Die in Plain Sight (39 page)

B
itch.

The man couldn’t believe she had outrun him.

What was she, a fucking gazelle?

He’d planned the evening perfectly—things were supposed to go smoothly, just like the other times. And everything had, until she’d shown up.

Frustrated rage gave him strength. He threw himself around the corner of the alley and into the street. A moment of rational thought slowed him down. He looked around; the woman was gone.

Did she get away?

He paused to calm his breathing. His other senses began to process the surrounding environment—the wet pavement smell and the steam rising lazily off the street. The thunderstorm was moving to the east, leaving behind cooler temperatures.

As his breathing slowed, he heard music nearby, a throbbing undertone of bass that penetrated the sound of the rain. The volume increased. Doors opened, and a rush of voices added to the din. The man slowly approached a stairway that led down to the source of the music. He glanced up at the sign over the entrance.

Suds ’n Studs—Ladies Only.

A strip bar. How very tacky.
Cautiously looking around the corner and down the stairway, he saw a mass of women huddled around something on the steps. The gazelle, apparently.

“Is she breathing?”

“God, what happened?”

“Her eyes are twitching, is she having a seizure?”

The questions came rapid fire, directed at no one in particular. Bellowing for someone inside to call 911, a muscled bouncer tried to clear the excited patrons away from the stairs. From just inside the doors, a woman pushed through the crowd, shouting that she was a doctor. The music stopped abruptly.

The killer took in the scene, assessing his options. Too many witnesses. He’d better cut his losses. The injured woman wouldn’t be able to clearly identify him—it had been rainy and dark.

Besides, he’d take care of her soon enough.

He turned away from the strip bar and headed down the street towards Dupont Circle. Once he was a few blocks away, he paused under a streetlight to pull the gazelle’s small purse from his jacket. He’d stopped to pick up the handbag, which was one of the reasons she’d outrun him.

At least that’s what he told himself.

He flipped open the wallet, quickly reading through the information on her driver’s license. Marie Claire Lambert, 30, Georgetown address. And keys to let him in.

The man’s mouth twisted upward in a cruel smile. “You’re dead, Marie Claire.”

O
fficer Reggie Garfield had responded to calls at the Suds ’n Studs before. When it came over the radio that a woman was down in front of the entrance, he figured this would be a fairly routine incident involving Friday night, alcohol, and a boisterous strip club. Backup was on the way, and the ambulance was a couple of minutes behind him. It should be an open-and-shut report. He figured to be back on the streets before 2
A.M.

Garfield stepped out of his patrol car. He automatically moved to put the nightstick in its belt loop, shifting his love handles briefly when they interfered with this process. He grabbed the shoulder microphone to radio back that he had arrived on the scene. His first job would be to find someone who knew what had happened. He went down the stairs to get a look at the victim and start gathering information.

“Stand back, everybody, coming through.” The words came automatically from Garfield’s mouth.

He saw a huge, heavily muscled guy in a sea of females. “You the bouncer? Get everyone back in the club and clear the way for the paramedics.” He pitched his
voice louder. “Ladies, the show is over, please go back inside and let us do our job.”

The crowd reluctantly began breaking up. Most of the women stopped just inside the open double doors to the club, milling and chatting about how awful it was, stretching their necks to get one last glimpse of the scene.

“You a nurse?” he asked a woman who had remained crouched next to the unconscious victim, monitoring her pulse.

The woman looked up in brief irritation but kept a hand on the victim’s shoulder as if to hold her down. “No, I’m a doctor. Third-year resident.” When the officer looked surprised, she rolled her eyes. “They do have female doctors, you know.”

He sighed. Great—attitude to go along with his late-night call. He got out his notebook. “She slip down the steps, then?”

“I don’t know. Some women came out of the club and said they found her at the bottom of the stairs. Nobody knows her. She took a hell of a blow to the back of her head, but I’m not sure if it was on the stairs.”

Garfield raised his eyebrows. “You don’t think she just fell in the rain? Maybe had too much to drink?”

“I’ll tell you what I do know—the victim has a serious head wound. She was disoriented and incoherent, and kept trying to get up when I first arrived. She’s got no ID, no purse. And look here—she’s barefoot and there are cuts all over the soles of her feet.” The doctor lifted a white bar towel that had been wrapped around the victim’s feet. She paused, then spoke softly. “She was also saying some pretty scary stuff.”

The cop came to attention. Leaning over to look at the woman’s dirty, bloodied feet, he made notes in his book.

“What kinda stuff?”

“They were broken phrases. Like I said, she was disoriented. I did catch a couple of them, though. ‘He killed her. I saw them, at the school. Run!’She repeated that last one while struggling to sit up. We had to get the bouncer to hold her down.”

“She seems quiet now—think she’ll be all right?” Garfield paused in his note-taking.

“I don’t know.” The young doctor reached again to take the victim’s pulse. “I’m not a neurologist. She lost consciousness just before you arrived, but her vital signs are stable. She needs to get to a hospital and have a CT scan done. If the injury is severe enough, she might need surgery.”

