| Author: | Mary Base | ISBN: | 9780463349113 |
| Publisher: | Mary Base | Publication: | May 18, 2018 |
| Imprint: | Smashwords Edition | Language: | English |
| Author: | Mary Base |
| ISBN: | 9780463349113 |
| Publisher: | Mary Base |
| Publication: | May 18, 2018 |
| Imprint: | Smashwords Edition |
| Language: | English |
“The crime scene photos are logged into evidence. All I have with me is a picture of a picture,” he said. “So it’s not a great shot.”
The girl had dark, shoulder-length hair. Both eyes had been blackened, one swollen shut, the other a narrow slit into dead vacancy. An uncomfortable prickling began at the back of my neck. I felt flushed. Could it be?...
Gingerly, I picked up Braddick’s cell phone and brought it closer to my eyes. I’d only met her once. And I didn’t want it to be her.
“You know her?” he asked.
“I…I think it might be Aysu,” I said, weakly.
Detective Sergeant Margaret (Magnum) Schultz looked away from the strangled girl in the picture and wondered what sort of a religion gave a stamp of approval to murder.
After nearly 16 years in law enforcement, Magnum had thought she’d seen it all: deranged serial killers, rapists, perverted child molesters, even a foray or two into the woo-woo side of the supernatural. But this had to be the most disturbing. A religion so committed to their own tribal convictions about what God expected of them that common sense morality was shoved aside, making way for a heartless cruelty beyond her understanding. How else to explain an otherwise loving father willing to murder his own daughter; a culture that controlled women not only through how they were allowed to dress, but through female genital mutilations? And it wasn’t just foreign religions who were so self-righteous these days. At what point had it become a Christian ideal to treat anyone with the disrespect she’d seen recently from so-called religious people in the good ol’ USA? She was beginning to feel that with the amount of hate in the world being expressed in the name of religions, atheism might be the sole remaining keeper of love for humanity.
Magnum stood up, shook her head, and slid on the sunglasses. Time to get to work.
“The crime scene photos are logged into evidence. All I have with me is a picture of a picture,” he said. “So it’s not a great shot.”
The girl had dark, shoulder-length hair. Both eyes had been blackened, one swollen shut, the other a narrow slit into dead vacancy. An uncomfortable prickling began at the back of my neck. I felt flushed. Could it be?...
Gingerly, I picked up Braddick’s cell phone and brought it closer to my eyes. I’d only met her once. And I didn’t want it to be her.
“You know her?” he asked.
“I…I think it might be Aysu,” I said, weakly.
Detective Sergeant Margaret (Magnum) Schultz looked away from the strangled girl in the picture and wondered what sort of a religion gave a stamp of approval to murder.
After nearly 16 years in law enforcement, Magnum had thought she’d seen it all: deranged serial killers, rapists, perverted child molesters, even a foray or two into the woo-woo side of the supernatural. But this had to be the most disturbing. A religion so committed to their own tribal convictions about what God expected of them that common sense morality was shoved aside, making way for a heartless cruelty beyond her understanding. How else to explain an otherwise loving father willing to murder his own daughter; a culture that controlled women not only through how they were allowed to dress, but through female genital mutilations? And it wasn’t just foreign religions who were so self-righteous these days. At what point had it become a Christian ideal to treat anyone with the disrespect she’d seen recently from so-called religious people in the good ol’ USA? She was beginning to feel that with the amount of hate in the world being expressed in the name of religions, atheism might be the sole remaining keeper of love for humanity.
Magnum stood up, shook her head, and slid on the sunglasses. Time to get to work.
