Presumed Guilty: (A Jefferson Winter novella) Read Online Free PDF Page B

stations had the bigger vehicles, and bigger logos. CNN and Fox were there, along with a dozen other acronymic news channels. They’d probably camped out in nearby motels, too, so they could get here as soon as the news broke.
    A black coroner’s van was parked opposite the apartment, and a couple of guys with CORONER’S DEPARTMENT on their jackets were hanging around next to it, waiting for the okay to move the body.
    They were in for a long wait. This crime scene was too fresh. Forensics needed to do their thing before the body was released.
    Yoko didn’t condemn the people in the crowd, or the media, since that would be hypocritical. They’d come here to make sense out of the senseless, and, when you got down to it, wasn’t she here for the same reason?
    It was a little after nine, but already warm. The sky was a cloudless blue and there wasn’t any haze to burn off. Today was going to be a hot one. She walked to a nearby tree and stood in the shade for a while, watching and smoking.
    She turned her attention to the mass of people pressing against the barriers. She could have sworn the crowd had got bigger. This didn’t surprise her. Valentino was a big deal, everyone wanted a peek. The fact they wouldn’t see much wasn’t any sort of deterrent. They just wanted to boast to their friends that they’d been here.
    For a while she stood and smoked and studied the crowd. There was an equal number of whites and blacks with the odd Hispanic face thrown in, which was consistent with Greenbelt’s racial demographic.
    There were babies in strollers, octogenarians and everything in-between. People were chatting to each other, as relaxed as if they’d bumped into one another at the grocery store.
    Almost everyone was staring beyond the barriers, trying to see what was happening. Even when they looked away, it wasn’t for long. They might turn and speak to the person beside them, or glance towards the entrance to Darnell Avenue because they’d heard a vehicle, then they’d go back to gawping.
    One kid caught Yoko’s eye because he wasn’t doing any of that. White male, average height, late teens or early twenties. She focussed on a point ten feet to the left of him, just far enough so she could keep him at the edge of her peripheral vision.
    This kid was different from the rest of the crowd, and it wasn’t just the fact that he was acting like he couldn’t care less about what was happening on the other side of the barrier.
    He’d positioned himself in a place where he could get the best view of the crowd, and his eyes were moving from person to person. There was a greedy look on his face, like he was drinking up their reactions and just couldn’t get enough.
    The hairs on the back of her neck were tingling, and there was only room enough in her head for one thought. That’s our guy. It was going around and around inside her brain, making it hard to think straight.
    She stood very still, not wanting to make any sudden movements. Not that it would have made much of a difference. The kid was far too interested in the crowd to pay any attention to her.
    Unfortunately, the angles and distance made it impossible to see his face properly. Yoko wanted to know who she was up against. She wanted to look into his eyes so she could get some idea of what made him tick.
    She always liked to see her opponent.
    Yoko smoked her cigarette slowly, all the way to the butt, then made her way back inside. She found the crime-scene photographer taking pictures of the bath. She told him where the kid was standing, told him to hurry. Told him to pretend like he was James Bond on a secret mission and make sure the kid didn’t work out what he was up to.
    She found Dumas hovering in the bedroom doorway, grim-faced, the stress showing. He was taking this too personally, acting like he wished he could turn back time. Except that wasn’t going to happen. There was nothing anyone could do about Alice Harrigan’s murder. That ship had