Debbie ViguiГ© [ViguiГ© - The Shadow of Death

The Shadow of Death

Other Books by Debbie Vigui

The Psalm 23 Mysteries

The Lord is My Shepherd

I Shall Not Want

Lie Down in Green Pastures

Beside Still Waters

Restoreth My Soul

In the Paths of Righteousness

For His Names Sake

Walk Through the Valley

The Kiss Trilogy

Kiss of Night

Kiss of Death

Kiss of Revenge

Sweet Seasons

The Summer of Cotton Candy

The Fall of Candy Corn

The Winter of Candy Canes

The Spring of Candy Apples

Witch Hunt

The Thirteenth Sacrifice

The Last Grave

Circle of Blood

The Shadow of Death

Psalm 23 Mysteries

By Debbie Vigui

Published b y Big Pink Bow

The Shadow of Death

Copyright 2014 by Debbie Vigui

ISBN-13: 978-0990697107

Published by Big Pink Bow

www.bigpinkbow.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

To Calliope Collacott for her tireless support

Thank you to everyone who helped make this book a reality, particularly Barbara Reynolds, Rick Reynolds and Marissa Smeyne.

Detective Mark Walters attitude about holidays was completely dependent on whether or not he was working them. Holidays had a remarkable way of bringing out the best in people and the worst in people. He loved the celebratory feeling of time off that he could spend with his wife, Traci. He hated being called to a crime scene when a family function had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The Fourth of July was coming up in just a couple of days and already he was bracing himself. He wasnt scheduled to be on call that day, but he had a terrible niggling feeling in the back of his brain. It didnt help that since meeting Cindy and Jeremiah holidays had seemed to become a focal point for murder, or, at least, the discovery of it. He knew it wasnt the secretary and the rabbis fault, but they did have the most astounding knack for stumbling over dead bodies. What made him even more nervous was that they hadnt found one for months. They were overdue.

So he had taken matters into his own hands. He had invited them both to a barbeque at his house to celebrate the holiday. That way he would know where they both were, and maybe could relax and enjoy the day instead of waiting for the inevitable call from one of them. Traci told him he was being paranoid. He thought he was being proactive. All of that didnt stop the terrible feeling that something was going to go wrong, though.

Mark?

Yeah, sorry, he said, turning to his partner, Liam. It was still hard not to think of Liam as his new partner even though they had been working together now for ten months. He was a good man and hed had Marks back, the only one who had been willing to take on that role after the death of Marks previous partner, Paul.

Mark hadnt made any more progress for months on solving the mystery behind his late partners life. The truth was, he was struggling very hard to put the past in the past and focus on the future. Namely he was focused on the upcoming birth of his and Tracis first child. It was going to be a girl. That was one mystery he could not wait to have solved. Traci, on the other hand, still didnt know. She wanted to be surprised, but it was getting harder every day not to spill the beans by accident.

Mark took a deep breath. What were you asking?

What should I bring to the barbeque tomorrow? I could make a potato salad or something.

No, Traci makes that. Its her moms recipe and its the best Ive ever had.

A fruit salad then?

That could work.

How many people are going to be there?

Eleven. Twelve if Tracis younger sister comes, but I doubt it.

Okay.

Contrary to popular belief, not all Marks days started off with a fresh dead body. Actually very few of them did. While some cases were pretty open and shut, many were more complicated than that. In truth, the majority of his time was spent working the angles and trying to solve cases that had been open for more than a couple of days. In that way he envied the detectives on television. Always a new crime to solve and always a nice, neat ending forty minutes later.

Mark picked up the next file on his desk with a sigh. It was an unsolved murder almost two years old at this point. He flipped it open and found himself staring again at a picture of a guy with dark, curly hair, olive skin, and intense eyes. He was an Iranian named Asim Kazmi who had just turned twenty-one when he was murdered. He had been a student at one of the local colleges and had been murdered in the park downtown. A female jogger had found him dead, sitting up on a park bench with a knife buried in his chest.

There had been no fingerprints as it turned out. None anywhere. Not even on Asims fingers. His fingerprints had all been burned away post-mortem. It made no sense really. Whoever had killed him had taken the time to remove his fingerprints, but not his wallet, which included a school issued picture i.d. among other things. Teachers at his school and his passport, which they found in his apartment, also corroborated his identity.

The fingerprint thing had always bothered him. It was incredibly suspicious and there were only a handful of reasons that he could think of why someone would bother to do that. As the investigation had continued and they hadnt found anything concrete, Paul had kept urging him to let the fingerprint thing go, saying it was a dead end.

He couldnt help but wonder if Asims fingerprints had been intact what would have happened if he had run them. Would they have shown up but under a different name? If Asim was an alias and his killer was trying to obscure his real identity it would make sense. It also made sense why Paul, himself an imposter, kept telling Mark to forget about the fingerprints.

There it was again, the doubts about Paul, the second guessing of everything hed said or done in light of the revelations about him after hed died. He tried to keep himself from doing so because that path lead to madness.

You look a bit on edge, Liam said.

Mark grimaced. It was getting to the point where Liam could read him frighteningly well. A bit, he admitted.

Why dont you go home? Its late, and Ive got things covered.

After I read through this file Ill head home.

He flipped through the notes hed made. Interviews with students and faculty at the school had been less than helpful. Everyone he had interviewed had described Asim as either nice or shy or both.

He read again the notes of his interview of the female jogger who had found the body. No new insights there. He flipped over to start reading Pauls notes. Paul had made detailed notes about the crime scene and had talked to a few other bystanders, none of which had been any help. Seeing Pauls handwriting didnt improve his mood. What made it worse was the man wrote like he spoke so Mark could almost hear his voice reading the words out loud.

He was just about to close the file and take Liam up on his offer when something caught his eye. Paul had made a notation that he believed a homeless man with a German Shepherd had seen something, but refused to talk about it.

The hair on the back of Marks neck lifted as he wondered if that would be the same homeless man who had been found dead months later in Jeremiahs front yard. If so, was that his German Shepherd that Jeremiah had adopted? Thanks to Josephs charity program there were several homeless people in the area who had dogs, but they had acquired them well after Asim was killed. The only homeless man he was aware of that had had an animal prior to that was Peter Wallace, the man who had turned up dead on Jeremiahs lawn.