Playing Dead (48 page)

Banks pulled out the dog tags. “Price, George L.,” he read. “This looks like U.S. Army. No medical restrictions, blood type A negative. Christian. Have the social as well.”

Both Meg and Kamanski wrote down the information. Tate snapped pictures. Banks put the chain down and Meg didn’t hear anything. “Wait,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“There’s only one tag.”

Banks held up the chain. Carefully, Meg searched along the chain for another tag, as she said, “The two tags should be together. Either attached and separable, or the second tag on it’s own small chain.”

“There’s only one tag,” Banks said.

“Maybe he lost it,” Kamanski offered.

“Not likely,” she said, but she didn’t discount the possibility. “Maybe the killer took it for a souvenir.” Or another reason. Maybe he
did
lose it. Maybe he’d been injured or there was some other reason the second tag had been removed in the field when he was a soldier. It felt odd to Meg, but she didn’t have any facts to base her instincts on so she kept her mouth shut.

An attractive brunette exited a nearby building across 12th Street and waved at Kamanski. “Dave, we found something you need to see,” she said over the radio.

“That’s Simone Charles, day shift supervisor for the CSU,” Kamanski told Meg.

As Meg followed him over to where Simone waited, she used her BlackBerry to e-mail her boss about the victim’s ID and the similarities to the two out-of-state murders. She added the single dog tag to the information and asked if the other two victims were also military.

Kamanski introduced them, and said, “So what did you find?”

“Follow me.”

Instead of taking them inside the building, Simone walked past the door she had exited and down the alley a dozen feet. The alleyway was steep and narrow. To the right was a parking garage, to the left was the backside of a business. Ahead of them was the rectory attached to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, the oldest Catholic Church in the diocese.

She pointed toward the painted brick wall at the same time that Meg saw what had to be blood.

“Castoff,” they said simultaneously. They were a good half-block from where the body was found.

Along the ground were bright yellow numbered cards and they told the story as Simone spoke. “We tested the wall, it came back positive for blood but we’ll have to retest it in the lab. The victim was walking toward 11th Street, and the killer sliced his hamstrings, from right to left, and the blood spattered on the wall. But he had complete control of the knife, because there are no drops consistent with him holding the knife after the attack.”

“Which means?” Kamanski asked.

“He sheathed it,” Simone said. She demonstrated. “Slice—he can’t avoid the spatter, probably because of the momentum and the suddenness of the attack—but he sliced, then stuck the knife right back in its case. Probably on his belt loop for ease of use.”

She pointed to the numbered cards. “Those are from the victim. He fell here,” she pointed to an area that had a pool of blood with two clean areas in between, where the victim had fallen to his knees. “Then was picked up and carried back that way.” She started toward the building she’d exited, but then turned to the parking garage.

“I thought you left the building,” Kamanski said.

“I did. Nothing there, but we’re processing it anyway. It’s the garage that I’m interested in.”

“Wait,” Meg said. “Did you say he was carried?”

Simone grinned. “Oh, yeah. Carried.”

Meg looked at the ground, at the numbered markers, then saw what Simone saw. “No drag marks.”

“Exactly,” the criminalist said. “The guy couldn’t have walked anywhere, so the killer would have to drag or carry him. The vic was pretty big, but I suppose a larger, strong male could have hoisted him over his shoulder.” She frowned, looking down the alley.

“But then,” Meg said, “the killer would have had his arms around the victim’s legs.” She demonstrated by pretending to haul something large onto her shoulder. “There wouldn’t be this kind of blood trail. Maybe a few spots, but nothing this extensive.”

“Yeah. Yeah I think you’re right.”

“That means there were two people?” Kamanski asked.

Meg nodded. “Carrying him probably under the arms. Lifting him up.” She followed the blood spatters. “You can see some small, narrow drag marks in places—nothing deep, probably from his shoes.” She made note to check the victim’s shoes for scuffmarks.

Nowhere in the reports from the previous crime scenes had the investigators indicated there had been two potential suspects. Meg’s heart beat rapidly with the new and valuable information.

