Drained (Edgars Family #6) - Suzanne Ferrell Page 0,54

breaded thing he was eating, while giving Aaron a knowing half-grin that they’d arrived together so early in the morning. “Still keeping guard on your witness?”

“For now,” Aaron said, in a mind-your-own-business tone. The younger man chuckled. “What do we have?”

“Young woman, probably late twenties, early thirties. Asian descent. No physical injuries. No lividity, according to Ramos.”

“Anything else similar?” Aaron asked, moving to the side a little to look at the body.

“She was cleansed head-to-toe, same as Art,” Jaylon said. “This time she was dressed in a long black formal dress and in her lap is a violin bow.”

“A violin bow?” Aaron asked. “Could she have been a concert violinist?”

“Have no idea. But I doubt it. There are track marks up and down both arms. She has no ID on her. Ramos fingerprinted her, so maybe something will come back later.” Jaylon took a step back. “You want to come have a look?”

Aaron looked Brianna’s way. Non-verbally asking her to wait.

She nodded further beyond the crime scene. “Stanley and I’ll go up the road there. That should put us out of the way.”

“Okay, but not too far,” Aaron warned, then walking away with his partner.

A little thrill shot down her spine. He was worried about her safety, even with all the police milling about. Other than Abby and her adoptive parents, she couldn’t remember anyone worrying about her.

Walking on the far side of the narrow road from where the technicians and policemen worked, she waited until she was beyond the tape barrier to let Stanley down. Happy to be down in a new area, he wagged his tail as he tried to pull her to the opposite side of the street where a tree and bushes lined the road. Brianna stood patiently while Stanley marked the area, the cool morning breeze milling about her. Behind her was an abandoned building. Beyond Stanley’s trees and down a slight embankment was the hiking and biking path known as the Towpath the city had developed. The area had definitely seen improvement along the trail, but not quite up to where this little patch of old urban industry still lingered.

Once Stanley had finished, she worked her way back to the police tape barrier, mindful that this was an isolated place and a killer with an agenda was on the loose. One of the patrolmen met her and lifted the tape. She scooped up Stanley and went to stand near Aaron and Jaylon once more.

“And who found her?” Aaron asked.

Jaylon pointed to a young, dark-haired man sitting sideways on the backseat of an open police cruiser, talking with one of the uniformed policemen. “Name’s Mike Connelly, works at the West Side Market. His shift starts at o-six-hundred and he jogs to work from the east side of town. Said he goes past this spot every morning and evening. Didn’t work yesterday, but said the woman definitely wasn’t there Wednesday evening when he went home.”

“So, the body was dumped here in the past two nights.” Aaron said. “Let’s get him down to the station for a formal statement and let him get on to work. Last thing we want to do is cost some poor kid his job.”

Jaylon nodded and signaled the officer standing next to the cruiser they could head to the station. “Already contacted his boss and explained the situation. Boss was cool with it.”

Aaron turned back to study the body. “What else do we know about her, beside that her blood has been drained and she was a drug addict? Was she a violinist?”

Brianna still couldn’t bring herself to look beyond the black ballet flats on her feet. Which was silly. She’d already seen a corpse. Of course, she’d been shining a flashlight beam on Art, trying to keep the rats from eating anymore of his flesh.

Slowly, she raised her gaze, taking in the ankle length black gown—the kind women members of an orchestra wore. The hands lying overtop of the violin bow in her lap—nails clipped short and freshly painted with a coat of clear nail polish. Her arms with the long, ugly tracks of her drug addiction inching upward to the little cap sleeves of the dress. The scooped, neck of the bodice, exposing the emaciated lines of her collarbones.

With every inch that Brianna saw, her nerves grew a little more itchy, her breath shallower, until finally she saw the young woman’s face, made up of a light covering of powder, the lips covered in a pink lipstick, the thick, long