Quicksand Read online

  Rahma stood, peering out through the dirty glass. The curving metal bars were meant to keep others out but that now kept her in. She stared down, knowing the body had been placed there so she and the other girls could see it. She felt a tidal wave of tears surging, pulsing, begging to explode out of her. She placed her hand against the glass, imagining that it touched the woman’s hand, remembering through the fog how warm and soft her hand had felt when it held hers, so briefly. Rahma imagined that her own hand could close the holes in the body, could warm the cooling flesh, could bring her

  back,

  back,

  back …

  A dog ambled into view and began to sniff at the corpse.

  She slammed her hand against the window, trying to find the words to shout, but forgetting what they might be. Don’t touch her! She tried to help me … please let her be, let her be …

  She looked desperately around the room and finally found a small, silent clock. She pounded it against the glass—it took an infinitely long time for a corner of the window to finally shatter, but before she could shout at the dog she heard heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs. She scrambled backward, her heart racing, racing. She cringed as she heard his key in the lock, and the door swung open. He paused for a moment, surveying the broken window, as everything inside her writhed in fear. His face clouded, and he entered swiftly, moving so fast she could barely track his movements, and he swung at her, landing his blows on her back and her arms that now clutched her knees as she tucked herself into a ball,

  made herself small,

  made herself into stillness, into nothingness,

  and gave herself over to the fog.

  CHAPTER 3

  The office she shared with Wansbrough, Burton, and Calder was overly bright and smelled of a collision of aftershaves. They had a visitor, she saw. Special Agent-in-Charge Joseph Schacht. He was tall with a wide girth, a thick crop of gray hair, and pale pink skin that always seemed a bit flushed. He was famous for some of the ugliest ties Nora had ever seen, and today’s was no different. Burgundy, with a smattering of silver paisleys. Schacht looked up from the file folder he was reading over Burton’s shoulder. He nodded to Ben, Nora, and John as they entered, then he sat on the edge of John Wansbrough’s desk.

  “Okay,” Schacht said. “Possible gang killing in an alley behind a residential area. Not far from 55th and Chester. Busy area. Very mutilated, very naked female body; very nervous locals.”

  “Who called this in?” Wansbrough asked.

  “Neighbor.” Schacht handed Nora a printout bearing the logo of the Philadelphia Police Department. “Elderly woman. She has already been questioned extensively but didn’t have much to tell, apparently…”

  “That’s in the heart of Junior Black Mafia territory,” Burton observed.

  “Is the stabbing similar to Kylie’s?” Nora asked, feeling an anxious sort of clutching in the pit of her stomach. She and John exchanged glances.

  Schacht answered, “In addition to multiple stab wounds, her throat was slit. Much like the Kylie Baker case. Only this time we add to the mix that her eyes have been cut out. So if there’s a connection, it looks like they’re doing Kylie one better. The natural assumption, then, is that this crime could be an act of revenge for Kylie’s murder.”

  All four frowned. It was a gang war after all. But it was being played out on female bodies.

  Schacht shrugged. “Like Kylie’s murder, the crime is very open, very brazen. But Kylie’s body was basically tossed on the lawn of her family home so that Kevin could find her. We knew immediately who she was and what her death meant. This is in JBM territory, yes, but doesn’t seem directed at anyone in particular. We need to find out who the victim is, and if she’s linked in any way to the Junior Black Mafia. Or the A&As for that matter.”

  Wansbrough nodded as he listened. “At this point, I think we also need to prioritize the arrest of Kevin Baker.”

  Schacht nodded. “I agree. Calder and Burton: I want you guys to lift every rock in the city. Find Kevin Baker. Maybe if both Kevin and Dewayne are in our custody their respective crews will take it down a notch and we won’t have any new bodies for a while. Wansbrough and Khalil: Philly PD is holding down the fort on our most recent stabbing ’til you guys get there. Work closely with Watt and the forensic team on this one, and find out if these killings are linked. Keep me up to date.”

  All four watched as Schacht left the room. Nora stared at the address of the witness in her hand. She looked at Wansbrough. “I guess we’re going back to Kingsessing, then?”

