The Ways of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

distance.
    He looked at his watch. They were past deadline for the suburban.
    “What does that alley look like?” Rubin asked.
    “It’s seven minutes after ten.”
    “I moved an early version. The alley?”
    “The center of police activity. I’m calling it narrow, wide enough for one car at a time. I remember walking through there once or twice before, when I was doing the Escobar thing. It’s pretty nondescript. Alley, dumpsters, needles, condoms, beer cans. It’s the back of all the stores that face Georgia.”
    “How far is it off the street?”
    “I haven’t stepped it off, but sixty, maybe seventy feet? Doyle’s is a little weird—it has four or five parking spaces in front of it between it and Georgia, this little parking lot.”
    “Are the dumpsters right behind the market’s door?”
    “Unknown. But they couldn’t be far. The alley bends, okay? It doesn’t go straight across. It bends backward, away from Georgia to accommodate an office building, the one with the restaurant, the Hunger Stopper, on the first floor, and then it comes out onto Otis. Shit. Look up whether that’s Otis Place or Street. The dumpsters couldn’t be in the turn, so, yeah, the dumpster is within twenty or thirty feet of the back door of the market.”
    “She was found in the alley between Princeton Place and Otis Place? That’s accurate?”
    “Yes. I mean, no—yeah, Otis. I don’t know if it’s street or terrace or whatever.”
    “I’m looking at a street map. Princeton Place, Otis Place. Princeton runs east and west. It’s only two and half blocks long.”
    “What, it picks up at the golf course and dead-ends into Georgia? The other side of the golf course, that’s whatsit, Catholic University? So yeah, it wouldn’t pick up again over there.”
    “Alley is pavement? Not brick?”
    “Ah, affirmative.”
    “And you’re sure about that location for the alley? It’s not shown on my street map.”
    “I’m looking at it.”
    “What’s the population back there right now?”
    “In the alley? I’m counting two squad cars, three unmarkeds, and a tech van. The van is just outside the alley. What’s Chris telling you about the investigation?”
    “Cops are mostly shutting him down. A statement coming at ten thirty from the chief, then the mayor. They’re going to do a stand-up in front of the store.”
    “Suspects?”
    “Well, the BOLO, if you want to count that. Cops are calling them persons of interest, asking witnesses to come forward. Particularly any who may have been in Doyle’s.”
    “How many hacks feeding you?”
    “I got Jamie on the FBI and Main Justice. The obit desk, which has the bio stuff on Reese. Got a feed from National. Something about judges being targets of crimes, and another about him being the presumptive next nominee to the Supremes. Research is putting together a list of his recent decisions. Metro has the kid going to the Hazelwood School. That’s like twenty grand a year, you know. Looks like we’re getting a picture of young Miss Sarah from the yearbook. Metro also has somebody out there in the neighborhood, trying for friends and family. We’ll add in the police and the feds when they go on at ten thirty. And there’s you and Chris. How many was that?”
    “Like about twenty people who don’t know fuckall.”
    “Well, it’s what we do best.”
    Sully clicked off the cell and dropped it in his pocket. The rotating lights of the police and emergency vehicles bounced off the houses, scattered through the leaves of the trees overhead. The breeze came back up. The last of the bourbon pulsed at his temples. He tapped his pen against his notebook and his foot against the pavement. Something about the neighborhood was bouncing just beyond the reach of his memory.
    The press conference was going to be in front of the dance studio, well inside the perimeter—Chris would cover that—and somewhere offscreen there would be the parental misery of David and Tori Reese, a wound