Damn, damn, damn. That damn woman and her phone call—look at what she’d done to him.
He looked at her body, his heart broken. Her neck was a mess, a large rip where he had cut. Her wrists were completely mangled; she had hurt them badly when she’d struggled to get to her damn phone. She had bruises and scratches on her feet . . .
She had been so beautiful. And so innocent. Or at least that’s what he had thought.
The hell with the embalming. He would take her like she was. They could have a few wonderful days together, before she would have to leave. He removed the tube from her neck, another spurt of blood drenching his fingers and her delicate skin. Her entire chest was a mess. Frantic, he began dressing her up, struggling to put a shirt over her head. Was that the sound of sirens?
Damn it!
He picked her up. No time for her pants. Carrying her over his shoulder, he got into the garage. If he hadn’t had a garage available, he would have given up on her. No way he could walk out the door with the woman’s body on his shoulder, with the police out in the street.
He hesitated. Should he put her in the back or in the front seat? The cops might be less suspicious about a man driving with his wife in the passenger’s seat. But if they looked closely . . .
He popped the trunk, dumped her inside. Looked at himself in the side mirror.
He was covered in blood. He walked back to the workshop, washed his face and hands. There was a huge stain on his blue shirt, but perhaps in the dark it would be harder to see. He could hear more sirens. Time to go. Now.
He entered the van and opened the garage door. It rose slowly as he gritted his teeth. Come on . . . come on . . .
Finally, the door was open. He drove outside, headlights off. Closed the garage door behind him.
First things first. Get off the street. He quickly turned right on North Ridgeway Avenue, switching on his headlights as he did so. Just another man on the road, driving his van somewhere unimportant. No need for the police to check too close.
Above him, he heard a helicopter. The street flooded with bright white light behind him. He forced his foot to remain steady on the gas pedal. If he started speeding now, he’d be pulled over in no time. He had to stay calm. He would just drive up to Chicago Avenue, turn left, and drive home. There was no reason for the police to . . .
There was a roadblock up ahead. A cop signaled the vehicles to stop, checking each one closely. He stopped the van, frantically looking around. Saw the alley.
There really was only one course of action.
CHAPTER 35
The rain spattered on Officer Mikey Calhoun’s yellow raincoat, trickling down his neck onto his back. By that point, the raincoat was a sham, a nylon wrapping just as effective at trapping water inside as it was at keeping it out. When he had left for work that morning, rain had seemed unlikely, and anyway, he was supposed to be in a car. The future had seemed reasonably dry. But here he was. He had water in places he couldn’t even speak about in public. They were getting intimate, the rain and him. Much more intimate than Mikey and his current girlfriend were lately.
The cars were honking incessantly. He got it. People didn’t like to be held up. They didn’t like traffic jams, and they definitely didn’t like roadblocks. He didn’t either, okay? When he took his daughter to school, he wasn’t happy if he suddenly ran into road construction or a holdup because of an accident. But he knew this was part of living in a big city—not just the job opportunities and the bars and the well-maintained roads. You sometimes got roadblocks. And if you did, the best thing you could do was be a good sport about it and stop that damn honking. Let’s consider for a moment that the interior of a car was dry, right? Much drier than Officer Mikey Calhoun, thank you very much. They even had wipers for their windows, didn’t they? All Mikey had was a hand, as wet as the rest of him, with which he could occasionally wipe his face.
He motioned for the next vehicle to come forward. The traffic moved at the pace of an undernourished snail. The vehicle inched slowly forward, stopping next to him. A dark Nissan van. One driver, no passengers. That meant, according to the instructions Mikey had been given, that this was someone he had to check carefully.
“Hello, sir,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“Driving home, Officer,” the man said. He gave a civilized smile, which Mikey interpreted as understanding. This guy realized Mikey was just doing his job. Maybe he was even sympathetic to Mikey’s predicament, standing outside in this weather.
“Yeah?” Mikey ran his flashlight over the floor of the van. It was spotlessly clean. Mikey avoided turning his light on the man. If people gave him some lip or were impolite, Mikey would aim the beam at their eyes. Sure, it was a bit petty, but at times, pettiness was all Mikey had.
“Would you mind opening the back of the van for me?”
“Why?” the man asked.
“Because I want to look inside.”
“Don’t you need a warrant for that?”
He did. Unless he had probable cause to believe this man had committed a crime. Which he didn’t. Mikey contemplated turning the light on the man. Was he giving him lip? But he just sounded matter-of-fact. A man concerned about his own privacy.
“I need to check your car, sir.”
“The thing is, my van is a bit of a mess.”
“Open the back, please, sir.”
If he wouldn’t, Mikey would tell him to step out of the car. He didn’t really want to do that. It would just hold up traffic even more. And the honking would get louder. But this was his job. He took pride in it.
The man hesitated for another second, and Mikey began to wonder if he had a reason to hesitate. Was this the man they were looking for? His flashlight turned toward the man, the beam of light illuminating his clothes. His shirt was stained with barbecue sauce or something. Mikey moved the light upward to the man’s face . . .
“Okay, Officer, it’s open. I’m really sorry for the mess.”
Mikey went over to the back, keeping an eye on the driver, who sat, both hands on the wheel, like he should. Mikey pulled the door open and cast the flashlight’s beam on the cargo area. It wasn’t that messy. Just a couple of plastic containers. One of them was on its side, and it seemed to have spilled on the cargo area’s bottom, leaving a large dark stain. Mikey shut the door and went over to the man.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Say, what’s this all about?”
“Just routine, sir.”
“Routine? You have the entire neighborhood blocked off. My girlfriend lives back there. Should I be concerned?”
Mikey sighed. The car behind this one honked. He felt very wet. “I’d tell her to stay inside tonight, sir. There’s a dangerous person on the loose. Now, please drive—you’re holding up traffic.”
The car drove off, and Mikey shook his head at the honking car behind them. That one looked angry and agitated. He would get the “light on face” treatment for sure.
CHAPTER 36
Just before midnight, Martinez answered a phone call. As he spoke, mostly in monosyllables, Zoe perceived his shoulder slumping, the hand holding the phone loosening, the color slowly draining from his face. Finally, he turned around, the phone still held in his hand, not bothering to return it to its cradle.
“The body of Lily Ramos was just found in an alley south of Chicago Avenue,” he said listlessly. “The ME is on the scene, and he hasn’t said anything definite yet, but her throat was slashed, and the body is drenched in blood, so I’d say that sounds like a cause of death.”
There was a long silence as the task force digested the information. The rest of the detectives had been summoned back and were all in the room.
“Are we sure it’s Lily?” Scott asked.
Zoe noticed how he asked if it was Lily. Not Lily Ramos. Not Ramos. In the past few hours, as they all did their best to find her and save her, the investigators in the task force and Lily had become close.