geez, maybe you found a clue or something.”
    â€œFirst time for everything.” Branch made introductions. The CSI nodded, then whistled across the graveyard. “Yo! Commander! Take a look!”
    A giant in a tailored charcoal suit trotted over. From the road