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As co officer of the Homicide detail, I wasn’t supposed to do hands-on detective work anymore But at times like this, I just couldn’t stay away

Another kid had been electrocuted, but why? Was he a random victim of violence or was it personal? Inin pain as the juice shot through him and shut his heart down

The standing water on the cracked tile floor was creeping up the legs of my trousers I lifted a foot and toed the bathroo to see The door whined with the nasal squeal of hinges that had probably never been oiled

Tords were spray-painted on the door For the second time in a couple of weeks, I wondered what the hell they meant

“NOBODY CARES”

Chapter 2

IT LOOKED LIKE A particularly grisly suicide, except that the spray paint can was nowhere around I heard Charlie Clapper and his CSU teain to unpack forensic equiprapher took his shots of the victim, then I yanked the extension cord out of the wall

Charlie changed the fuse “Thank you, Jesus,” he said as light flooded the god-awful place

I was rifling through the victi not a scrap of ID, when Claire Washburn, my closest friend and San Francisco’s chief h the door

“It’s pretty nasty,” I told Claire as ent into the bathroom Claire is a center of warmth inan impulse”

“To do what?” Claire asked me mildly

I sed hard, forcing down the gorge that kept rising in s, but I would never get used to the murder of children

“I just want to reach in and pull out the stopper”

The victiht Claire crouched beside the tub, squeezing her size-sixteen body into a size-six space

“Pulmonary edema,” she said of the pink foam in the dead boy’s nasal and oral orifices She traced the faint bruising on the lips, around the eyes “He was tuned up a bit before they threw the switch on him”

I pointed to the vertical gash on his cheekbone “What do you make of that?”

“My guess? It’s going to match the push-down lever on the toaster Looks like they clocked this child with that Sunbeam before they chucked it into the tub”

The boy’s hand was resting on the bathtub’s rior Body’s still war He’s been dead less than twelve hours, probably less than six No visible track h the boy’s ers “He hadn’t seen a dentist in a while Could be a runaway”

“Yeah,” I said Then I otten quiet for a minute or so