Chapter 81
I WAS STILL INSIDE the church when my cell phone went off, and it was trouble near the Capitol. I said a quick prayer for whoever was in jeopardy, and a prayer that we would catch the killer-rapist soon. Then I left St. Anthony’s on the run.
Sampson and I rushed to the neighborhood behind the Capitol building in his car with the siren blaring, lights flashing on the rooftop. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung up everywhere by the time we arrived. The scene, the backdrop of important government buildings, couldn’t have been more dramatic, I thought, as Sampson and I hurried up the four stone front steps of a brownstone.
Is he putting on a show for us? Is he doing it on purpose? Or did it just happen this way?
I heard a car alarm whining and glanced back toward the street. What a strange, curious sight: police, news reporters, a growing crowd of looky-loos.
Fear was plainly stamped on many of the faces, and I couldn’t help thinking that this was a familiar tableau of the age, this look of fear, this terrible state of fear that the whole country seemed to be caught up in ? maybe the entire world was afraid right now.
Unfortunately, it was even worse inside the brownstone. The crime scene was already being tightly controlled by somber-faced homicide detectives and techies, but Sampson was let inside. He overrode a sergeant’s objections and brought me along.
Into the kitchen we went.
The unthinkable murder scene.
The killer’s workshop.
I saw poor Mena Sunderland where she lay on the reddish-brown tile floor. Her eyes were rolled back to the whites, and they seemed pinned to a point on the ceiling. But Mena’s eyes weren’t the first thing I noticed. Oh, what a bastard this killer was.
A carving knife was stuck in her throat, poised like a deadly stake. There were multiple wounds on the face, deep, unnecessarily vicious cuts. Her top, a white tee, had been torn away. Her jeans and panties had been pulled down around the ankles but hadn’t been stripped off. One of her shoes was on, one off, a pale-blue clog lying on its side in blood.
Sampson looked at me. “Alex, what are you getting? Tell me.”
“Not much. Not so far. I don’t think he bothered to rape her,” I said.
“Why? He pulled down her pants.”
I knelt over Mena’s body. “Nature of the wounds. All this blood. The disfigurement. He was too angry at her. He told her not to talk to us, and she disobeyed him. That’s what this is about. I think so. We might have gotten her killed, John.”
Sampson reacted angrily. “Alex, we told her not to come back here yet. We offered her surveillance, protection. What more could we do?”
I shook my head. “Left her alone maybe. Caught the killer before he got to her. Something else, John ? anything but this.”