Read Online The Day Before by Liana Brooks - Free Book Online

word later as she could.
    Her mother tutted. “I’m traveling this weekend. Embassy receptions and a new general to meet. I’ll call again on Monday to straighten your schedule out. There’s a D.C. visit coming up in my schedule if no one cancels again, and I want you to be there.”
    â€œWashington, D.C., isn’t really driving distance from Alabama. The Commonwealth is a little bit bigger than Europe.”
    â€œSamantha, darling, that wasn’t a request. I will send my itinerary to you on Monday when everything is finalized. Be good. Go to Mass and confession.”
    â€œYes, Mother. Good-­bye, Mother.” Sam hung up and rolled her eyes. “Sorry.”
    MacKenzie didn’t acknowledge her.
    â€œAll mothers are nags, right?” she tried again.
    â€œDon’t know. I haven’t talked to mine in five years.”
    Sam felt a twinge of guilt. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she was dead.”
    â€œShe’s not.”
    They drove the rest of the way in silence. She parked the car next to the open field. The sad, sun-­bleached evidence flags waved in the faint breeze, marking where pieces of Jane had been found. “Here we are, Jane’s penultimate resting place.”
    MacKenzie climbed out of the car and scanned the field with a frown. “Here?” He pointed at the open field in confusion.
    â€œYes, here.” Sam stepped into the field, ready to do the tour. They walked the perimeter. The ground was hard from weeks without rain and showed no evidence of recent activity. No tire tracks. No footprints. For all the world, it looked like Jane Doe had dropped from the open sky.
    â€œThis . . . this doesn’t fit,” MacKenzie said with a shake of his head.
    While the ME stumbled around, Sam knelt to get a ground view of the scenery: bare field, pine trees, oak, and scrub on the hazy edges, wildflowers wilting and going to seed in the heat, a glint of metal on the ground. She reached under a spiky weed for the glint. Just in time, Sam remembered she was at a crime scene. “There’s something here. Go get my evidence kit from the backseat.”
    MacKenzie fetched her bag from the car and handed it over. Using a green flag to mark the spot, Sam picked up a silver ring with her tweezers and dropped it into the evidence bag. It was delicate and pretty, something a woman would wear.
    The silver ring shone in the sunlight. “Did Jane wear a ring?” Sam peered closer, she’d had a ring like it years ago. She’d lost it in one of the moves after college.
    MacKenzie frowned at her. “Um . . . ?”
    â€œWas there a tan line on her fingers? Is there any reason to think this is hers, or is this something we should be trying to pin on a suspect?”
    He turned away, dodging the bag. “I-­I have to check.” He looked around the field in confusion. “Jane was frozen after death. She . . . when she showed up at the lab, the decomposition was slowed, but still fairly advanced.” He frowned at the field as if personally offended by the Alabama sawgrass.
    She tucked the evidence bag in her kit with her gloves and shrugged. “So they brought her to the dump site in a refrigerated truck?”
    â€œYeah . . . probably.” Now he was staring at the cloudless sky.
    Sam craned her neck to look up. Maybe he was looking for aliens, you never knew with his type. “Missing something?”
    â€œTrees. Jane’s face. Her head was crushed postmortem, like she’d run into a wall or been thrown into something. I’m still doing reconstruction.” He sighed. “Jane Doe was tortured, over days. Strangled by ropes, and hands. Killed, I don’t know how. Frozen. Crushed. Arm torn off.”
    â€œShe had to fall somewhere. Her face was crushed by an impact of some kind.” She studied the empty sky with renewed interest. “There are some trees near