Renz flashed a gold cuff link and glanced at his watch. It looked like a gold Rolex. “Gotta run. Late for a meeting.”
“At this time of night-morning?”
“Uh-huh. We all sit around with cards and chips. I interrupted the game to come over here. Thought you should see the crime scene. I knew you’d understand why.”
Quinn did.
“I’ll call you later,” Renz said.
“No doubt.”
Ignoring Pearl altogether, Renz nodded to Quinn as he turned, ducked his head into the folds of fat beneath his chin, and left the tent.
Quinn and Pearl followed Renz and breathed in fresh morning air.
The CSU guy in charge was still standing outside the tent, smoking a cigarette. Quinn almost said something to him about fouling a crime scene and then saw that it was one of those battery-operated cigarettes that look like the real thing.
He was a short man, built like a miniature bull, with a thick neck and sloping shoulders. Quinn had worked with him before. His name was Bronsky. He waited with patient brown eyes for what Quinn had to say.
“What’ve we got so far?” Quinn asked, thinking that after Renz it would be a pleasure talking with somebody like Bronsky. Crime Scene Unit types were almost always all business and no bullshit.
“Looks like the killer wore rubber gloves, so we might as well forget about fingerprints,” Bronsky said. “So far, he didn’t leave much if anything behind. We might pick up more on him from the victim herself, try for some of his DNA.” He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and held it up for Quinn to see. “I just got off this,” he said. “We got her address from her purse, and we’re going through her apartment.”
“Great,” Quinn said, wondering again why Renz wanted this one in the worst way.
“There are signs of the killer washing up some in the bathroom, but still with the gloves on. Plenty of smudgy prints here and there throughout the apartment, some bloody. He musta gone there after the murder.”
“He was letting us know that,” Quinn said.
“We did lift other prints from the apartment, but they’re probably what you’d expect-the victim’s, neighbors’, former tenants’, the super’s…”
Quinn waited until Bronsky finished with the list. All the prints would have to be matched with the people who’d made them. The prints that couldn’t be matched would be placed in a separate file, in the faint hope that someday they’d help to convict the killer. Tedious work, but necessary.
“The bloody prints. Could you say if they were a man’s or a woman’s?”
“No way to tell. Because of the gloves.”
Quinn sighed. “So maybe the lab will come up with something.”
“Maybe. We’ll get the usual hair samples from the carpet. A few nail clippings from the bedroom. But my guess is they probably won’t amount to anything useful.” He rotated his head on his thick neck. “Not as much blood here, or in her apartment, as you’d think.”
“M.E. said she probably went into deep shock when she saw what he’d done to her. Her heart must have stopped shortly after that.”
Bronsky pulled a face that made him resemble Edward G. Robinson in an old tough-guy movie. “Jesus! Not a nice man.”
“The M.E. or the killer?”
“Killer. I already know the M.E. is a prick. You going in now to look over the apartment?” The question sounded almost like a warning about what was waiting inside.
“I was about to,” Quinn said.
Bronsky took a drag on his cigarette that meant nothing. “Two bedrooms with two twin beds in each. I heard somebody say the victim shared the place with three other students. The roommates all went home for the summer. What if they’d been here, though? All four girls?”
“Richard Speck,” Quinn said.
“That’s what I was thinking. Would this creep have killed all of them?”
“Why not?” Quinn said.
“Those other girls should know that,” Bronsky said. “Realize how lucky they are to be young and still alive. They might be more careful the rest of their lives. More appreciative.”
“It’ll give them something to talk about,” Quinn said. “Then in a few days or a few weeks they’ll go back to being themselves.”
Bronsky made his Edward G. Robinson face again. “Why do you figure that is?”
“We’re all who we are,” Quinn said.
“Yeah, I guess we have to live with that.”
“And die with it,” Quinn said.
He left Bronsky, who continued puffing on his faux cigarette, blowing faux smoke. Six feet away from the dead woman who was real.
6
Central Florida, 2002
It was barely audible but growing louder. Something was striking metal, over and over. It was like a steel drumbeat, and he walked to it.
Daniel Danielle kept his head down and his eyes squinted almost closed as he trudged west. The wind blasting from behind him was fierce, and the heavy rain obscured his vision.
The joy of escape filled his mind. He would make it all the way, he knew. Fate was on his side. Destiny belonged to him.
The ground couldn’t absorb the rainfall, and half the time he was splashing through pooled water. A few times the howling wind knocked him off his feet, but he always struggled to a hunched standing position and continued his trek west, away from the wrecked prison van and the dead guards. He was armed now, with the small-caliber gun that had been taped to the ankle of the one who’d pretended to be a fellow con, and with a nine-millimeter Glock handgun from the holster of one of the dead guards. He’d managed to find the right key on the cluster of keys dangling from a dead guard’s belt, and he was no longer handcuffed. He was still wearing the prison’s orange jumpsuit, and that could be a problem.
The metallic banging sound was ahead of him now. Much closer. Curious, he altered course slightly and moved toward it.
An angular dark shape loomed ahead in the driving rain. As he drew near, he saw that it was what was left of a house. Most of the roof had come down, and part of what remained was flapping violently in the wind against what looked like a section of steel ductwork. The mad drumbeat got louder as Daniel approached.
The central part of the house hadn’t collapsed. A man appeared from the wreckage, bent forward against the wind, and motioned with his arm for Daniel to come to him. He was a tall, rangy guy with a hawk nose and gray hair. His shirt was torn half off him and flapping like a flag.
As Daniel got closer, he saw the man’s gaze fix on the orange jumpsuit.
“You here to rescue us?” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth so Daniel could hear. Daniel could see the dread knowledge and doubt in the man’s eyes. Rescue workers didn’t wear that kind of uniform.
“Sure am,” Daniel said. “From everything.”
He used the Glock to shoot the man in the chest. He went down hard on his back. A blast of wind rolled him to rest against part of the wrecked roof that was jammed up against the base of the house.
In the wind, the bark of the Glock had been barely audible.
Daniel smiled… Rescue us? Dumb cracker!
He picked his way through the wreckage to the central core of the house, what used to be the bathroom.
