I took a deep breath and then I knelt over Nina. The rats had been at her, I could see. The killer had done much worse damage.
It looked to me as if Nina had been beaten to death, with punches, and possibly kicks. She might have been struck a hundred times or more. I had rarely seen anyone given this much punishment. Why did it have to happen? She was only thirty-one years old, mother of two, kind, talented, dedicated to her work at St Anthony's.
There was a sudden noise, like a rifleshot, in the building. It reverberated right through the basement walls. The EMS workers jumped.
The rest of us laughed nervously. I knew exactly what the sound was.
'Just rattraps' I said to the EMS team. 'Get used to it.'
Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel
CHAPTER Ten
I was at the homicide scene for a little over two hours, much longer than I wanted to be there, and I hated every second. I couldn't fix a set pattern for the Jane Doe killings, and Nina Quids' murder didn't help. Why had he struck her so many times and so savagely? What were the flowers doing there? Could this be the work of the same killer?
The way I usually operate at a crime scene, the homicide investigation takes on an almost aerial view. Everything emanates from the body.
Sampson and I walked the entire crime scene - from the basement to each floor and on up to the roof. Then we walked the neighborhood. Nobody had seen anything unusual, which didn't surprise either of us.
Now came the really bad part. Sampson and I drove from the woeful tenement to Nina's apartment in the Brookland section of Washington, east of Catholic University. I knew I was being sucked in again, but there was nothing I could do about it.