  * * *

  A bicycle race on the parkway had snarled Saturday traffic on the 676. John didn’t bother with the lights. They sat quietly a while in a crawl, Billie Holiday filling the silence with a protracted, throaty complaint; sometimes being stuck in traffic was their downtime before being “on.” After Kylie Baker, Nora wasn’t eager to see another stabbing victim up close. Instead of merging onto the Schuylkill Expressway, though, John pulled onto Market Street behind the 30th Street Station, and wove his way through University City.

  “Wait, stop for a minute. Coffee break.” She was pointing at a Dunkin’ Donuts.

  John looked at her. “You’re drinking coffee now? What has Calder done to you?”

  “Just … give me a minute,” she said, getting out of the car. She poked her head through the still-open door. “Thirty seconds. You want something?”

  “Were you gonna go into a Dunkin’ Donuts and not get me something?”

  Nora shut her door and ran into the store, returning a long five minutes later with a carrier containing three cappuccinos.

  She handed one to John and kept the other two on her lap.

  He stared at her, then shifted the car into drive. “What kind of fool goes into a Dunkin’ Donuts and comes back with only coffee?”

  She ignored the question, responding simply, “I learned something last time we found ourselves in a situation like this.”

  They emerged from the car on a side street just beyond a battered Ethiopian restaurant. Scarlet and gold leaves dusted the trash-strewn sidewalks and the yards of tightly packed homes. Gang symbols peppered the landscape. The Junior Black Mafia’s upside-down crown with two intersecting pitchforks was spray-painted on the sides of abandoned buildings, on stop signs, and on corner mailboxes. The crime scene lay in a wide alleyway that fell in the center of a block of shabby duplexes marked by their peeling paint and bowed wooden porches. A Philly PD car was parked at an awkward angle. More yellow crime scene tape decorated the area than Nora had seen in recent memory.

  Mike Cook and Pat Crone were two of Nora’s fellow officers. They looked cold and irritable, but they greeted her warmly, and she introduced John.

  “How they treatin’ you, Nora? I need to rough somebody up for you?” Mike asked, looking pointedly at Wansbrough.

  Nora laughed as she handed over the cappuccinos. “It’s pretty posh with the feds, guys. This is just a token of our appreciation. Thanks for all your hard work on this case so far.”

  Mike chuckled, looking Nora over. “Oh, I know exactly what this is. And yeah, it’s probably gonna work, too.”

  “Nora’s always giving people food or tea or something in order to get them to help her out,” Crone said to John. He sniffed the small opening, then took a tentative sip. “That’s why we miss her,” he added.

  Nora grinned. “So? What do you think? Anything you can tell us about the initial canvassing of the neighborhood?”

  Crone shrugged. “Went to the old lady’s house. She saw the body when she came out to feed the pigeons or some dumb-ass old lady thing. Houses here, here, and here wouldn’t answer.” He pointed at the surrounding homes that backed up to the alley.

  “Gawkers?” Wansbrough asked.

  “Plenty. We started tellin’ ’em that anyone standing around would be questioned by the police. They dispersed pretty quick after that.”

  “Press?” Nora asked.

  “Nah. M
ust have sounded too much like just another Philly gang killing. Gangs don’t get press anymore unless they’re called al-Qaeda.” Mike Cook said all this through gritted teeth that showed how cold he was. He took a long sip of his cappuccino.

  “You got any sense that the A&As are owning up to this one?” Wansbrough asked them.

  Both shrugged. “Didn’t hear anything about that,” Crone answered.

  Nora let her eyes wander across the landscape. She could feel the questions pouring out of the upstairs windows of the surrounding homes, imagined the fearful curiosity of the neighbors. She slowly took in the entrance to the alleyway, the long, dark passage between two tall row homes.

  What brought you out here? She questioned the woman where she lay, an opaque beige tarp covering all but her toes and some strands of dark hair. It was then that Watt drove up with the van.

  “Well, that looks like it for us,” Crone said, pulling out the security log for the crime scene and handing it over to Wansbrough. He glanced over it and signed it.

