The Ways of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

that would never heal. He could give a fuck about Reese himself, Washington parasite that he was, but he felt a twinge in his chest for Tori, the well of sorrow she was falling into, a blackness he knew well enough.
    “Keening,” he said out loud to nobody.
    And Sarah. He would rather not think about the child’s last minutes, but that was the job. He looked at the moths circling above and found himself wondering why a girl—white, rich—would run into an alley in a neighborhood like this. Had somebody lured her back there, and if so, with what? She had crossed the street for a soda from the store—fine, he could believe that. But why did she leave from the back entrance? A drug buy? Weed?
    Drugs, that was the smart money. Sarah, what, goes out back to buy some weed—maybe that was the point of the whole foray from the dance studio—and pulls out too much cash? Maybe that’s what the three black guys in the store were doing, a little dealing. Hey, white girl, you want some quality endo? Y’all come on out back. She goes, pulls out her money, dude grabs it, she bucks, gets the knife, and that’s the end. Or, maybe: She pays and they try to get a little what-what with the transaction. She bucks, the knife, the same.
    Maybe a rapist who had spotted her before—she would have been in the same place, same time each week—and finally made a play? He blew out his lips. Possible, but less likely.
    Then there was the Big Idea story that his colleagues would love most: Daddy was the target, she was the message. This struck him as the most likely to be bullshit, but if it was true, the killing would almost certainly be a professional hit, designed to be quick, clean, and most likely done efficiently with a firearm. Or maybe the killer liked the knife because, if he was sure of his physical control of the situation, it offered the benefits of silence and no left-behind ballistics.
    Of course none of this really mattered—the initial BOLO would fix the narrative on television, radio, newspapers, the national consciousness. Three young black guys, one dead white girl. This was how shit got started.
    He looked up and saw three people walk out of the alley. The low yellow light was not good but he recognized the police chief’s short, rotund outline. The other figure, a tall, broad-shouldered dude in a suit, he didn’t know. He guessed FBI. They both turned and went away from him, toward the lights on Georgia Avenue.
    The third figure, who started walking his way, was a woman. She passed under a streetlight, crossed the street, passed the cop in the cruiser, and pulled out her car keys. Sully smiled.
    “Counselor,” he called out.
    Eva turned, startled, but did not relax her shoulders when she recognized him. She crossed the street, walking to where he sat.
    “Thought you guys dug out information. Not come to a crime scene and sit.”
    “Odd for you to be out on a scene, isn’t it?” he said.
    “No,” she said, a little too quickly. “We don’t always wait to get suspects to file indictments.”
    “A grand jury original?”
    “’s what they call it.”
    “This’ll be your case.”
    “It might, but you can’t print that. It’s not settled.” She turned and looked toward the alley. “They got more people down there than the state fair. FBI, Marshals, ATF. Surprised I didn’t run into LAPD.”
    “Who are the guys in the store just before she died?”
    “Listening to the BOLOs, are we? Three young men we want to talk to. We don’t have names, so don’t ask. There’ll be a bulletin in a few with a general description.”
    “Are they suspects?”
    “I believe the term is ‘persons of interest.’”
    “So are they suspects?”
    “If you were one of them, and half the local and federal police agencies in the nation’s capital were hunting your ass, what would you feel like?”
    “Thought so. Where’s the girl? Sarah?”
    “She
was
in a dumpster back there. She
is
at the morgue. I imagine they’ll