Read Land of Shadows for Free Online Page A

possible, but I don’t think so.”
    I pointed to the spot near the back of her right ear. “Her hair back there … looks like she may have been bleeding.” Brooks shone the light on that spot but didn’t move her. He grunted, then nodded.
    â€œWe’ll move her once Zucca gets what he needs.” With that, he closed his kit and left the closet.
    Lieutenant Rodriguez clicked his teeth, then said, “Lou?”
    â€œAfter Zucca does his thing,” I said, eyes still on the victim, “I wanna look around her again.”
    Arturo Zucca was a fat-thin Italian-American, one of those guys that looked chubby but wasn’t—six months working out on an elliptical machine and eating bags of spinach would change everything. Zucca had the eyes of an eagle and the mind of Louis Pasteur: two advanced degrees in biology and chemistry and a grand master in the USPSA shooting competition. His love of guns and science made him perfect for a job in which an ordinary person strolls into an unoccupied condo and sees no blood, no signs of struggle, nothing. That person will scan the two bedrooms, the bathrooms, the kitchen, and still see nothing except empty holes for electrical sockets and a layer of dust and grit on the countertops. That ordinary person will return to the lobby, ruffle her hair, and say, “Other than the dead girl, the flies, and the cell phone, I didn’t see anything.” But Zucca saw everything because there was always something there. Every time you left a place, you left behind a little piece of you.
    The condo was quiet, too quiet, even as seven people worked the scene. I heard my pulse racing and my shallow breathing. I heard Lieutenant Rodriguez and a forensic tech whispering. I heard cameras pop and click. And then, there were the flies …
    Too much quiet. Not enough noise. And so, I passed forensic techs dusting for prints on the front door and tiptoed to the hallway to clear my mind. I glanced out the narrow window at the north end of the hallway—the construction trailer, a medical building, and a dirt lot. I swiveled away from the window to stare down the hallway. At the south end, an exit sign hung above an emergency staircase.
    I toggled the switch on my radio and called Colin. “Pull a uniform and search the emergency stairs off the second floor. The bad guy could’ve brought her up that way.”
    Zucca poked his head out of unit 1B. “Anytime, Lou.”
    The videographer, a hard-built woman with chopped-off gray hair, was recording a criminalist peering into the kitchen’s drainage pipe. Another criminalist, this one in the second bedroom, inched in a slow clockwise spiral, searching for a strand of hair that shouldn’t have been there. Countless yellow evidence tents had been dropped in the living room, near the threshold of the master bedroom, and at the patio window.
    â€œFound some dust motes from the San Gabriel Valley?” I asked Zucca.
    He surveyed the room. “Something like that.”
    â€œI didn’t see any blood,” I said, “but, of course, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any.”
    â€œOnce we move the girl,” he said, “I’ll use luminol.” Which glowed blue once it acted with the iron found in blood.
    â€œI didn’t see any drag marks, either,” I noted.
    â€œRight. He must’ve carried her here.”
    â€œAnd you’ll use ninhydrin to lift prints off the closet and bedroom walls?” I asked. “He could have placed his hands there to balance himself while hanging her.”
    â€œYep,” Zucca said. “And I’m assuming you’ll want 3D scans, inside and out.”
    Pure white light burst in the world beyond the balcony.
    My hand flew to my chest and I gave a small yelp. “Did the Russians just nuke us?”
    â€œSomeone finally switched on the halogens,” Zucca said with a chuckle.
    â€œI’ll