Read Online Picture Me Dead by Heather Graham - Free Book Online

a sweatband around her forehead, and the typical shorts, T-shirt and sneakers found among those who chose the quiet paths out in the farm district for their morning rituals. She was badly shaken by her discovery. He could hear her sobbing softly, speaking to the officers, who had supplied her with a blanket and hot coffee.
    â€œMy God, I was just running and then…there she was. I saw her…and it was so dark, I didn’t even realize at first. And so I doubled back. And I was so frightened I could barely punch the numbers into my cell phone. Thank God for cell phones! I know now that I’ll never go out jogging when it isn’t full light again. I don’t care if I have to learn to run around my own living room, I’ll never, never come out like that again. It’s so terrifying. But then, of course…she was just left on the road, right? She might not have been killed there, right?”
    Jake could hear one of the uniformed officers telling her that they had no facts right then, but that she didn’t need to worry, one of the officers would get her back home.
    Lady, you shouldn’t go out jogging along this path alone before the sun is up in any way, shape or form, Jake thought. They were in what most people in the county considered to be the country. Far south in Miami-Dade, an area where the old encroached on the new, where waterways connected to the deep river of grass that was Everglades. There was good land out here. Some people kept large tracts with beautiful homes, and some had acreage where they grew strawberries, tomatoes and other produce.
    Good earth for growing intermingled with sawgrass, deep dark muck and tangled trees.
    Much of the land, such as this immediate area, was county owned. It was often heavily wooded, and where there weren’t actually trees, the foliage was thick and dense.
    A good place to dispose of human remains, a place where nature could inflict tremendous damage on a corpse and render many of the clues it might have given up hard to discern, even destroy them. Over the years, a number of criminals had tried to dispose of bodies and evidence on land much like this. And, God knew, many of them had succeeded.
    The jogger was just the poor civilian who had happened upon the physical remnants of a brutal crime. There would be little, if anything, she could tell him. Still, he would speak with her himself for a moment. Later.
    For now…
    The victim.
    â€œWhere’s the M.E.?” he asked.
    â€œRight over there, talking with Pentillo, who was first officer on the scene. The M.E. is Tristan Gannet. Mandy’s taking the last of the pictures he requested right now.”
    â€œGood. I’m glad we’ve got Gannet and Nightingale.”
    Mandy Nightingale, one of their best photographers, was snapping photos as they carefully approached the position of the body.
    â€œHi, Jake,” she said, acknowledging his arrival with a quick nod before she snapped another photo.
    â€œMandy, good to see you here.”
    They had worked together many times. She was thin as a wraith, with steel gray, close-cropped hair, and a strong, Native-American facial structure that defied age entirely. She was quick and efficient, careful to snap a crime scene in its entirety, to make sure that she not only got excellent photographs of the body but of the surrounding elements as well.
    â€œThanks, Jake. I’ll be out of your way in just a second.”
    â€œTake your time, Mandy,” he told her. “There’s no hurry for this one now.”
    â€œI think I’ve gotten just about everything I can and everything that Dr. Gannet specified,” she assured them, squatting low to focus on a last photograph. “I’ll be over with Pentillo, hanging around ’til the M.E. moves the body and I can take the rest of the shots,” she told them.
    â€œThanks, Mandy.”
    She nodded. “I think Dr. Gannet knows you’re here. I’ll