The doctor gently pushed back wet black curls from the woman’s white face, then checked her pupils with the bouncer’s flashlight.

Garfield left the steps and went to talk to one of the officers that had arrived as backup. “Start talking to witnesses inside. I’ll get the doc’s contact info and get the vic on her way to the hospital.”

An ambulance siren grew slowly louder, its sound distorted by the humid night air.

Garfield cleared the crowd that had begun to form again by the time the ambulance arrived. The doctor was giving two paramedics instructions as they strapped the victim onto a backboard, and several firemen waited to help carry the unconscious woman up the stairs. As the group reached the ambulance doors, the doctor approached him.

“I’m going to ride to the hospital with her.” She stopped, took a deep breath, and then spoke before she lost her nerve. “Look, there’s a school a couple of blocks from here. A middle school or something. I don’t want to
tell you how to do your job, but if you’d seen how scared she was….” The woman’s voice trailed off.

“Don’t worry, Doc. I’m on my way over there right now. We’ll check it out.”

Garfield helped the doctor into the ambulance and closed the doors, banging his fist twice on the side in a signal for the driver to take off.

Washington, D.C.

Saturday morning

D
etective Sean Richter swore luridly when his pager went off in the darkness, sounding like a crazed hornet as it buzzed on the nightstand. His curses became more creative when he saw the time. 2
A.M.
He’d worked until an hour ago on one of the cases he was investigating.

He worked in the cold cases section of the Homicide Division for the DCPD. Along with his partner, Sean handled cases that had no clues, few leads, and no real suspects after six to twelve months of active investigation. He was assigned to these difficult cases full time, but there weren’t enough hours in the day to do the job, so he often worked nights as well.

He grabbed his phone and dialed the number in the pager’s glowing display.

“Richter. What’s up?” he said in a rusty voice.

“Sean, my man, you owe me big for this.”

The voice belonged to a cheerful night person. Officer Ambrose “Banjo” Caulley often sat up until dawn listening
to his police scanner and monitoring the communications of other D.C. Police Department staff.

“How about I be the judge of that, Banjo? What’ve you got?”

“A call came through a little while ago. Murder at a school near Dupont Circle. Young female, multiple stab wounds. She was practically still warm.” Banjo drew his story out with relish.

“I’m listening,” Sean said, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly.

“Seems the victim, a dark-haired female in her mid-twenties, was stabbed in the lower abdomen three or four times with a real big knife. No other signs of trauma. No sexual assault, no robbery.”

Sean’s pulse picked up. The preliminary description was similar to two other murders he was working with the Cold Cases Unit—cases he believed were related. But there wasn’t enough evidence to bear out this theory yet. His other cases involved prostitutes who were also drug addicts, women on the seamy edge of society.

“Was the victim a working girl?”

“Not clear yet. But here’s what you’re really going to like. They’ve got a witness, someone they think saw the crime.”

“You’re shitting me.” Sean jumped to his feet and reached for the jeans he had left hanging over the back of a chair. “Who? Where is he right now?” He pulled the jeans on over his boxers, then put on and buttoned his shirt one-handed while feeling around blindly with his feet in search of shoes.

“Hang on a second, I’m getting to it. The report is that an unidentified woman fell down the stairs at Suds ’nStuds. That’s a male strip club on Dupont Circle. According
to people who helped her at the scene, she was incoherent and hysterical, saying something about seeing a man kill a woman at a school. The first officer on the scene went to a middle school off the Circle, just to check things out. He found the murder victim and called it in. Then I called you.”

“Where’s the witness now?” Sean asked.

He turned on the light, slipped on his shoulder harness, checked that the weapon on the nightstand was ready to go, and put it in the holster.

“She knocked herself silly, probably from falling down the stairs. She was taken to GWU Hospital, but I don’t think you can see her yet. She was apparently unconscious when they left the club, so she’ll probably be tied up in the ER for a while.”

“Damn. Is she going to be all right?”

“Officer on the scene couldn’t say. Why don’t you head out to the school first, talk to him if he’s still there? Name’s Reggie Garfield. You can swing by the hospital in the morning.”

“I’m on my way. What’s the address?” Sean scribbled the information on a tablet while attaching his pager and cell phone to his belt. “I owe you big time, buddy.”

“I know.” Banjo’s tone said he would enjoy collecting. “You want me to call Burke for you?”

“Not yet. His lady friend got back in town last night and is leaving again tomorrow, so he’s probably, ah, engaged right now. Anyway, I’ve been working the other two cases most recently. I’ll give him a call when I get a feel for whether this murder is related to the others. I’ll have my cell phone on if you hear anything more.”

Sean hung up and headed out the door. He reached the scene of the murder within thirty minutes. Despite the fact
that it was nearly 3
A
M
., gawkers were gathered around the site, drawn by the flashing lights and predawn activity. They were held back by yellow crime scene tape, with a uniformed officer on the other side.

Sean pushed his way through a knot of milling teenagers. “Jesus, where are your parents? Let me get through, here—and go home!”

Even though he was a head taller and much stronger than the teens, they gave him a lot of attitude. He ignored it, flipped open his ID for the uniform on duty, and asked, “Where’s Garfield?”

