Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,1
back to this too-quiet town house. For most of the day, she and her fellow detectives had stood here and debated what they saw. Now she stood with the lights out, in the middle of a blood-scented room, and waited for what she could feel.
Rockabye, baby . . .
Christine Ryan had already been dead before the killer had made his first cut. That much they could tell from the lack of anguish stamped into her pale face. The victim had died relatively easily. Then, most likely as her heart emitted a final few pumps, the killer had delivered his first downward slash across her right flank.
Meaning the murder hadn’t been about the victim’s pain, but about . . .
Presentation? Staging? The ritual itself? A killer with a compulsion to skin. Maybe as a kid, he’d started with small animals or family pets, then, when the fantasy had refused to abate . . .
The ME would check for hesitation marks, if determining jagged edges was even possible given the mounds of thin, curling skin, as well as test for evidence of sexual assault.
But once again, D.D. suffered a nagging sense of discomfort. Those elements were the things a criminal investigator could see. And deep inside, D.D. already suspected that was the wrong track. Indulging, in fact, in exactly what the killer wanted them to focus on.
Why stage things just so, if not to manipulate your audience into seeing exactly what you wanted them to see?
Then it came to her. The thought she’d had in the back of her head. The first and foremost question worth pursuing and the reason she now stood in the dark, her vision deliberately obscured: Why set a scene?
A sound. In the distance. The town house’s front door, easing carefully open? A creak of the stair riser as a heavy foot found the first step? The groan of a floorboard just down the hall?
A sound. Once distant, now closer, and that quickly, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren realized something she should’ve figured out fifteen minutes ago. Jack’s favorite lullaby, the children’s song she’d been humming under her breath . . . That tune wasn’t coming from solely inside her head.
Someone else was singing it, too. Softly. Outside the bedroom. From elsewhere in the dead woman’s apartment.
Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .
D.D.’s hand shot to her sidearm, unsnapping the shoulder holster, drawing her Sig Sauer. She whirled, dropping into a crouch as her gaze scanned the corners for signs of an intruder. No shifts in the blackness, no shadows settling into the shape of a human form.
But then she heard it. A creaking floorboard elsewhere in the apartment.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .
Quickly, she crept from the bedroom into the darkened hall, leading with her weapon. The narrow corridor didn’t offer any overhead lights. Just more shadows from the glow of neighbors’ apartments casting through the uncovered windows. A wash of lighter and darker shades of gray dancing across the hardwood floor.
But she knew this house, D.D. reminded herself. She’d already trod this hall, judiciously avoiding the pools of vomit, while noticing every pertinent detail.
She reached the top of the stairs, still looking from side to side, then peering down into the inky pool that marked the landing below. The humming had disappeared. Worse than the singing was the total silence.
Then, from out of the darkness, low and lilting: “Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .”
D.D. halted. Her gaze ping-ponged reflexively, trying to determine the location of the intruder as the singing continued, slow and mocking: “When the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .”
She got it then. Felt her own blood turn to ice as the full implication sank in. Why do you stage a scene? Because you’re looking for an audience. Or maybe one audience member in particular. Say, a hardworking detective stupid enough to be found after dark at a crime scene all alone.
She reached belatedly for her cell.
Just as a fresh noise registered directly behind her.
She spun. Eyes widening.
As a figure darted out of the shadows, heading straight for her.
“And when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall . . .”
Instinctively, D.D. stepped back. Except she’d forgotten about the top of the staircase. Her left foot, searching for traction, found only open space.
No! Her phone, clattering down. Her Sig Sauer, coming up. Trying belatedly to lean forward, regain her balance.
Then . . . the shadow reaching out. Herself falling back.