Chapter 39
CONKLIN AND I climbed past the angled rows of parked cars, my feelings of dread increasing the higher we went. By the time we greeted McNeil and Chi at the top of the fourth floor, I felt as if spiders were using the tops of my arms as a freeway, working their way under the hair at the back of my neck.
I didn’t want to see the victims, yet I had to look. I forced my eyes down. And there, lying in an empty parking space between two vehicles, were the bodies.
The woman had been pretty, and she still retained grace in death. Her white sweater and long brunette hair were soaked with blood, which pooled around her and ran in long runnels down the sloping concrete floor. There were bloody footprints around her and blood on the bottoms of her shoes.
The child was tucked into the curl of the woman’s body. It looked as though they had been posed.
My vision started to fade. I felt the ground shift under my feet and heard Conklin’s voice. “Linds? Lindsay?” His arm around my waist stopped me from dropping to the floor.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I nodded and mumbled, “I’m fine. Fine. I haven’t eaten today.” I was annoyed at myself for looking weak. For looking female. My superiors, the guys, my friends in the squad, would be looking to me for leadership. I had to get a grip.
The victims were bracketed between a red Dodge Caravan and a silver Highlander. An open handbag lay on the ground, and the contents of the victim’s purse were scattered.
All of the Caravan’s doors were open. I lifted my eyes to the windshield and saw the letters “CWF” written in red.
That strange signature again. What the hell did it mean?
Paul Chi called my name from behind my shoulder, and I turned to see his blanched face. I knew that, like me, Chi was shocked to the core by this terrible crime.
“The vic’s name is Elaine Marone,” Chi said. “Mrs. Marone was thirty-four. She had fifty-six dollars in her wallet, credit cards, a driver’s license, and so on. We don’t know the little girl’s name.”
“Did you find the lipstick?” I asked, hoping that it had rolled under a vehicle, that the killer had left a fingerprint on its shiny case.
“We found no makeup of any kind,” Chi said. “But here’s something new: check out the bruising on Mrs. Marone’s wrist. Maybe she tried to disarm the shooter.”
I crouched next to the body of Elaine Marone. As Chi said, there were bluish finger marks on the woman’s right wrist, and I counted five distinct bullet holes in her sweater. Elaine Marone hadn’t just put up a struggle. She’d fought like hell.
And then the screaming started, a heartrending howl twisting up through the concrete cavern.
“Laineeee. Lilllly.”
Footsteps pounded on concrete. Jacobi yelled, “Stop! Freeze right where you are!”
It was a clear warning, but the footsteps kept coming.
Chapter 40
I RAN DOWN the incline toward the third floor, then rounded the turn to see Tracchio and Jacobi tackling a big man wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. The man was a bruiser, a charging bull on full adrenaline. He shook off Tracchio and Jacobi as if they were small dogs, then continued running up the ramp toward the crime scene. It looked like he was going to blast right through me.
Jacobi yelled, “FREEZE,” then pulled his Taser from his belt. I shouted, “Jacobi, NO! Don’t do it, don’t-” But I knew he had no choice. I heard the electric chattering of the stun gun, and the big man was jerked off his feet, going down as if his spinal cord had been cut. He flopped and slid down the incline, a five-second ride, and during that time he was paralyzed and unable to scream.
Jacobi caught up to him, shouting, “Jesus Christ, look what you made me do! Are you done now? Are you done?”
The rattle of the Taser stopped and the fallen man’s horrific sobbing began-and he couldn’t stop. I stooped beside him as Jacobi twisted back his arms and snapped on the cuffs.
“I’m Sergeant Boxer,” I said, patting the man down. I lifted his wallet from his back pocket and checked his face against his driver’s license photo. The man was Francis Marone.
“Let me UP. I have to go to them!”
I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Marone, not right now.”
“What happened? Are they okay?” Marone choked out. “I just spoke to Elaine.” He sobbed. “I had to stop for cigarettes, but I told her I’d meet her at the car.”
“You were talking to her on the phone just now?”
“I heard her say to someone, ‘What do you want?’ And then I heard-oh God, tell me she’s okay.”
I said again that I was sorry as Marone cried, “NO, not my girls. Please, please, I have to go to them.”
Francis Marone was breaking my heart-and this was the savage part: if we ever expected to catch, let alone indict, the killer, we had to protect the crime scene from this man.
A forest of legs had grown up around me-Tracchio, Conklin, Chi, McNeil. I asked Mr. Marone if there was a friend or relative I could call for him, but he wasn’t listening. Still, I had to know: “Mr. Marone, can you think of anyone who may have wanted to harm your wife?”
Marone searched my face with his bloodshot eyes before shouting, “I operate a cement mixer! Elaine does PR for a toy store! We’re nobodies.
Marone was bleeding from bad scrapes on his forearms. I put my hand on the poor guy’s shoulder and stood aside as Jacobi and Tracchio got him to his feet.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, man,” Jacobi said.
I signaled to officers Noonan and Mackey, asking them to drive Marone to the hospital. I promised Marone I’d meet him there as soon as I could. Then I got out of the way as Claire’s van tore up the ramp.
Chapter 41
CLAIRE WAS STOWING her camera by the time I made it back up to the fourth tier. She looked into my face, and I saw my own horror reflected in hers. We opened our arms and held on to each other, and this time I didn’t care who thought I was weak.
“These babies. I can’t take the babies,” I said.
“It’s