  The two cops extended their hands to shake John’s, then fist-bumped Nora. “Don’t be such a stranger, Nora,” Mike Cook said, his gaze taking her in from head to toe. “Don’t go forgetting where the good guys hang out.”

  Nora smiled. “Just don’t you guys get in the way of any bullets, okay?” She watched them walk off toward their car.

  “Sly,” John was murmuring. “I think Officer Cook was especially grateful.”

  Nora glanced over just in time to see Cook staring at her from the passenger seat as his partner guided the car toward Chestnut Street. “Not my type,” she said, even as she gave him a small wave.

  Pale and paunchy, Montgomery Watt emerged from the crime scene van and shrugged into his heavy field jacket. He had started a scruffy beard since last Nora had seen him. He carefully draped a high-speed digital camera around his neck, then rifled about for a moment before grasping his kit. He had a shine in his eyes that made Nora smile despite herself. He was unapologetic about how good he was at his job. His bedside manner was a little dry, but he made up for it in unflinching competence. Now he was trailed by two evidence technicians, each of whom carried small video cameras. “Shall we?” he said brightly.

  Watt and his small team signed the security log and then started digitizing every inch of the scene as they walked carefully around the perimeter that the Philadelphia Police Department had outlined with their bright yellow tape. Watt placed booties over his shoes and then ducked gingerly under the yellow tape and squatted next to the corpse. He lifted the tarp from the body, and Nora first saw a mass of thick, black hair, some spilling across the dark and bloodied brick. The body was covered with deep, dark gashes; very little remained of the victim’s facial features. Both eyes had been cut out, leaving gaping burgundy holes.

  John directed the technicians to include in their video work the back of the home of the woman who had made the call, Elfreda Chambers, 5501 Chester. Nora watched as the camera lenses swept along the alleyway and the tilting chain-link fences that lined it. There was little to obstruct the view of this stretch of cement from the windows and back balconies of the surrounding homes. Not all of the homes were inhabited; some had broken windows and roofs in a state of near-collapse. Mike Cook had made clear his opinion that those that were inhabited would produce little information.

  The evidence truck had brought a crowd with it, and John quickly called for more agents to help keep the crime scene off-limits.

  Watt dug in the technician’s box for his gloves and began passing them out.

  “She looks pretty messed up,” he said to no one in particular. When he got to Nora, he withheld the gloves as he studied her face. “You good? You didn’t do so well last time.”

  She took the gloves, frowning at him. “Watt, come on. I’m all jaded and experienced now.”

  “Cool.” He returned to squat next to the corpse, gently placing his fingers to her flesh. “Time of death maybe twelve hours ago. She’s about twenty years old.”

  Nora and John pulled booties over their shoes and stepped under the yellow tape. They gave Watt his space, but squatted near him. Leaning in, Nora peered at the texture of the dead woman’s hair and found it slightly coarse. The skin along the woman’s arms and legs, though, looked smooth and hairless. Nora looked closely at what was left of the cheeks and upper lip. Also smooth. She peered at the fingers of the left hand. There was no telltale indentation on the ring finger.

  “She has your coloring, Nora,” John observed.

  Nora had been thinking the same thing.

  Watt nodded, glancing up at Nora. “So, probably Arab. Or Hispanic maybe.” He was running his gloved fingers gently along the woman’s wounds. There were small gashes up and down her torso. Monty was pointing toward her neck. “Long, flat blade.” The woman’s throat had been ripped open, leaving her with a wide, dark streak under her thin, pointed chin. “The neck wound is what killed her; I can’t tell yet if it preceded the other wounds.”

  “How different are the wounds from Kylie Baker’s?” Nora asked.

  “At first glance? Different. Kylie was killed with one blade. And there were several wounds, but she wasn’t mutilated, and her face wasn’t touched. The eye thing … it’s pretty intense. It’s not an easy thing to cut someone’s eyes out like this. You have to really deliberately intend it. But her cheeks are also slashed. The neck wound is almost … well, it’s pretty clean. Kylie Baker’s was pretty deep. Unnecessarily so. From here it looks like a copycat. But given the eyes, they were amping it up a bit. Whoever did it has done it before.”

