"Whenever there's more than one, they mutate and multiply. It ain't pretty. They leave a slime trail."

"Detective Cronan," A blonde female TV reporter shoved a mic in his face and kept pace with her camera crew in tow. "Can I have a word with you about the murder?"

Without breaking stride, he said, "Yeah, have two. No comment."

Cronan flashed his detective's badge to the uniformed cop at the tape and saw Angel do the same. That's when the reporter called it quits. The woman waved a hand across her throat, telling her camera crew to cut the live feed. Cronan saw more lights deeper into the park and knew the forensics investigators and evidence technicians were hard at work.

A shadow crossed his path before he caught a glimpse of the body.

"Well, if it ain't Angel Gabriel, come to show us the light and grace us with their presence," a gravelly voice called out. "How did you two get lead without even being on call? One of them immaculate receptions?"

Cronan grimaced when he heard the nickname given to him and Angel after they'd first been a.s.signed together. Few said it to his face anymore and before that, no one had called him Gabriel since his days in foster care. Although the name had gotten him into more than his share of fights as a boy, he was stubborn enough not to change it. His name had been given to him-the last connection to his family. Fighting over it had been worth every busted lip.

"This a.s.signment keeps getting better," he said to Angel.

A man's face, backlit in floodlights, got swallowed by shadows, but Cronan recognized the voice and the shiny bald head under wisps of a gray comb over. Larry Schumacher had the job of senior forensics investigator with the ET-North mobile unit. His short stout body looked the polar opposite to that of his number two man, the guy standing next to him. Tall and lanky, Sam O'Brien looked more like a human coat hanger.

"Lay off the angel c.r.a.p, Schumacher," Cronan said. "If this were my slice of heaven, you wouldn't be here, and Jessica Biel would have the hots for me."

"Not with that face, she wouldn't. What the h.e.l.l happened to you?" O'Brien asked. "Your mug looks like it's been through a meat grinder."

"Try a chainsaw." Cronan walked past the two forensic guys and focused on the corpse.

A woman's dead body lay sprawled on the gra.s.s. A flowerbed near the base of a gnarled tree almost hid the body. Only her legs were visible from the sidewalk. She wore a dark skirt, pale top, and dress shoes. With her blouse open and skirt hiked up, the encounter looked as if it had been for s.e.xual reasons, except that she still wore panties. The ME would have to determine if there had been penetration and DNA evidence left behind. She appeared to be in her early twenties. She must have been gorgeous, a young blonde woman beautiful enough to be on the big screen.

Cronan stepped closer to the dead woman and noticed the look of terror on her face. Her mouth hung open, and her eyes stared into a h.e.l.l only she had seen. Her shocked expression still held an edge of pain from her last moment as she bled out.

The victim's pink blouse was stained with blood spatter from a wound to her stomach. A pool of blood glistened on the ground under her belly. Within minutes of leaving the body and after the heart stops, blood stagnates and clots and turns into gel. The dark thick ooze looked more ominous at night.

"Fill us in," Cronan said as he slipped on latex gloves. "Did the ME give you TOD?"

"Body was found around ten," Schumacher said. "By the time the scene got secured, only limited rigor had set in on the face and neck. The ME estimated TOD sometime between seven and nine, give or take. Lividity is consistent with the positioning of the body, so she wasn't moved. The ME's ready to bag her. Gurney should be here soon."

Cronan knew the ME would have to consider the body being exposed to the evening air in order to determine time of death. Dead bodies lost heat at a rate of 1.5 degrees per hour until they reached ambient temperature, but the muggy night air would have jacked with that timeframe. The ME could measure liver temp to get the core body heat and work off that to narrow the gap. Whatever time the victim died, they could confirm the estimate by piecing together her final hours before she took her last breath.

But in order to compile a time line, they'd have to know her name.

"You find any ID? Do we know who she is?" Cronan asked.

