The Girl with the Crooked Nose
A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry
The Nightmare
June 2003
Frank was used to the bad dreams. They came with the strange hours
and the heads. It was a trio that he had learned to live with ever since
the murder of Anna Duval.
The dreams returned at random, like old acquaintances—the man
hanging in the tree, the boy tied up and strangled and burnt and shot
through the temple, the man cut in half by a train—especially when he
was working on a new case.
It was very early. He had come to bed only at two A.M., after working
on a skull that he had just gotten from the New York police. He could
hear Jan breathing faintly next to him. Boy lay at his feet while Guy, black
and haughty, was barely visible on top of the video recorder in the corner,
his eyes the only thing that gave him away.
Frank knocked his knee against the side table as he got up. Boy shifted
slightly and then settled back into place. Frank turned to see if he had
woken Jan, but she hadn’t moved.
He pulled on a pair of boxer shorts. He looked good for a man who
read full excerpt from The Girl with the Crooked Nose ebook
