A Flash of Red

by BV Lawson

About the Author: BV Lawson has been published in dozens of magazines and is a Derringer Award winner for her short fiction and a contributor to the Anthony Award-winning Blood on the Bayou. BV's Scott Drayco mystery series was named Best Mystery in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, chosen as a Featured Library Journal Self-e pick, and a finalist for the Shamus, Silver Falchion, Daphne Awards, and Kindle Awards. BV lives in Virginia with her husband and enjoys flying above the Chesapeake Bay in a little Cessna.

Excerpt

Scott Drayco watched the video of the murder for the forty-seventh time. All ten seconds of it. One moment, Allison Browning was taking a selfie in front of the District of Columbia War Memorial and then suddenly she and the cellphone fell, leaving only a blur of unfocused motion. If she hadn’t fallen on top of the phone, he wouldn’t even have that much to go on—her attacker didn’t have a chance to grab it before the rest of Allison’s college group headed in that direction.

The knife punctured Allison’s heart and left lung, and she didn’t live long enough to give any details about the assailant. This blurry cellphone recording, preserving the last terror-filled moments of a young life, was all he had. Drayco sighed and played the video again, frame by frame, focusing on the only interesting part from the blur, a flash of red.

The police detectives who’d worked the case the past six months hadn’t determined the source of the red flash. Their official consensus was simply blood and that the killer was an opportunistic thief. But Drayco wasn’t convinced. Neither was the wealthy bank lobbyist who decided he needed a crime consultant and hired Drayco to look into the murder of the granddaughter he’d tearfully called Sissy.

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