Alex Cross, Run (Alex Cross 20)

CHAPTER

4

WE LAID THE GIRL OUT AS CAREFULLY AS WE COULD ON THE FLOOR OF THE apartment, and left the rope around her neck. As long as she was out of the public eye, that’s all I needed. The rest I could leave to the investigation.

Her name was Elizabeth Reilly. According to the driver’s license I found in a purse by the front door, she was just two weeks shy of turning twenty-one. The apartment had all the signs of someone who lived alone, from the Lean Cuisines in the freezer to the single towel and washrag hanging neatly in the bathroom.

Obviously there was more to the story here, but I wasn’t seeing it yet.

When the ME did arrive I was glad to see it was Joan Bradbury. Joan’s an easygoing, sixty-something Texan. As far as I knew, she never came to work in anything but top-stitched cowboy boots, even after twenty years in DC. She’s opinionated, but also easy to work with, and didn’t give me any big lectures when she saw what I’d done with the body. Joan has four daughters of her own; I think she instinctively got it.

While she started her initial exam, I got our team of investigators out knocking on doors, especially across the street. This hanging had gone down in broad daylight. Someone had to have seen something.

I also got some more info from Sergeant Huizenga on our victim. Elizabeth Reilly had been a nursing student at Radians College on Vermont Avenue until the previous December, when she’d dropped out. There was no word yet on recent employment, but other than one unpaid parking ticket her record was squeaky clean.

By the time I got back to Joan, they were ready to wrap and bag the body for transport to the morgue.

“I’m going to need a full autopsy,” she told me, “but I’m thinking this girl was dead before she went out the window. Maybe strangled with the same rope.”

She reached down and pointed at some dark, purplish marks on Elizabeth Reilly’s lower neck.

“You see these contusions? These are all consistent with manual strangulation. But up here, higher, where the rope caught her? Just faint bruising. If there was any blood flow when she was actually hanged, those marks would be darker.”

I rocked back on my heels and ran a hand over the bottom of my face.

“This is what I was afraid of,” I said.

“There’s more, Alex.”

Normally Joan was pretty matter-of-fact, even at the roughest scenes, but there was a tightness in her voice I’d never heard before. This one was getting to her.

“The abdomen’s still flaccid, and she’s got obvious striations around her midsection and breasts,” she told me. “As far as I can make out, our girl here had a baby recently. And, Lord help me, I mean recently.”

CHAPTER

5

IT WAS LATE EVENING BY THE TIME I FINALLY GOT OVER TO THE AMERICAN Allied Parking garage in Georgetown. The site was well preserved, but Darcy Vickers’s body had already been removed. I’d have to fill in some blanks with the crime-scene photography later and glean what I could for now.

Ms. Vickers’s silver BMW 550i was parked on the third level. That’s where she’d been found. One of the Second District detectives, Will Freemont, walked me through it. He seemed like he wondered what I was doing so late to the party, but that was the least of my worries right now. My thoughts were still consumed by the Elizabeth Reilly case.

“So, they found her in here,” Freemont said, pointing into the open trunk. “Stab wounds were here, here, and here.” He pointed with two fingers to his own chest, abdomen, and upper leg. “This lady didn’t die too well, but you can bet she died quick, for whatever that’s worth. And just for shits and giggles, I guess, he cut off her hair, too.”

Left behind were a yoga mat, a briefcase, a few shopping bags, and a garment bag, all covered in a combination of dried blood and a mess of loose blond hair, some of it matted with the blood.

There was also a good-size dark stain—more blood—pooled on the cement under the car.

“He would have needed it to be quick,” I said. “It’s a pretty risky site for a murder.”

“He?” Freemont said.

“I’m guessing,” I said. It was all about first impressions at this point. “What do we know about Darcy

Vickers?”

The detective flipped open a small notebook, the same kind I carried, and looked down at it.

“Forty-two years old. Divorced, no kids. Works for Kimball-Ellis on K Street, mostly retainer work for a couple of the big tobacco companies. Supposedly she had a real cutthroat reputation, from what I’ve got so far.”