Projection Read Online Free PDF Page B

percent were resolved to the satisfaction of law enforcement authorities when a strategy of rigid noncooperation was employed."
    "I think law enforcement was pretty satisfied with Waco and Ruby Ridge."
    Hancock stiffened.
    "The helicopter might reassure him he has a way out," I went on.
    "I'd rather convince him he doesn't," Winston shot back.  "Then he'll realize from the beginning that he has nothing to gain by violence."
    "He nearly tore his arm off trying to escape from the last place he was locked up.  He didn't stand to gain much from doing that."
    "And he didn't accomplish anything other than hurting himself.  I suggest we be as immovable as the bars of his cell."  His eyes lit up, and his gazed flicked from me, to Hancock, then back, as if he expected congratulations for the simile.
    I was about to suggest he check out his idea with Abe Hodges when shouts erupted from the front of the green.  I turned and saw two firefighters and a cop looking up at a naked, obese woman who was leaning out the fifth-floor window at the far corner of the building.  They ran toward her.
    "No one say a word," Winston yelled at the men on the ground.  He took off after them.
    I walked, not that it mattered what I did.  The poor woman would be spooked whether four shadowy figures raced toward her or five.  Before any of us were halfway there, she shrieked once and dove from the window.  Complete silence descended as she plunged toward the ground.  I heard her skull crack against the sidewalk.  For a few moments, everyone stood still, staring at her body on the cement.  Then we all ran the rest of the way toward her.  When we reached her, we fell silent again as we stood over her twisted body.  Her long, white hair lay in a pool of blood.  Her neck, breasts and stomach were carved up.
    "Lord God," Winston whispered.
    Sweat had blanketed me.  I started to shiver in the cold night air.
    The firefighters knelt down beside her.  The older one listened for breathing.  "Nothing," he said.  He felt for a pulse and shook his head.  They started CPR.
    Even with reflected light bathing the woman's body, it took me a minute to figure out that the bloody lines cut into her weren't haphazard.  They looked like letters, upside down.  I moved to her feet, but the two men kept leaning over her, then backing off, so I couldn't manage to get a good view.
    "No go," the younger firefighter said.  "We should shock her."  He ran toward the ambulance for a defibrillator.
    Hancock knelt down.  She squinted at the hospital identification bracelet around the woman's wrist.  "Grace Cummings," she said.  "Birth date, September 11, 1929.  She was sixty-eight."
    "Grace Cummings.  Sounds familiar," Winston said.
    "She was the one who drove her car into the group of kids waiting for a bus on Glover Street in Saugus," Hancock said.  "One of them ended up paralyzed.  It got a lot of press.  She was awaiting trial for assault with intent to murder."
    Blood flowed from the letters carved into her.  I couldn't make them out.  "Why would they kill her?"
    Winston shook his head.  "Nobody necessarily forced her out the window.  What's to say she didn't slash herself up and jump?"
    I knelt down next to Hancock and started to blot the wounds with my sleeve.
    "What are you doing?" she asked.  She tried to pull my hand away from the body, but I kept at it.  After a few seconds, she stopped tugging at me, settled back on her heels and stared at the body.
    The letters were starting to ooze again, but the words were legible.
     
    SWEET BOY
     
    "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Hancock asked.
    My pulse moved to my throat.  "I don't know," I said.  "But I think Lucas will see to it we find out."
    "Trevor Lucas, this is Dr. Winston," the bullhorn blared.
    I turned and saw Winston walking toward the front of the green, holding the bullhorn to his lips.  "Make him stop," I told Hancock.
    "I'm a psychologist with the state," Winston went