"No, not yet. We haven't found a purse, so robbery could have been a motive. If we don't find her ID soon, we'll clean her up and have the ME take a picture. That'll give us something to show potential witnesses when we canva.s.s the neighborhood again with the stores open."

"Who found the body?" Angel took out her notepad.

"A late night jogger made a cut through the park. He found her and called 9-1-1," Schumacher said and gave her a name. "He was down here on business and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. A d.a.m.ned cheesehead."

"What did the guy say?" Angel asked.

As Schumacher filled Angel in on the man who first discovered the body, Cronan looked closer at the corpse. He leaned in and stared at the dead woman's face, taking in every detail.

Her blue eyes had turned filmy white, giving her a ghostly appearance. Not much more than a translucent wax statue. Tiny dark specks covered her pale neck and her cheek. Blood spatter. Bugs crawled near her eyes, and a swarm of mosquitoes and flies hovered over the body. Cronan shifted his gaze from her face down to the wound that had killed her.

Up close, the entry wound looked to be caused by a knife. She'd been stabbed below the sternum. He knew from other murders that with one strong upward thrust, the killer could avoid ribs and cut into the heart to sever a major artery. He recognized the low velocity spatter pattern.

The killing hadn't been the work of dumb luck. The murderer knew how to take a life with one well-placed thrust. Whoever did this could hide any blood on their clothes in the dark. It wouldn't have been the cleanest way to kill, but it would have been quick and efficient. In seconds, the dead woman would have been incapacitated and drowning in her own juices-a miserable way to die.

"I'm gonna find out who did this to you," Cronan whispered with the commiseration he reserved for the dead. "I promise."

In a louder voice, he said, "You guys done with photos?"

"Yeah. She's all yours," Schumacher said.

Gabe pulled the dead girl's blouse over her chest to cover her. The techs had their evidence. He saw no point to leaving her exposed.

The cop part of his brain worked the scene as a darker side of his nature emerged. Cronan sensed the audacity of the murderer to come in close enough to plunge a knife into the woman's heart. If the objective had been robbery, why take the risk to kill with a blade? Using a knife usually indicated the kill had been personal, but the stab had been clean. Death from only one thrust usually meant the work of a pro, except that most hit men would have used a gun. This murder didn't feel like a robbery.

"According to the cheesehead, it was a lucky break he found her. He had cut through the park on his run and almost missed her. Pretty dark in this section at night," Schumacher said.

"Lucky for us. Not so much for him," Angel said. "You find any other witnesses?"

"Not so far." O'Brien shook his head. "You know how it is."

"I see shopping nearby, but what was she doing here in the park?" she asked. "She wasn't dressed for a stroll, not with those heels. Why did she come through here?"

"Drug deals have been known to happen in parks after dark, but I've never heard that kind of activity happening here," O'Brien told her. "If you're thinking robbery as a motive, we didn't find any discarded shopping bags and no purse."

"Well, keep looking. They could be in a nearby Dumpster by now."

"Sure thing."

Angel watched her partner from the corner of her eye. She'd seen him tug at the girl's blouse to cover her and pull down her skirt. That gesture never failed to touch her, but Gabe was far from done.

Cronan had his mojo working now. She'd witnessed his hocus pocus before. He honed in on the body as if he were doing a Vulcan mind-meld on the corpse. She didn't know what he got from his ritual. He never really talked about it, but he did talk to dead people-every single one of them. Thankfully, she never witnessed any of the dearly departed chatting back, but it had taken her a while to get used to Cronan's way.

Her husband Manny joked that his best friend only felt comfortable around one kind of woman-a dead one.

When Cronan's hoodoo paid off, that made it easier for her to forget she worked with a lunatic. Although she had heard rumors about what had made him that way, with him being her partner, she cut him slack. The guy could be weird if he wanted to. He'd earned the right and who was she to call him on it.

