HOT CASE: A Detective Shelley Caldwell Novel

A dead woman drained of blood who disappears...a detective who won’t give up the case...

Detective Shelley Caldwell finds LaTonya Sanford drained of blood—but by the time back up arrives, the body is gone. Shelley is determined to work the non-case and is sent to psych evaluation, then goes from being a homicide detective to an instructor at the police academy...
...until another dead young woman is discovered—and disappears like the first one. And this time, the only witness is Shelley's identical twin.
Donning her sister's identity, Shelley works as a waitress at a Goth bar and encounters things no rational detective would believe possible—and a man no earthly woman could resist. But can she trust her instincts and find the killer before she becomes the next victim?

From RT Book Reviews: Patricia Rosemoor fills Hot Case (4) with well-drawn characters. The believably flawed heroine drives the quick-moving story with her engaging voice and satisfying emotional journey.

5* review from Harriet Klausner: Besides a fantastic lead protagonist, the key to Patricia Rosemoor's super tale is that the paranormal feels bona fide due to the inquiries of the lead cop on the trail of a HOT CASE.

Excerpt:
My stomach knotting, I moved toward the lump in the middle of the alley. As if the fog decided to cooperate, it rolled off the body and framed it, giving me a picture I would never forget.
She was sprawled across the alley pavement, her skirt up around her waist, panties shredded, legs spread and bruised—she’d obviously been sexually assaulted. I moved closer, my eye caught by an intricate design high on her outer thigh—a winged gargoyle. A tattoo. Even in the dim light I could see how young she was. A teenager. Just a kid. Her jaw looked as if it had been dislocated, one of her eyes rolled partly out of its socket and an ear was half ripped off.
She’d fought her attacker like hell, I thought. She’d fought and lost.
Her caramel skin was ash-pale, and I knew a person’s skin color came from the oxygen in the blood. Her body hadn’t been oxygenated in a while. Even so, I set the lantern down next to her and felt for a pulse. Her flesh was icy against my fingertips. Nothing moved inside of her.
I looked for wounds and on the inside of her arm found a nasty slash that severed the median cubital vein—the primary site used to draw blood by medical personnel. Her arm was smeared with red and the gashed flesh lay open. If she were still alive, it would have been a gusher, but it wasn’t bleeding because her heart wasn’t beating and maintaining blood pressure. No other wounds that I could see. Only that gash, meaning she must have died of blood loss.
The problem was…where had all the blood gone?
I flashed the light around through the fog, but there were only a few splotches on the ground near her arm. The short hairs at the back of my neck rose, and I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t the primary site. That she had been killed elsewhere and dumped here. Only it didn’t look that way.
As the fog drifted over the body once more, I checked for my cell phone but couldn’t find it. I raced back to my car where I’d left it. Since I was off duty, I didn’t have a radio to call in to dispatch, so I dialed 911.
“This is Detective Shelley Caldwell, Homicide,” I said, squeezing my ears against a sudden weird, high-pitched noise. What the hell was wrong with the damn cell phone? I’d never heard anything like this before. I raised my voice as I settled back into the seat. The fog was too thick to see anything anyway. “Call Dispatch. I have a body…”
Or I’d had a body.