  Despite herself, Nora felt her fingers climb to her own throat.

  Watt looked back at the corpse. “There’s a lot of something under her nails, here. I’m thinking … carpet, maybe. Like she was clawing a carpeted surface.”

  John nodded, then said to Watt, “What do you think of the splatter-pattern?”

  He stared thoughtfully for a while at the bloodstains. “I don’t see splatter, do you?” He stood, frowning; crouched, then stood again, pointing. “Dog prints.” He pointed until they all saw them, and could follow with their eyes the trail that led off toward 55th Street.

  Nora and John joined Monty in staring long and hard at the ground around the body. Nora noted the way the blood had gathered in the crevices between the uneven brick of the alley.

  Watt finally said, “It really looks to me like she was left here to bleed, but not attacked here. Look, there’s nothing on the fences, nothing even right here.” He pointed at the ground just a few inches from the blood. “No dots, no splatters. It’s all localized, from directly beneath her. The Baker murder had a trail of blood leading to the street, indicating she’d been taken out of a car before being dumped.”

  John stood, his gaze taking in the entire surrounding area. “Then, they would have had to wrap her in something. It would have been a very messy project to transport a body with that many holes in it,” John said.

  Watt nodded. “Much messier than the trail at the Baker scene.”

  “And why here?” Nora was demanding. “If it’s some sort of message, who’s the intended audience here?” She looked again at the backs of the houses along the alley. “Do we have JBM kids here, or their families?”

  Wansbrough said, “We may get more details on that from Burton. He’s working something up on all the known members now.”

  Watt sat on his haunches and then put his head up. “How’s the wind?”

  Wansbrough understood. “It hasn’t been too windy.”

  “I want a hair, guys,” he said to his techs, who were covering their shoes. “There’s just no surface that could retain any prints. I need to find some perp hair here.”

  Nora was shaking her head. “No, it’s been windy enough. You’re never gonna find anything.”

  Watt was handing the assistants plastic gloves, a couple pairs of tweezers and some baggies. “Never say never.”

  The three men pored over the scene, with Wat
t occasionally stopping to photograph something.

  “Could she have been wrapped tightly in plastic, or a tarp? She could have been placed here and then, like, unrolled?” Nora asked.

  “I don’t see why the plastic wouldn’t have dripped when it was opened,” Watt answered. “No, if that’s the case, then it had to be something absorbent, like a carpet. So we’re looking for traces of a vehicle that could have transported her, and also for fibers.” The techs nodded when they heard this, and one headed over to look for tire prints in the mucky mix of leaves and dirt that rimmed the gutters and sidewalks near the alley.

  John Wansbrough had seen enough for now. “Nora, let’s go see the neighbor lady.”

  That sounded great to Nora; the lack of movement in the autumn chill was starting to get to her.

  As they started out, John paused. “I just got one more question,” he said. Watt nodded, focused intently on his tweezers.

  “What about this woman’s missing parts?”

  Watt rested his elbows on his bent knees, looking to Nora rather like a Bedouin. He surveyed his surroundings quite intently, as though seeking a previously overlooked eyeball. Finally he said, “Same issue. I don’t think they messed her up here, so they probably kept them or disposed of them before dumping her.”

  Nora couldn’t help shivering. “Nice.”

  The other agents had finally arrived, and she waited for John to hand over control of the crime scene, then followed him gingerly along the alleyway heading away from the street. They walked slowly, aware of each step, looking for signs that the terrain had been disturbed in any noticeable way.

  “So, like Kylie’s, we’re looking here at a secondary crime scene,” Nora said as they walked.

  John nodded, his eyes scanning this other entrance to the alley, then looking up and down the street. “Yeah, let’s hope we have better luck finding the primary crime scene this time.”

  “Probably not a car, like we’d postulated for Kylie.”

  “That was Eric Burton’s idea, not mine. No black man kills anybody in his ride.”