predawn hours, backlit the scene, and yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the alley’s mouth.
And, just in case Alex needed further confirmation she’d found the right place, a mob of media looked to be in a feeding frenzy street-side of a wooden police barricade, their microphones and cameras thrust into the faces of the two impassive, uniformed officers holding them at bay. One of the uniforms glanced over as she killed her engine, acknowledging her arrival with a nod.
Alex took a gulp of lukewarm, oversugared coffee and balled up her fast-food breakfast wrapper. She’d bought the meal, if it could be called such, out of desperation on her way home, as a combined supper and bedtime snack. The nearest she could figure, it was the first food she’d had in almost twenty hours, and she hadn’t made it past the first bite before she’d been called to this, another murder. Even knowing what she’d have to view when she arrived at the scene, she’d gone ahead and eaten it. Working Homicide had that effect after a while.
She dropped the wrapper into the empty paper bag, drained the remainder of her coffee, and tossed the cup in to join the wrapper. Then she slid out of the air-conditioned vehicle.
The early-August humidity slammed into her like a fist, rising from the damp pavement and the puddles that lined the uneven sidewalk. Alex grimaced. After a storm like the one that had raged from midnight until almost three, knocking out power to most of the city’s core for the better part of an hour, surely they’d earned at least a brief respite from the sauna-like weather.
She fished in her blazer pocket for a hair elastic, checked that her police shield was still clipped to her waistband, and raised her arms to scrape back her shoulder-length blonde hair as she kneed shut the car door and started toward the alley.
The media piranhas, scenting new prey, engulfed her.
“Detective, can you tell us what—?”
“Can you describe—?”
“Is this death related—?”
The questions flew at her, fast and furious, and became lost in each other. Alex elbowed her way through the throng and shouldered past a television camera, wrapping the elastic around her fistful of hair. If they knew how many coffees and how little sleep she operated on, they wouldn’t be so eager to get this close.
She patted her pockets in an automatic check. Pen, notebook, gloves . . . Lord, but her partner had picked a fine time to retire and take up fly-fishing. Davis was a hundred times more diplomatic than she was, and she’d always counted on him to run media interference for her at these times. She hoped to heaven his eventual replacement would be as accommodating.
“Don’t know, can’t say, and no comment,” she replied, and winced at the snarl in her voice, glad her supervisor wasn’t there to overhear. “We’ll let you know when we have a statement for you, just like we always do.”
The uniform who had acknowledged her arrival lifted the tape so she could duck beneath it.
“Yeah,” he muttered, “and the sharks will keep circling anyway, just like they always do.”
Alex flashed him a sympathetic look and headed down the alley, her focus shifting to the tall, lanky man silhouetted against the floodlights, and to the scene he surveyed.
Her stomach rolled uneasily around its grease-laden meal. Even from here, she could see the remains of a bloodbath: telltale shadows darkened the brick walls on either side of the narrow passageway; rivulets of the night’s rain, stained dark, pooled on the alley floor; crimson reflected back from puddles lit by the floodlights.
She flicked a glance at a sodden cardboard box, catalogued it as nothing out of the ordinary, strode deeper into the narrow passageway. A numbered flag, placed by Forensics, marked a blurred shoe imprint in a patch of mud. Another sat beside a door where nothing visible remained, perhaps the site of something already bagged and tagged.
Alex drew nearer to the scene and inhaled a slow breath through her nose. She held it for a moment before expelling it in a soft gust. If this was the same as the others, if it was another slashing . . .
She drew her shoulders back and lifted her chin. If it was another slashing, she would handle it as she did any other case. Professionally, efficiently, thoroughly. Because that was how she worked. Because her past had no place here.
She stepped over the electrical cables powering the floodlights. Staff Inspector Doug Roberts, in charge of the Homicide Squad where Alex worked, turned. A smile ghosted across his lips but didn’t reach his strained eyes. Alex made out the vague shape of a human body beneath a tarp stretched out just beyond him.
“Have a good sleep?” Roberts asked. Even raised over the guttural thrum of the generator powering the lights, his voice held a dry note. He knew she’d never made it home.
Alex produced a credible return smile. “Nah. I figured the concept was highly overrated, so I settled for caffeine.”
She ran a critical eye over her staff inspector’s height, noting the two days’ growth along his jawline. Perspiration plastered his short-cropped hair to his forehead and she felt her own tresses wilt in mute sympathy. If the air out in the street had been heavy, here in the alley it was downright oppressive. The man looked ready to drop.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Ditto on the sleep, but I missed out on the caffeine.”
That explained it. Given enough java in his or her system, a homicide cop could run almost indefinitely, but without . . .
Alex’s gaze slid to the tarp. “Well?” she asked.
“We won’t know for sure until the autopsy.”
“But?”
Silence. Because he didn’t know, or because he didn’t want to say?
“Chest ripped open, throat slit, posed like the others,” he said finally.
“Damn,” she muttered. She scuffed the toe of her shoe against a weed growing through the pavement. Four in as many days, with the last two less than twelve hours apart. One of the floodlights gave a sudden, loud pop, and the light in the alley dimmed a fraction. Underneath a loading dock, someone bellowed for a replacement bulb, his voice muffled.
Alex pushed a limp lock off her forehead, scrunched her fist over it for a moment, and said again, “Damn, damn, damn.” She released her clutch on her scalp. “Is Forensics finding anything?”
“After the rain we had? We’re lucky the body didn’t float away.”
“Maybe the killer’s waiting for the rain,” Alex mused. “Maybe he knows it will wash away the evidence.”
“So what, he’s a disgruntled meteorologist? How does he know it will rain hard enough?” Roberts shook his head. “The weather’s too unpredictable for someone to rely on it like that, especially lately. None of these storms this week were even in the forecast. I think it’s just bad luck for us.”
She sighed. “You’re probably right. So, has the chief called for a task force yet?”
“Not yet, but my guess is that it’s about to become a priority. I’ll put in a call and get the ball rolling. The sooner we get a profiler working on this psycho, the better. You have a look around here, then go home, okay? I’ve put Joly and Abrams on point for this one. You’ve been on your feet longer than anyone else on this file so far, and you need some sleep.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “If this guy keeps up at the rate he’s going,” she muttered, “I can pretty much guarantee that won’t happen.”
“If this guy keeps up at the rate he’s going, I’m going to need you on your toes, not dropping from exhaustion. So let me rephrase that: get some sleep.”
The head of Homicide Squad stalked away. Alex watched him cover the distance to the end of the alley in remarkably few long-legged strides, dodging a police photographer who looked to be performing a weird kind of dance in an effort to catalogue the scene’s every angle, and then bulldoze his way through the waiting scavengers. With a sigh that came all the way from her toes, she turned back to the bloody, rain-washed alley.
Roberts was right. The others were getting more downtime than she was on this case. They always did on slashings, because as much as she liked to pretend that her past had no bearing on her present, no one else brought the same unique perspective to these cases that she did. The kind of perspective that made her drive herself a little harder, a little longer . . .
