"Insanity," Lucas said as he studied the body.
A moment later, Carrigan said, "Who's this?"
Lucas looked over his shoulder and saw Connell striding toward them, wrapped in a raincoat. "My aide," he said.
"Your fuckin' what?"
"Is it him?" Connell asked, coming up. Lucas stood up and stripped off the gloves.
"Yeah. Cut the SJ into her," Lucas said. He crooked his head back and looked up at the night sky, the faint stars behind the city lights. The guy had pissed him off. Somehow, Wannemaker didn't reach him so personally; this kid did. Maybe because he could still feel the life in her. She hadn't been dead long.
"He's out of his pattern," Connell said.
"Fuck pattern. We know he did Wannemaker," Lucas said. "The girl up north didn't have the letters cut into her."
"But she was on schedule," Connell said. "Wannemaker and this one, these are two that are out of order. I hope we don't have two guys."
"Nah." Lucas shook his head. "The knife in the stomach, man, it's a signature. More than the letters, even."
"I better look at her," Connell said. She crept under the bushes for a better look, squatted next to the body, turned the light on it. She studied it for a minute, then two, then walked away to spit. Came back. "I'm getting used to it," she said.
"God help you," said Carrigan.
A patrolman and a tall black kid were walking fast up the block, the kid a half-step ahead of the patrolman. The kid wore knee shorts, an oversize shirt, Sox hat, and an expression of eye-rolling exasperation.
Carrigan took a step toward them. "What you got, Bill?"
"Kid saw the guy," the patrolman said. "Sure enough."
Lucas, Connell, and Carrigan gathered around the kid. "You see him?"
"Man…" The kid looked up the block, where more people were wandering in, attracted by word of a murder.
"What's your name?" Connell asked.
"Dex?" The answer sounded like a question, and the kid's eyes rolled up to the sky.
"How long ago?" Lucas asked.
The kid shrugged. "Do I look like a large fuckin' clock?"
"You're gonna look like a large fuckin' scab if you don't watch your mouth," Carrigan said.
Lucas held up a hand, got close to the kid. "This is a farm girl, Dex. Just came up to the city, somebody let the air out of her."
"Ain't got nothin' to do with me," Dex said, looking at the crowd again.
"Come over here," Lucas said, his voice friendly. He took the kid's arm. "Look at the body."
"What?"
"Come on…" He waved the kid over, then said to the patrolman, "Loan me your flashlight, will you, pal?"
Lucas took Dex around the bush, then duckwalked with him toward the woman on the wound side. He went willingly enough; hell, he'd seen six thousand bodies on TV, and once had walked by a place where some ambulance guys were taking a body out of a house. This'd be cool.
A foot from the body, Lucas turned the light on the stomach wound.
"Fuck," said Dex. He stood up, straight through the bush, and started thrashing his way out.
Lucas caught his web pocket, hauled him back down, rough. "Come on, man, you can tell people about this. How the cops let you check her out." He put the flashlight on the girl's face. "Look at her eyes, man, they're still open, they look like eggs. You can smell her guts if you get closer, kind of soapy smelling."
Dex's eyes moved toward the corpse's, and he shuddered and stood and tried to run. Lucas let him go: Carrigan was waiting when the kid fought free of the bush.
"Never saw nothin' like that before," Dex said. A line of saliva dribbled from one edge of his mouth, and he wiped it with his hand.
"So who was it?" Carrigan asked.
"White dude. Driving a pickup."
"What kind of pickup?"
"White with dark on it, maybe red, I don't know; I know the white part for sure," Dex said. He kept moving away from the body, around the bushes back toward the curb. Carrigan held one arm and Dex babbled on. "There was a camper on the back. People come up here to throw garbage sometimes. I thought that's what he was doin', throwing garbage."
"How close were you?" Connell asked.
"Down to the corner," Dex said, pointing. A hundred yards.
"What'd he look like, far as you could tell?" Connell pressed. "Big guy? Small guy? Skinny?"
"Pretty big. Big as me. And I think maybe he plays basketball, the way he got in the truck. He like hopped up there, you know. Just real quick, like he's got some speed. Quick."
Connell fumbled in her purse and took out a folded square of paper. She started to unfold it when Lucas realized what it was, reached out and caught her hand, shook his head. "Don't do that," he said. He looked at Dex and asked, "How long ago?"
"Hour? I don't know. 'Bout an hour." That meant nothing. For most witnesses, an hour was more than fifteen minutes and less than three hours.
"What else?"
"Man, I don't think there's anything else. I mean, let me think about it…" He looked past Lucas. "Here comes my mom."
A woman rolled right through the police line, and when a cop reached out toward her, she turned around and snapped something that stopped him short, and she came on.
"What're you doing here?" she demanded.
"Talking to your son," Carrigan said, facing her. "He's a witness to a crime."
"He's never been in no trouble," the woman said.
"He's not in any trouble now," Connell said. "He might've seen a killer-a white man. He's just trying to remember what else he might've seen."
"He's not in no trouble?" She was suspicious.
Connell shook her head. "He's helping out."
"Momma, you oughta see that girl," Dex said, swallowing. He looked back toward the bush. The girl's hip was just visible from where they were standing. He looked back at Carrigan. "The truck had those steps on the sides, you know, what do they call them?"
"Running boards?" Lucas suggested.
Dex nodded. "That's it. Silver running boards."
"Chevy, Ford?"
"Shoot, man, they all look the same to me. Wouldn't have one, myself…"
"What color was the camper?"
The kid had to think about it. "Dark," he said finally.
"What else?"
He scratched behind one ear, looked at his mother, then shook his head. "Just some white dude dumping garbage, is what I thought."
"Were you alone when you saw him?" Lucas asked.
He swallowed again and glanced at his mother. His mother saw it and slapped his back, hard. "You tell."
"I saw a guy named Lawrence was up here," he said.
His mother put her hands on her hips. "You with Lawrence?"
"I wasn't with Lawrence, Momma. I just saw him up here, is all. I wasn't with him."
"You goddamn better not be with him or I throw your butt outa the house. You know what I told you," his mother said, angry. She looked at Carrigan and said, "Lawrence a pusher."
"Lawrence his first name or his last name?" Carrigan asked.
"Lawrence Wright."
"Lawrence Wright? I know him," Carrigan said. "'Bout twenty-two or -three, tall skinny guy, used to wear a sailor hat all the time?"
"That's him," the woman said. "Trash. He comes from a long line of trash. Got a trashy mother and all his brothers are trash," she said. She smacked the kid on the back again. "You hanging around with that trash?"
"Where'd he go?" Lucas asked. "Lawrence?"
"He was around here until they found the body," Dex said, looking around as if he might see the missing man. "Then he left."
"Did he see the white guy?" Connell asked.
Dex shrugged. "I wasn't with him. But he was closer than me. He was walking up this way when the white dude went out of the park. I saw the white dude lookin' at him."
Lucas looked at Carrigan. "We need to get to this Lawrence right now."
"Does he smoke?" Carrigan asked Dex.
Dex shrugged, but his mother said, "He smokes. He's all the time walking around with his head up in the sky with that crack shit."
"We gotta get him," Lucas said again.