Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,6

glad when this rain stops and the sun comes out.”

She sat in a chair in the living room, and Sinclair and Braddock sat on a sofa across from her. “Did you know Dawn well?” Sinclair asked.

“Not really. She lived here maybe two years and I’d run into her and chat. Sometimes we’d be at the pool together and talk about boys and stuff.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“Not just one. She was a party girl. I saw all kind of men coming and going from her apartment. And I mean all kinds.”

“How’s that?” Sinclair asked.

“Young, old, black, white, some in jeans and T-shirts, others in suits.”

“Did you two ever talk about that?”

“She said she liked men. Said most of them were her clients. She was an accountant and worked out of her apartment doing people’s business books and taxes and stuff.”

“But you had your doubts,” Sinclair said.

“We’d be out at the pool. She had a killer body and gorgeous long hair. Guys were always coming on to her. Really cute guys. But she just ignored them. Said they weren’t her type.”

“These clients of hers, did you ever catch any of their names?”

“No, they didn’t hang around once they left her apartment. A neighbor once said they recognized a really muscular black man who used to visit. They said he was an Oakland Raider who was on the kick-off return team or something like that.”

“How about any other friends?”

“I never saw any of her girlfriends, assuming she had any.”

“Why’d she leave?”

“She said the manager found out she was using her apartment for commercial purposes, you know, running her bookkeeping business there, and that was a zoning violation.” Rachel tucked her legs under herself on the chair. “What did she do?”

“She got herself killed last night in Oakland,” said Sinclair.

“That’s too bad,” Rachel said.

He copied Rachel’s full name and contact information, the last phone number she had for Dawn, and the phone numbers for the manager. He handed Rachel his card as he left.

On their return drive to Oakland, Braddock said, “It looks like Dawn was operating an in-call business out of her apartment. I think Rachel knew it, too, but didn’t want to come out and say Dawn was a call-girl.”

“At least it gives us a direction.”

“And a few hundred possible johns who might have killed her.”

“Piece of cake,” Sinclair said. “All we have to do is find the last trick she was with.”

Sinclair dropped Braddock off at her car at Burckhalter, and while she headed back to the station, he drove to the coroner’s office.

Chapter 3

Sinclair dressed in a cloth gown, paper cap, safety glasses, and booties and pushed through the double doors into the morgue. The ventilation system in the ceiling hummed, but the smells of decaying flesh and disinfectant still hung in the air. Three bodies lay on stainless-steel tables, and Dr. Gorman, one of the pathologists, hovered over the body of an elderly man.

Gorman looked through his plastic splash-protective visor. “Good morning, Sergeant Sinclair. This gentleman can wait. I’ll return to Ms. Gustafson for you.”

Sinclair gestured to the elderly corpse. “What’s his story, Doc?”

“He lived alone and was found dead by his son. He hadn’t seen a doctor in years, so there was no one to sign off on the death certificate. I’ll probably discover his death is of natural causes resulting from one or more undiagnosed medical conditions.”

“As long as you don’t find a bullet in him.”

“If I do, it belongs to Fremont PD, so today will be your lucky day.”

“I’ll see if that’s true after I hear what you have to say about my victim.”

Gorman moved to a flat-screen illuminator mounted on the wall and attached several x-ray films. “You can see here,” he said, pointing to a dark object at the base of the skull in the image, “we have a single projectile that passed through the anterior portion of the skull, the thick frontal bone, and came to rest at the back of the skull without penetrating the parietal bone. I see no fragments, so it appears the projectile remained intact, which should aid in the ballistics examination by your crime lab.”

Gorman flipped off the light of the x-ray viewer and walked to the table where Dawn’s body lay. Her skin was pale white except for black soot and charred skin on her upper legs and abdomen. Her hands rested alongside the torso, the manicured fingernails short and covered with clear nail polish. The head was propped on a hard plastic rest. “I’ve already