Blood on the Tracks Read Online Free Page A

bed was a bright-yellow Tweety Bird. I pointed it out.
    “From one of the traveling carnies,” I said. “Maybe Elise liked to go to those.”
    “We’ll look into that. Last carny, though, would have been back in, what, August?”
    “September. They came in on our trains.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Something here I’m supposed to notice?”
    He shook his head. “Just wanted you to see everything.”
    I was turning away to leave when I noticed a disruption on the nightstand’s thin veneer of dust. I turned back and crouched so I was eye level with the surface.
    Within the fine dust was a clear patch about eleven inches long and two inches deep. “Someone took something,” I said.
    Cohen squatted next to me. “Framed photo, maybe.” He went out and came back with a detective to take a photograph.
    “Why take this photo and leave all the others?” I asked. “If a tramp killed Elise, he’d likely be in some of those pictures, too.”
    “This picture being right next to the bed,” Cohen said. “It was probably someone special.”
    The detective placed a yellow marker on the nightstand, shot his photos, and left.
    “I’m ready to see the body,” I said.
    Cohen stood, suddenly awkward. He glanced toward the door, as if making sure no one was there, then back at me. “Look, Agent Parnell, I want to thank you for your service.”
    I rose as well, shoulders stiff. “Where you going with this, Cohen?”
    “It’s a fucking mess in there. Whoever did this had a lot of rage. I’m sorry to spring this kind of body on you. Especially someone you knew, for Christ’s sake. I know what you did in Iraq and—”
    “Don’t be an asshole, Detective.” I held up a hand and mentally counted to five. “Look, I’m sure you mean well. But I’m a cop, okay? I’m not going to jump when someone says boo. That stuff you read about vets and PTSD and flashbacks and all? Mostly it’s not true.”
    “No.” He looked down at his shoes. “I see that.”
    But I’d caught the expression in his eyes before he looked away. No doubt he knew damn well how my nights went. I might as well get the fucking T-shirt.
    While Cohen asked the three people squeezed in the back bedroom to give us a moment, I did a quick meditation, the way the VA counselor had taught me.
    I am not here. I am far away. Nothing can touch me.
    “Parnell?”
    The others had cleared out. Cohen was looking at me again.
    I took a breath; the Xanax unfurled in my blood like a roll of velvet. I stepped to the doorway.
    The killing had been savage, leaving the victim no dignity even in death. Elise Hensley had been sliced and diced, her stomach opened, her bare arms flayed. The walls of the room were sprayed with arterial blood, her hair matted with it. From the wreck of her face, her eyes stared at the ceiling.
    Everywhere along the walls, written over the blood and smearing it, were symbols drawn in what looked like black Sharpie. Circles and arrows, hatch marks. A stick figure of a cat.
    The work of a madman.
    “Damn,” I said, thinking that this had to have been done by one of my homeless guys. By someone I knew .
    “When we first saw these, we thought it was some sort of cult thing,” Cohen said.
    I shook my head. “You were right about it being hobo sign. Like the cat outside.”
    “What do they mean?”
    “The circle with two arrows across it means to get out fast—hobos aren’t wanted here. The circle next to the square means a bad man lives here. Elise have a roommate?”
    “Not according to the landlady. An on-and-off boyfriend. Maybe the guy in the missing photo. What about the next sign, the one that looks like a snowman holding a ball?”
    “It means sucker. Someone who is easy to catch.”
    “The killer describing himself in all of these?”
    “Could be. But the cat means this is the home of a kindhearted woman. So why kill the kindhearted woman?”
    “Beats the fuck out of me,” he said. “Maybe because you’re a bad-hearted