“Over there,” the cop said, pointing toward a heavyset patrolman by the victim’s body.

“Officer Garfield?” Sean called out to him.

“Yeah.”

Sean approached him, ID in hand. “Detective Sean Richter. I’m with the Homicide Cold Cases Unit. I want to see if there might be some overlap with this murder and a couple of ongoing investigations.”

“What makes you think there’s any connection? Forensics hasn’t even assessed the scene yet.”

Obviously Garfield was feeling a little protective of his crime scene. But if the cases were linked, Sean’s claim would take precedence.

“Similarities in the victim’s physical profile, cause of death, and a hunch,” Sean said. “If you’ll tell me what you know about this victim, I’ll get out of your hair and wait for the report to come out. I just wanted to see the crime scene myself.”

Garfield raised his eyebrows. “Victim is in her mid-twenties, dark hair, slender build. No sign of sexual assault, but we’ll wait for the medical examiner to confirm. Cause of death looks to be multiple stab wounds to the abdomen.
Her purse was found nearby, wallet inside. Credit cards, driver’s license, and eighteen dollars in cash. She has gold jewelry as well, so I’m thinking robbery wasn’t the motive.”

“Do you recognize her from the streets? Does she have any kind of record?”

“Nah, she’s not a working girl. The name on the ID comes back as a teacher at this school, Renata Mendes.”

Sean processed the information. The victim’s physical profile fit with the other cases, all young Hispanic females. But not the teacher bit. The two other murdered women had been drug addicts who had sold their bodies to support crack or meth habits. “What kind of stab wounds?”

“Big ones. Lots of blood.”

“Any defensive wounds?”

“Not so you can tell. Looks like the perp was a strong guy, and he probably surprised her.”

That fit. “Who reported the murder?”

“Now that’s the funny part. Seems there might be a witness. In fact, that’s what sent us up here in the first place.” He briefed Sean on the incident with the woman injured at the Suds ’n Studs club.

“Were you able to speak to her?” Sean asked over the sudden squawking of Garfield’s radio.

“Nah. She was out cold when I got there, but people on the scene confirmed what she said right after she was found.” Garfield reached up to silence the radio on his shoulder. “My gut says she saw something that scared her half to death. She’s in the ER right now.”

“Thanks. I’ll take a look around, then get out of your way.”

Sean turned away and went to the victim’s body, where
evidence technicians were just starting their work. They bustled around, testing equipment and setting up freestanding lights to illuminate the area for the video cameras.

While the techs worked on the lighting, Sean borrowed a flashlight from one of the patrolmen and briefly reconnoitered the area around the victim. He crouched over a bent umbrella and a leather-wrapped canister of pepper spray, or maybe mace. Both objects had paint around them, waiting to be photographed and tagged as evidence.

Sean made a mental note to check if the fingerprint analysis came up with anything that could connect the items to the victim. A little farther away, he found two more objects. Medium-heeled women’s shoes, sprawled a couple of feet apart, size 7. Glancing over at the victim, he saw sensible black flats on her feet.

“OK, team, we’re ready to start,” one of the technicians shouted. The forensics team had the scene lit up like center stage at a Vegas show.

Stepping closer to the victim, Sean examined the body objectively. He had seen death before, yet still he had to work to distance himself from the victim’s humanity and vulnerability.

This one had brown eyes that were wide open. Her mouth was open as well, as if she had died crying out. Sean’s lips thinned as he took in the victim’s clothing, hairstyle, jewelry. She looked like a kid.

Crouching down, he examined the stab wounds more closely. A decent-sized blade had been used. One stab alone would have been mortal from the look of things, yet there were at least four other wounds. Something to keep in mind about the murderer—he enjoyed his work and believed in overkill.

A technician shifted a piece of equipment, throwing a
stark light across the victim from a different angle. Sean focused immediately on a cloth loop at the woman’s slender waist. Shifting around, he saw an identical bit of fabric on the other side. It looked like she had been wearing a belt, but he didn’t see it anywhere.

Sean motioned to one of the technicians. “Did one of you guys find a belt or sash? It looks like there was one here—see the loops? She wouldn’t wear the dress with these things just hanging off her sides, would she?”

The forensics tech studied the victim and nodded his agreement. He made a note on his tiny laptop and called out questions to his team members.

No one had seen any belt.

All of the victim’s other articles were there next to her body. Sean looked over her effects—a straw purse and umbrella, a Mickey Mouse key ring with four keys attached. No belt.

“We’ll look for it,” the tech assured Sean.

“Good, but I don’t think you’ll find anything.”

“Why not? Looks like maybe this was a robbery attempt or something. Sure, her money and stuff is right here,” the tech said, “but word is the killer was interrupted by a witness, which would explain why the valuables got left behind.”

Sean’s eyes were pale blue and cold in the artificial light. “I think our killer got exactly what he wanted from this victim, and then kept a little something to remember her by.”

“You think the guy wanted a trophy? The belt?” The tech sounded excited. “Hey, I bet you’re right!”

Sean didn’t say anything. Sometimes he hated being right.