Read Deadly Messengers for Free Online Page B

before been a bustling eatery.
    He wondered what would become of the place and if it would ever recover. Eventually the murders would become folklore, but it might take several reincarnations of the business for people to forget. At the very least they would need to re-staff their kitchen. Basically the premises was screwed as any type of food establishment in the near future.
    Forensics had already been over the place. The remnants of their visit—dozens of little numbered a-form placements littered around the kitchen and dining room—told of the hive of activity in the preceding hours. It would take days to process the scene. Not that it mattered hugely. There wasn’t going to be a trial. Benson had seen to that.
    Lesson one for mass killers who want to survive: when police arrive, put down your weapon. No guarantees even then, but if you wave the weapon you’ve just used to slaughter innocent people, don’t wave said implement at armed human beings, police or not. The result rarely goes your way.
    Trip and he planned to run interviews today with the witnesses—thirty-four freaked out patrons, four wait-staff, one female owner who ended up in hospital overnight under sedation, and several passers-by who witnessed something they would never forget. By night they should have a clear picture of events.
    Preliminary interviews puzzled O’Grady. Toby Benson was unknown to the wait-staff as far as they could remember. Arriving around nine-thirty, he’d smashed in the kitchen door, then proceeded to go crazy with an axe.
    Normally these situations turned out to be an ex-employee, a spurned ex-husband of an employee, or at least someone with an axe to grind (excuse the pun). They still hadn’t found any connection. Nada. This Benson character had simply flipped out—O’Grady’s bet was a mental illness—and his victims were simply in a “wrong place, wrong time” scenario. O’Grady’s experience told him if it looked like a crazy fish, smelled like a crazy fish, then that’s what you were cooking … a crazy fish.
    Examining the damaged kitchen door, O’Grady ran a cautious finger over the lock’s remnants. The door was badly splintered; thin, jagged pieces of white wood stuck out at haphazard angles.
    He pushed gently with his right hip to force the door open, keeping his hands in the air so he didn’t touch anything and contaminate evidence the CSI team hadn’t already noted.
    Out in the alley, he carefully scanned the area. More yellow evidence markers littered the narrow laneway. Several forensic officers wearing thin white suits from head to toe moved slowly around, bending every few feet to examine something that had caught their eye. Down the end of the alley, where the entrance opened into the busy early morning street, yellow police tape flapped in the breeze. Just behind the tape, an officer stood, arms folded, staring out at the gathered crowd of curious onlookers.
    O’Grady turned back to look at the door. Splinters of wood hung from around the lock. If nothing else, the guy was determined. Why had he picked this door, in this lane, when there were countless other restaurants and bars? The million-dollar question.
    The detective took one more glance down the very ordinary-looking access lane and walked back in. He regarded the kitchen from the point of view of the killer upon first entering. The blood on the floor where the waitress had died drew his eye. The coroner had removed the body a few hours earlier. Poor girl. She was only twenty, waitressing to pay her college tuition.
    Over by the kitchen sink they’d found the kid. O’Grady would never forget that image. He’d seen a lot in his eighteen years on the job, with twelve as detective, but what that freak had done to the kid was horrendous.
    One of the beat police first on the scene had lost his lunch and his dinner within twenty seconds of walking in. Fortunately, he’d made it to the lane, so he hadn’t polluted any evidence. O’Grady