Her husband had loved Gabe Cronan like a brother, but she had another reason to feel a close bond to her partner. If Cronan hadn't introduced her to his best friend, she would never have met Manny, the man who had changed her life and taught her how to love.

Feeling a special bond with Gabe allowed her to forgive his strange idiosyncrasies, like when he worked the case as if he was the only cop running the investigation. Eventually he talked things out with her when he got ready. The way his mind worked-real out-of-the-box stuff-it had been good for her to see. He listened to her theories, and their process had made her a better detective. Other homicide cops had made fun of Cronan's strange ways until his clearance rate surpa.s.sed theirs.

That's when the smack talk stopped.

"The way this park is laid out, it's easy to see why we may not find a witness," Sam O'Brien said. "There's a narrow road behind those trees. North Howe Street. It winds through the park and has blind spots where the road curves. It's an easy in and out. With all these lights on now, you can't see it very well from here, but I've got people walking it, looking for anything suspicious. At night, that road probably doesn't get much traffic."

"So someone that knew about it could have driven into the park, accosted our victim, and left without being seen. Is that what you're saying?" Angel asked.

"Yep." O'Brien shrugged. "A guy could've been in and out of this park PDQ."

"But to stage that scenario, how would they know she'd be here?" she questioned, without expecting an answer. "This could be a random act of violence, a crime of opportunity, but I still don't understand why she was here."

Although Angel understood O'Brien's a.s.sessment of the park layout, his reasoning behind his *one guy' theory had been a leap in logic she wasn't ready to make. Sure, men committed most violent crimes, but there were always exceptions. A strong woman could have committed the murder. Or more than one person could have done the deed. Keeping an open mind at this stage of the investigation worked best. She had a bigger question in her mind. Why had the victim been in the park in the first place?

"Any surveillance cameras?" she asked.

"Yeah, there were, but don't get your hopes up. Life ain't that easy." O'Brien grimaced. "None of them were working in the park. Idiots vandalized them. The city has a work order to fix *em, but that's been on the books for over a year. d.a.m.ned budget cuts. But we'll check other cameras in the area. We might get lucky."

Angel took a deep breath and let out a sigh. "You know, that jogger was d.a.m.ned lucky. If he had come through the park with the killer here, he might have had a real reason to run, and we'd be working two bodies."

"Like I need another excuse not to exercise." Schumacher smirked and rubbed his belly.

"You find the murder weapon?" Cronan asked the forensics guys.

"Not yet," O'Brien said. "But we'll let you know if something turns up."

"Good. Thanks." Her partner stood and got her attention with a nudge of his chin. When he moved closer, she knew he'd be ready to talk.

"No defensive wounds, and she's still wearing her pearl necklace and a ring. This doesn't feel like a robbery, although someone might have wanted it to look that way by taking the purse," Cronan said. He kept his voice low so the media wouldn't pick up a sound bite. "She's also got manicured finger nails, perfect teeth, and flawless skin. Her clothes aren't cheap either. I smell greenbacks."

"Don't tell me you didn't notice her b.r.e.a.s.t.s look augmented." Angel raised an eyebrow. "Those cost money, too."

"Yeah, I noticed, but you shouldn't have brought that up." He looked over his shoulder at the forensics guys. "Not with those two around."

Schumacher didn't disappoint. "Hey, you mean those bodacious tah tahs aren't for real?"

Angel didn't respond to the obvious ploy to get a rise out of her, but when Cronan looked at her sideways, she said in a low voice, "What is it with guys and b.o.o.bs?"

"Oh, it's purely a biological imperative. We really have no choice. It's completely...out of our hands." Cronan waggled his gloved fingers and grinned.

"But doesn't it bother you when they aren't real?" she persisted.

"Well, I know the Easter Bunny isn't real, but I still like the taste of chocolate eggs," Cronan said with a straight face.

"Okay, you win. I'm out." Angel conceded the argument and changed the subject. "So you think our vic comes from money?"

Her partner was a card carrying cynic, world cla.s.s. He couldn't resist flaunting it.

