“Now that's a damn shame, Officer.” Starkey swung his pistol out from behind his back. He shot the trooper point-blank in the forehead. Didn't even have to think about it. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
He shook his head as he walked to the police car, shut off the headlights. He got into the front, pushing the dead trooper aside, and pulled the car out of sight from the main road.
“Go find the girl,” he said to Harris and Griffin. “Pronto. She's obviously not too far. And she's still wearing her platforms, the twit. Go! Go!” he repeated. “I'll give you chumps a couple of minutes' lead. I want to get this cruiser completely out of sight. Go. Warren is Point. Brownie is Flanker.”
When Colonel Thomas Starkey finally made his move into the woods, there wasn't a false step on his part. He went straight to where the girl had cried out for help and gotten the state trooper killed.
From that point, it was mostly instinct for him. He saw mussed leaves and grass. A broken branch of a bush where she'd passed. He noted his own internal responses rapid breathing, surging blood flow. He'd been here before.
“Tao se tim ra may, ”he whispered in Vietnamese. “Lue do may se den toi.”
I'm going to find you, honey. You're almost dead.
He was sorry that the chase after the girl had to be rushed, but the dead state trooper was an unexpected development. As always, Starkey had a calm, super aware focus. He was in the zone. Time slowed for him; every detail was precise and every movement controlled. He was moving fast, comfortable and supremely confident in the dark woods. There was just enough moonlight for him to see.
Then he heard laughter up ahead. Saw a light through the branches. He stopped moving. “Son of a bitch!” he muttered. He moved forward cautiously, just in case.
Harris and Griffin had caught the blonde bitch. They had taken off her black hot pants, gagged her with her own scuzzy underwear, cuffed her hands behind her back.
Griffin was ripping off her silver-sequined blouse. All that was left were the sparkly silver platforms.
Vanessa didn't wear a bra and her breasts were small. Pretty face, though. Reminded Starkey of his neighbor's daughter. Starkey thought again that she was a fine little piece to be selling herself for cheap on the street. Too bad, Vanessa.
She struggled and Griffin let her break away, just for the fun of it. But when she tried to run, she tripped and went down hard in the dirt. She stared up at Starkey, who was now standing over her. He thought she was pathetic.
“Why are you doing this?” She was whimpering. Then she said something else through the gag as she tried to push herself up. It sounded like “I never hurt anybody.”
“This is a game we learned a long time ago,” Starkey said in English. “It's just a game, honey. Passes the time. Amuses us. Get the paint,” he said to Master Sergeant Griffin. “I think red for tonight. You look good in red, Vanessa? I think red is your color.”
He looked her right in the eye and pulled the trigger.
Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice
Chapter Twenty-One
I got up at around five-thirty my first morning back in Washington. Same old, same old, which was fine with me.
I put on a Wizards tee-shirt and ancient Georgetown gym shorts and headed downstairs. The lights in the kitchen were still off. Nana wasn't up yet, which was a little surprising.
Well, she deserved to sleep late every once in a while.
I laced up my sneaks and headed outside for a run. Immediately I could smell the Anacostia River. Not the greatest smell, but familiar. My plan was not to think about Ellis Cooper on death row this morning. So far, I was failing.
Our neighborhood has changed a lot in the past few years. The politicians and business-people would say it's all for the good, but I'm not so sure that's right. There's construction on 395 South, and the Fourth Street on-ramp has been closed forever. I doubt it would happen for this long in Georgetown. A lot of the old brownstones
I grew up with have been torn down.
Town houses are going up which look very Capitol Hill to me. There's also a flashy new gym called Results. Some houses sport hexagonal blue ADT security signs courtesy of the huge Tyco Corporation. Certain streets are becoming gentrified. But the drug dealers are still around, especially as you travel toward the Anacostia.
If you could put on HG Wells time machine glasses, you would see that the original city planners had some good ideas. Every couple of blocks there is a park with clearly delineated paths and patches of grass. Some day the parks will be reclaimed by the people, not just the drug dealers. Or so I like to think.
A Washington Post article the other day proclaimed that some people in the neighborhood actually protect the dealers. Well, some people think the dealers do more good things for the community than the politicians like throwing block parties and giving kids ice-cream money on hot summer days.
I've been here since I was ten and we'll probably stay in Southeast. I love the old neighborhood not just the memories, but the promise of things that could still happen here.
When I got home from my run the kitchen lights still weren't on. An alarm was sounding inside my head.
Pretty loud, too.
I went down the narrow hallway from the kitchen to check on Nana.