The three of them followed the yellow markers into the parking garage. “I’ve already called for all security tapes, but there’re many blind spots. The main entrance, exit, and all pedestrian entrances are covered, but not every inch of each parking floor. Still, we should be able to find the vehicle entering or exiting. The garage opens at 5 a.m., but it’s unmanned—only those with card keys can get in.”

“So the killer had a card key?”

Simone shrugged. “I don’t know. He could have tricked the system, or walked in and stolen a pass from someone else’s vehicle to get in. We’ll figure that out when we get the tapes from security. Or he could have come in before the garage closed at 8 p.m.”

Meg was cautiously optimistic. If they had tapes of the vehicle, they could have a view of the driver. Or passenger, if there were two.

In the center aisle of the garage, Simone stopped. Three parking spaces had been cleared and yellow crime scene tape was posted. “People aren’t going to like me. I closed the garage as soon as we found the trail, but there were already some people parked inside. They’re not going anywhere until I finish collecting evidence.” She pointed to what first appeared like nothing.

Then Meg saw the blood. She glanced behind her and saw the trail of numbered yellow cards, and they stopped here. At the rear of the parking spot.

“My guess is van,” Simone said. “But they couldn’t have taken him anywhere, because the garage is closed at eight, chained, and opened at five. No in or out.”

“So they parked here before eight at night and left the vehicle,” Meg said. “Wouldn’t security have towed it?”

Kamanski shook his head. “A lot of people will leave their cars overnight. Drinking at a bar, working late, whatever.”

“We have the list—security does note the tag numbers, but not the location. There were twenty-one vehicles in the garage at eight-thirty last night when the parking supervisor made the rounds.”

“How did they come back in unnoticed?”

“You can just walk in pretty easily from the street, just like we did. There’s just that half-wall on the ground floor, plus walkways for pedestrians They brought him in, did whatever, and left him dead in the alley nearly a block away.”

“Why didn’t they just execute him in the garage?” Meg asked. “Why dump him in the alley? They had to cross 12th Street to do it.”

“Downtown is dead most nights, especially on Sundays,” Simone said. “I could run around here naked and no one would notice.”

Kamanski raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“I’d like a copy of the tapes,” Meg said. “And your forensics report. With security cameras on the pedestrian entrance we should get a face, possibly a good shot and ID.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. No problem.”

Meg frowned. “Is there any evidence that they took him out the same way?”

“Nooo,” Simone said cautiously. “But after a little time, the injury would have clotted and there might not be blood evidence. We’re still combing the crime scene—”

“What if,” Meg interrupted, “they drove him out?” She walked briskly over to the where the garage exited into the alley. “They could have taken him in the van, drove cross 12th Street, put him out and shot him. A lot easier than carrying an incapacitated man half a block.”

“Possible,” Simone said. “Very possible.”

As Meg walked back to the body with Detective Kamanski, she couldn’t grasp the motive. Why go through such elaborate measures to kill a homeless veteran? Why the torture? Why kill him nearly a block from where he was kidnapped?

It seemed both foolish . . . and planned. Deliberate. Personal.

What did George Price have in common with Austin small business owner Duane Johnson and Las Vegas mechanic Dennis Perry?

Why were they tortured?

Why were they executed?

And if the MO held, Meg would probably not learn anything else about the killers until they were caught. They’d moved around the country with ease, and if they killed Price at dawn, they could be three hundred miles away by now.

Fortunately, they had a lot more information than at the two previous crime scenes. Security tapes, a larger crime scene, greater chance of witnesses. They just needed a little time and a lot of hard work, and Meg was confident they’d ID the killers. She was good at that—working each piece of the puzzle until an identity was confirmed, a suspect arrested, and a killer prosecuted.

Meg didn’t know that in six hours, they’d have nothing. No tapes. No evidence. No body. And no jurisdiction.

Playing Dead
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2008 by Allison Brennan
Excerpt of
Sudden Death
copyright © 2008 by Allison Brennan

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Sudden Death
by Allison Brennan. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN: 978-0-345-50930-7

www.ballantinebooks.com

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