Read I Hunt Killers for Free Online

an it again,” Jazz told him. “Actually, don’t ever let me call anyone an it, okay?”

    Jazz finished his examination of the body while Howie crept into the nearby funeral home business office to make a photocopy of the anemic preliminary report. There was nothing substantial in the file, but Jazz figured it couldn’t hurt to have a copy. Besides, he didn’t want Howie around when he rolled the body.
    The human body holds about ten pints of blood when everything is going right, and Jane still had enough of hers when she died to cause dark purplish areas, almost like bruises, when the blood pooled postmortem. Jane had been found on her back, but there was evidence of blood-pooling on her front and side, giving the flesh of her lower abdomen and left hip an almost mottled appearance. Jazz reached into the bag, slipping his hands under her, one near the shoulders, the other near her buttocks. He paused for a moment. It was so strange. He was touching a woman’s ass . It was wrong on so many levels.
    “People matter,” he whispered to himself. “People matter. People are real. Remember Bobby Joe Long.”
    His personal mantra, whispered every morning. A reminder. His own magic spell, casting a shield against his own evil.
    It was tough to turn her, as her body was still going into rigor mortis. Rigor usually started about two hours after death. It started in the face and hands—the small muscles—and spread to the entire body over about twelve hours. If her big muscles were just freezing up now…Jazz did some quick math, factored in the pliability he’d observed in the field when the cops moved Jane’s body, and decided that she must have been killed no more than an hour or two before the cops arrived on the scene. Just before daybreak, then.
    He turned her onto her left side. Her back was pale.
    If she’d been killed in the field and left there on her back, all the blood in her body would have settled in her back and buttocks, making them purple and slightly swollen. But the blood had pooled elsewhere in her body. That meant she’d been killed somewhere else and then transported, her blood sloshing around in her dead body like the grains in a piece of sand art every time she was moved.
    So the killer killed her…then moved her…then called the cops right away.…
    Yeah. Definitely not a newbie.
    The killer was a badass. Talk about supreme confidence. Jazz couldn’t help it; he sort of admired the guy.
    People matter. People are real. People matter.…
    The spot in the field where Jane had been dumped wasn’t just the sort of place you stumbled upon while carrying a corpse around. The killer must have scoped it out in advance. Did it have some significance to him? And why that particular spot? Moving a body was risky, but also necessary. You want distance between you and the cops, so you have to—
    Shut up, Billy , Jazz thought fiercely.
    “Uh-oh,” Howie said from behind him, his voice panicked. “Jazz?”
    Jazz turned and saw that Howie’s face was covered in blood.

CHAPTER 4
    For a split second, Jazz thought someone had attacked Howie, but then Howie tilted his head back and said, “Oh, no. Crap!”
    Howie had twice-weekly shots to boost his clotting factor, but he was still prone to random nosebleeds. This one was a real flood, twin red rivulets running out of his nose, gushing over his mouth and chin. Howie had the report in one hand and the photocopy in the other, his arms spread wide to keep him from bleeding on either of them. Jazz dashed over and cupped his hand under Howie’s chin to catch the blood before it could hit the floor. Even so, a few drops spattered against the cold tile, almost perfect circles of red.
    Howie’s blood was warm, especially in the cold freezer. Special kinda warm , Billy said, and Jazz grimaced, then used his free hand to pinch Howie’s nose shut and stanch the flow.
    “Danks,” Howie said.
    “How long since your last desmopressin