“It is first thing in the morning,” she said.

CHAPTER

30

I WASN’T THE FIRST ONE ON THE SCENE THIS TIME. BESIDES THE CRUISERS parked at the picnic area just off Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park, there were several unmarked cars in the lot when I got there.

The action was across the grass, at the edge of the woods, where Rock Creek itself runs through the park’s seventeen hundred acres. We’d have kliegs up soon, but for now everyone was working with flashlights and headlamps.

I found Sergeant Huizenga leaning against the edge of a picnic table, signing off on something for a uniformed officer and talking on the phone at the same time.

“Yes, sir, I know. Yes, yes, we’re all over it. We will.”

I figured it was either the chief or the mayor himself on the line. Not too many people get a willing “sir” out of Marti Huizenga. She’s a good cop, but her temper gets in her way sometimes.

“We’re screwed, Alex,” she said, just as she hung up. “We could solve this tonight, and we’re still screwed. I’ve got the mayor’s command center so far up my ass, I can’t even breathe. How did they even know about this yet?”

It was a rhetorical question more than anything. Not all mayoral administrations are created equally, and this one had a strong tendency to step in sooner rather than later. The fact that we were now getting a substantial boost in resources from the city only exacerbated the situation. Increased resources meant increased oversight, accountability, and yes, sometimes meddling. Just one of the reasons I tend to avoid upward mobility at the police department as much as I can. I like working the cases, not the politics, where I can help it.

I followed Huizenga into the woods and down to the creek bed where the body had been left.

Errico Valente was already there, along with Tom D’Auria. Valente was the lead investigator on the Darcy Vickers case, and D’Auria is MPD’s Homicide Division captain. It didn’t look like anyone was sitting this one out.

At their feet was a nude victim, facedown along the edge of the water. She’d been there long enough for postmortem lividity to set in, with a line of bright red coloration along the lower parts of the body, where her blood had settled by gravity since the time of death.

If the previous case was any indication, she would have also lost quite a bit of blood in the attack, but a quick scan of the ground around her didn’t show any signs of it. No loose hair, either, even though she’d obviously been sheared nearly down to the scalp. That told me she’d been brought here from somewhere else.

“Do we have an ID?” I asked.

Valente shook his head. “Jane Doe, so far. Stab wounds are in the chest, abdomen, and upper thigh.”

“Just like Darcy Vickers,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

Psychologically speaking, we were looking at a whole new kind of perpetrator now. This was my worst nightmare—someone who seemed to be getting a taste for his craft. The first murder had gone sufficiently well, which meant there was no motivation to stop. Just the opposite. The resting period between Darcy Vickers and this young woman had been statistically very short. If he wasn’t already thinking about what he wanted to do next, he would be soon.

Also, it seemed pretty clear now that our killer had a type. The nudity was a departure from the Vickers case, but the physical similarity between the two victims was striking. This girl looked like she could have been Ms. Vickers’s daughter, with her pale white skin, remnants of blond hair, and well-proportioned, athletic body.

I thought about the old man we’d seen on the security video from the parking garage where Vickers was found. Could someone like him have gotten her all the way out here? Maybe. Was that what happened?

The girl’s back and legs were streaked with mud. By all appearances, she’d been brought to the top of the bank, rolled down, and left behind. But there was something about the way her right arm was cocked over her head that I didn’t quite buy.

“Does that positioning look natural to you?” I asked the others.

“Why?” Huizenga said. “What are you thinking?”

I came around to get a better look, and shined my light down. The girl’s hand on that side was closed in a loose fist, except for the index finger, which was extended. Or pointing, maybe, straight downstream.

“How wide’s our perimeter so far?” I asked.

“Just what you see,” Valente said. There were a handful of crime-scene techs scanning the banks around us, but it didn’t look like any of them had gotten more than thirty feet from the body so far.

“What are you thinking, Alex?” Huizenga asked me.

“I’m not sure.” Maybe I was thinking too much. Maybe not. “I’m just curious. Walk with me?”

Huizenga and I left Valente and D’Auria with the girl and started picking our way downstream.

 It didn’t take long, either. After a hundred feet or so, we came around a shallow bend and my light landed on something straight ahead.

It was another body, I realized all at once. It sent a fresh wave of dread straight through me. What the hell were we up against here?

“Oh…God,” Huizenga said, and then shouted over her shoulder. “Let’s get some backup over here! Now!”

I ran over to check vitals, but even before I knelt down I could see there was no chance. It was a young man this time. White. Fully clothed. He’d taken a single gunshot to the face, and there were several fresh stab wounds, all around the groin.

Another Cory Smithe.

He’d been left at the water’s edge, like our Jane Doe, with one arm extended out over his head. His hand on that side was clenched into a loose fist, and his index finger was pointed back upstream, the way we’d just come.

CHAPTER

31

BEFORE ANYONE REACHED US, HUIZENGA SWUNG AROUND AND SHINED HER light up into the woods on the opposite bank.

“What is it?” I said.

“Shh!”

She put a hand on my arm and pointed. That’s when I heard it. Someone was moving through the woods, breaking twigs and going at a good clip over dead leaves and soft ground.

Huizenga started up that way a beat before I did.

“Whoever you are, this is the police. Stop right there! Don’t make me chase you!”

I’ve got legs almost twice as long as hers, and by the time I was up the bank and past the tree line, I’d already left her behind. My Glock was out in one hand, my Maglite in the other. Maybe this was just some homeless person we were chasing, or a curious kid, but if not—I wanted this guy, bad.

About twenty yards in, I stopped and listened. Whoever it was, they’d been heading toward the Sixteenth Street side of the park, but now he—she? he?—had turned and was running parallel to the creek instead.

Meanwhile, I could hear Huizenga on the radio, somewhere behind me.

“—any available units to Sixteenth Street, north of Sherrill Drive. We’ve got an unsub, on foot, possibly headed out of Rock Creek Park—”

I took off at a sprint again, catching a few low branches in the face as I went. The adrenaline was driving me as much as anything right now.

Again, the footfalls ahead of me changed direction—but this time I caught him with the beam of my light. It was a man, anyway, in dark clothes. That’s all I saw. He’d just disappeared up and over a small rise, straight ahead.

I was right behind him, and a few seconds later I spilled out onto the pavement of Sherrill Drive. The road curved here, in a hairpin turn on its way out of the park. There was no sign of the guy, though. Had he kept going, back into the woods? Turned and run up the road?

If I’d had another half second, I would have realized why I didn’t hear him running anymore. But the next thing I felt was something hard, slamming into the back of my head. My knees buckled, and what little vision I had in the dark blurred out completely. Pain shot down my neck and back as I hit the pavement.