Trial By Fury
Chapter One
I was hung over as hell when Detective Ron Peters and I hit the crime scene at ten after eight on a gray and rainy Seattle Monday morning. Peters, my partner on Seattle P.D.'s homicide squad, was quick to point out that it could have been worse. At least I had some hope of getting better. The black man lying behind the dumpster at the Lower Queen Anne Bailey's Foods didn't.
He was dead. Had been for some time. The sickish odor of decaying flesh was thick in the air.
Partially wrapped in a tarp, he lay propped against the loading dock, the whole weight of his body resting on his shoulders, his broad head twisted unnaturally to one side.
The human neck is engineered to turn back and forth and up and down in a multitude of combinations. This wasn't one of them. I didn't need the medical examiner's officer to tell me his neck was broken' but it would require an autopsy to determine if a broken neck was actually the cause of death.
Fortunately, the medical examiner wasn't far behind us. Old Doc Baker, his fall head of white hair wet and plastered flat on his head, turned up with a squad of youthful ... read full excerpt from Trial by Fury ebook
