View to a Kill Excerpt

Hey gang -- well, as promised, here's an excerpt from my next-in-line Work in Progress. Keep in mind that I go back and fix *lots* of stuff after I've gotten to "know" my characters, so lots of this will change in the final version. Without further ado...

Crime scene photographer Sara Covington has lived with The Sight her whole life. Now she’s run across a killer with a signature she’s never seen before, an enigmatic, sexy-as-hell cop with no aura whatsoever and a colleague who’s bent on smearing her name. What’s a girl to do but hold on and hope like hell she doesn’t end up dead?

Chapter One

Pure sensation arrowed through me, shooting blinding pain through my skull before settling into a low throb that pounded behind my eyes.
“You okay, Sara?” The low, concerned voice came from my left and belonged to my sometimes-partner, Charles.
I gave him a grunt for an answer, and prepared myself for what I would see when I opened my eyes. I whispered a low prayer that it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought, then took the plunge.
As crime scenes go, this one was no better or worse than the hundreds of others I’d visited over my ten-year career as a photographer. At least not on the surface. Beneath if was a whole ‘nother story.
My stomach rolled as my brain tried to process the sight of lust, hatred and terror imprinted on the aetheric. Sights and sensations that only I could see and feel.
The victim lay naked at the end of a filthy alley, sprawled in a graceless heap, arms and legs akimbo, vivid scarlet seeping from the gaping knife wound that decorated his neck like a gruesome Valentine’s Day tie.
Cops walked back and forth, the odd one cracking a joke. Their morbid humor had pissed me off, once upon a time, when I was young and naïve. Now I recognized it for what it was…a defense mechanism. I could appreciate that, if nothing else.
I raised the Nikkon to my eye. I could just as easily take the pictures using the two-by-two inch screen in the middle of the digital camera, but that wouldn’t mute the scene the way I needed. Staring through the viewfinder reduced the world to two dimensions, diluting the fourth that had haunted me since I was born.
I snapped the first photo, falling into the clinical detachment that had served me so well since the day I discovered the distance a camera could give me. It was with that detachment that I saw that the victim had been handsome—strikingly so—with a toned body and pampered hands. How had he ended up here, in the worst part of Dallas? Had he been hunting drugs and found what he wasn’t looking for? Namely, trouble of the worst kind.
I walked around the body carefully, my feet moving of their own volition. I’d shot so many vics before that I knew the drill, knew instinctively where I could and couldn’t step in order to preserve the crime scene.
When I finally lowered the camera, one thing struck me, and it was as bright as a neon sign.
The killer had left his signature, a thick, viscous smear of purple that hovered in the air, an exclamation point of rage that faded as it meandered toward the street. In my gut I knew what I couldn’t tell the cops. This perp had killed before—and would again. The sonofabitch liked it.
Sometimes being gifted with The Sight is a good thing. Most of the time it’s a bitch. This was one of those times.
***
Maybe it’s time for me to introduce myself. I’m Sara Covington, crime scene photographer. I’m twenty-seven and have been doing this since I got my high-school diploma. You might think that that’s way too young to stomach the sights and sounds of death, but I’ve been around it far too long to flinch. Much.
I’ve been told I’m attractive, with short spiky blonde hair, hazel eyes and a decent figure, and if the way the new cops hit on me is any indication, it’s probably right, but when you’ve got The Sight, you know that looks are not only deceiving, but can be downright deadly. So they pretty much don’t matter to me anymore.
I’ve had The Sight for as long as I can remember, and if anyone ever asked me, I’d be pretty honest in telling them how much it’s fucked me up. Not that anyone ever has, mind you. It’s not like I can drop into my local shrink’s office, tell him (or her) that I see things that other people don’t, and expect to walk out without a heavy dosage of something mind-altering. Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again.
The Sight is complicated and utterly simple at the same time. I see the fourth dimension. Not all it’s cracked up to be, trust me. If I knew what the real world looked like, I could probably make a comparison, but all I’ve ever known is the supervivid world I live in. It’s especially bad when it’s my time of the month. Must be a hormonal thing. I’ve learned to control how much I can see—most of the time. Anyway, most people just give off an aura that tells me what kind of person they are. People who are alpha personalities are hugely red, and if they’ve done something recently they’re ashamed of, then it’s tinged to orange. Pacifists are, you guessed it, serenely blue. But those are the extremes. Most everyone falls into a bluish-green or orangish-red category. The middle of the road. But every once in a while I run into someone who’s truly extraordinary. Like tonight’s baddie. I’d never seen a shade of purple that vivid before, never experienced the churning in my gut that signified seriously bad ju-ju. His signature had sucker-punched me, even though I’d known it was coming.
I learned to shut my mouth about my “talent” when I was a child. Getting whacked by your momma will do that to you. A serious, God-fearing woman, my momma didn’t know what to make of her only child. One day I was blessed by the Lord, the next I was demon seed.
Now that I’m older, I can understand some of where she was coming from, but I’ll never forgive her for sending me to “counseling”, which was a polite way of saying “in-patient psychiatric care”. Needless to say, I walked out when I was sixteen and never looked back. I lived on the streets for awhile, got my high-school diploma about a year later via GED, and by then I was already a regular photographer for the local sheriff’s department. One of the deputies had a big mouth, popping off to a Dallas detective about how good I was, and within a year I was freelancing for them.
Nowadays, crime scene investigators shoot most everything, but I’d been around for a long time, and the precinct captain trusted me, so the CSIs were stuck with me. It pissed them off at first, but after awhile they realized that having me there gave them more time to do the nine million other things that needing doing, and left me alone.
If you hadn’t figured it out, that’s the way I like it. Just call me the original lone-wolf photographer.
***
I kicked the door shut behind me and let The Sight unfold. My house was just as I’d left it, warm and inviting. The tap of claws on the parquet floor preceded my furry roommate.
I crouched and waited for the Lhasa Apso whirlwind that was Xena as she launched herself into my arms. She licked my face, smothering me in doggie kisses as she wiggled.
I know, a Lhasa is such a girly dog, but hey, what can I say, I’m a girl, and the pooch gives me unconditional love.
Tucking her under my arm, I rose and tossed my keys onto the hallway table, then carefully set the Nikkon down.
Tonight’s crime scene bothered me on an elemental level. What bothered me more is that I couldn’t shut it out. Usually I left the ugliness I saw far too often at my front door, but tonight’s work had left me feeling flustered and off balance.
I walked into the kitchen, fed Xena and poured myself a glass of wine. The Merlot slipped down my throat nicely, and complemented the bluesy Robert Cray that slid from the speakers as I turned on the stereo.