No One Heard Her Scream by Jordan Dane

understood the enduring pain of their loved ones. Not knowing was the worst.
    Taken from the archived evidence boxes, photographs of the victims provided by the families morphed into Dani's face. Her eyes. Her smile. An unfulfilled future. For an instant, Becca even thought she smelled her sister's perfume, lingering in the air, triggering a haunting and pervasive guilt. She shut her eyes tight, holding back the tears that were never far from the surface.
    Keep digging. Becca took a deep breath and plunged into the boxes for more. Her instincts told her the answer might be at the next turn of a page. A young woman, buried in a very dark place, had died alone with only a futile scream to break the silence that marked her passing from this life. Putting a name to the bones at the Medical Examiner's was step one to finding her killer.
    Yet something in the photograph of Isabel Marquez drew her attention time and time again. And in the quiet of the late afternoon, she almost heard the girl whispering— Look again, or you'll miss it. She held up the high school class photo once more—a pretty young girl captured forever in a happier time, with a mischievous grin and eyes graced by innocence. Although her thoughts turned to Danielle, Becca wanted to remember the face of Isabel—as if it would be possible for her to forget.
    "Wait a minute. I knew that name sounded familiar."
    Finally, it clicked. The word "coincidence" raised a red flag. She'd seen the name of Marquez earlier in the day.
    Becca remembered something from the list of license tags taken by a CSI tech outside the destroyed theater. Standing hunched over her desk, she rummaged through the accumulating piles of paper, searching for the report she received earlier. As she suspected, the name of Marquez was on the list—a red Ford F—150 truck registered to Rudy Marquez. After a quick look in the case file, she learned that Isabel's father had been deceased at the time she went missing, but her mother and two brothers filed the initial report. Rudy was one of Isabel's brothers.
    To place a face with the name, she replayed the CSI video, hoping to get a fix on the owner of the truck. Of all the people gathered outside the Imperial Theatre, one set of eyes reflected a different level of interest than the rest of the rabble. And she knew, without confirmation, she'd found Rudy Marquez amidst the gawkers, standing by a red truck.
    "That's gotta be you," she whispered. "What are you up to?"
    Becca felt certain it wasn't idle curiosity that had drawn the man to the theater, but so much remained unexplained. Did Rudy Marquez know anything about the dead body found at the Imperial? And was there any connection to Hunter Cavanaugh, the onetime owner of the property—a man dangerous enough for the mysterious Diego Galvan to risk his own neck to warn her?
    Questions flooded her mind. But when she picked up the school photo of Isabel again, she knew she had a solid lead. Her eye caught another reason to make the trip to see Marquez.
    "Well, I'll be damned. Right under my nose all along." After a nibble on the corner of her mouth, she smiled. "Thanks, Isabel."

CHAPTER3
    Becca headed west on General McMullen, a bustling six-lane thoroughfare. A place where men still stood on busy street corners hawking newspapers, taking their lives in their hands to peddle bad news. Businesses along the way were mostly converted houses painted in vivid reds, yellows, and electric blues. In the light of day, the paint colors could do some serious damage to perfectly good eyeballs if a person stared too long. Now, with the sun on a downward spiral, the boulevard would soon blaze in neon and the night shift rabble would scurry from their hiding places like cockroaches on party patrol.
    Under the heading of surreal, churches wedged between bars, tattoo parlors, hooker hot spots, and tarot card readers—an eclectic hodgepodge of vice and redemption offered up in a single locale. Yet despite the rough