Speak for the Dead

Now working homicide, Wager lands a gruesome case in the botanic garden.

Homicide cops are always suspicious of the drug enforcement division, so when ex-narcotics detective Gabe Wager arrives on the murder squad, his first assignment is the graveyard shift. His new commanding officer hopes that the late shift will keep Wager out of trouble, and give him a chance to learn the byzantine regulations that govern murder investigations. But two days later, a call comes in just after dawn reporting a death at Denver's botanic gardens. Wager could leave it for the morning shift, but he is hungry to prove himself, and legs it over to the scene of the horrid crime. The young woman's head has been left inside the gardens, her body nowhere to be found. Without any way of identifying her, Wager is stuck without a lead. But when her torso surfaces in a junkyard, he begins the slow grind of finding the murderer who dismembered this once beautiful model.