"That's my guess. That means the chief will be an even bigger pain in the a.s.s. Having money shouldn't buy you justice, but that's reality."

Not on Cronan's watch, Angel thought. Her partner believed everyone deserved a voice. His obsession in finding justice for any victim had made his investigations personal. His open cases haunted him until he officially closed the file. The dead weren't mere case numbers, and Angel liked that.

"Wait a minute. What's that sound?" Cronan c.o.c.ked his head. "It's like...a hum."

"I don't hear anything." Schumacher shrugged.

Cronan listened for the noise. "There it is again. You hear it now?" He pointed. "It came from over here."

Chapter 4.

Oz Park a After Midnight People carrying a rabbit's foot for good luck made no sense to Cronan, considering what happened to the rabbit. He didn't think of himself as a lucky man, but he did believe a guy made his own d.a.m.ned luck if he paid attention. When he stepped away from the body to search the ground around the twisted tree, he felt like a fortunate man. Given the noise of a crime scene, it had been a stroke of good luck that he'd heard the sound at all.

He knelt by the ma.s.sive root system and took out a Kel-lite from his pocket. He flashed its beam into the shadows near the roots. Something shiny caught his attention. He reached in with a gloved hand and pulled out what he'd found to show his partner.

"A cell phone," Angel said. "Sweet."

The phone looked new-slick and black-like it hadn't been outdoors and exposed to the elements.

"That phone could belong to our murder victim," she said.

"Or the killer," Cronan said. "Either way, we got a lucky break."

He flipped open the phone and held it up in his gloved hand for Angel to see.

"The voicemail message alert is set to vibrate," he said. "That was the humming I heard. Maybe we'll find a name in here."

His partner leaned over his shoulder and watched him examine the cell phone for the registered owner information. He hit the keys using the tip of his pen. When he found what he searched for, he looked her in the eye.

"We'll have to confirm this, but it appears our vic's name is Olivia Davenport," he said. "And she's got mail."

Cronan punched up the voice mail message and hit the speaker b.u.t.ton for Angel to hear a man's voice on several messages.

"He knows her well enough not to leave his name. It sounds like she missed a dinner date," he said. "We'll definitely want to talk to this guy." After playing the last message, he searched Olivia Davenport's directory of contacts to match the phone number with the caller's name. "All she has listed for him is the name Ethan, but let's see who answers."

He hit the call back b.u.t.ton and the phone rang until it rolled into voice mail. He ended the call without saying anything after he heard the outgoing message. *At the tone, you know what to do.' No name given, first or last, but it was the same voice as the caller named Ethan.

"With a name, we can run a background check on our vic to find next of kin and locate an address through DMV." Angel stared down at the body. "I hate being the messenger, but with the media on this, we've got to locate and notify the family ASAP. There's no telling what these reporters will show on TV in the morning or run in the papers. If it bleeds, it leads."

Angel jotted a note and added, "She doesn't look the type who'd ride a bus here. DMV will give us a vehicle description to look for."

"Yeah, I hear that," Cronan agreed. "You're way ahead of me."

"I'll take that." Schumacher held open a plastic evidence bag and waited for him to drop the cell phone into it. "I'll let you know what we find out and put a rush on it."

"Yeah, thanks."

The phone would be processed for fingerprints and examined for other evidence. The contact information for people that the victim had listed would be downloaded. They'd need a warrant to obtain Olivia Davenport's phone records to help them build a case and pin down her whereabouts prior to the murder.

But for now, they had a potential ID on the victim and a phone number to trace for a guy named Ethan. Between any calls the victim might have made while she was still alive and Ethan's *where are you' messages, the time stamp for the calls would help narrow the timeline of what happened before she died.

"We've got a name and a place to start. Have you seen enough?" he asked his partner as the ME's a.s.sistant rolled up a gurney with a black body bag draped over it. "We should head for the station and get a jump on it."