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.Signal thirty.”Murphy looked across the table at his partner.“Not a-fuckin’-gain,” Gaudet said.“Call dumb and dumber.Tell them to meet us there.”Forstall Street dead-ends at Douglas Street.Douglas runs alongside the Mississippi River.Between the street and the river, the earthen levee rises gently to a height of twenty feet, then sweeps down to the edge of the muddy water.An asphalt exercise path runs along the top of the grass-covered levee.At roughly quarter-mile intervals along the path, wooden benches sit facing the water.Murphy’s junior- and senior-high-school alma mater, Holy Cross, sits a block to the west.He knew the area well.The decapitated body of a white woman, wearing orange pajama shorts and a matching tank top, lay fifteen feet up the levee, partially hidden in the knee-high grass.Murphy, Gaudet, and a Fifth District uniformed sergeant stood beside the body.Joey Doggs and Danny Calumet were working a neighborhood canvass.Murphy was staring at the grisly wound that had severed the woman’s neck.“We still haven’t found her head,” the sergeant said.“Any ID?” Gaudet asked.“Not confirmed, but we have an idea.”“Who?”“Sandra Jackson.from the crime lab.”“Our crime lab!” Gaudet said.The sergeant nodded.“Her boyfriend, the guy she’s living with, is in the Fourth District narcotics task force.He reported her missing early this morning.”“You think it could have been domestic?” Gaudet asked the sergeant.“It’s not domestic,” Murphy said.Gaudet looked at him.“How do you know?”“A cop is not going to cut off his girlfriend’s head.He might shoot her, might stab her, might strangle her, but he’s not going to cut off her head.That takes a psychotic disposition that your average cop just doesn’t have.”“An ex-husband then, or an old boyfriend,” Gaudet said.Murphy shook his head.“This is our killer.”“You think he left his.calling card?” Gaudet said.“What calling card?” the sergeant asked.Murphy shrugged.“When we roll her we’ll find out.But this is him.”The sound of a racing car engine behind them made the detectives and the uniformed sergeant turn around.Two blocks down Forstall, flying toward them, was a black Ford Crown Vic.“Got to be the boyfriend,” Gaudet said.A marked patrol car sat crossways in the street a block from the levee.The black Ford shot through a gap between the back bumper of the patrol car and a utility pole.Two seconds later the driver braked to a hard stop at the end of the street.Murphy was pretty sure if there hadn’t been an overgrown ditch there, the driver would have driven straight up the levee.Three uniformed cops converged on the Ford just as the driver’s door flew open and a muscular man in his midthirties with a shaved head jumped out.The man, who Murphy saw had a silver NOPD badge clipped to his belt and a pistol holstered on his right hip, sloughed off two of the three cops as they tried to hold him back.The third officer gave up and backed away.The plainclothes cop jumped the ditch and ran toward the woman’s body.The Fifth District sergeant stepped forward, holding up both hands.“Stop right there, officer.This is a crime scene.” But the cop pushed past him.Murphy stepped in the cop’s way and put both hands on his chest.“Hold it.”The grieving officer knocked Murphy’s hands away and tried to step around him.Murphy blocked his way again.When the cop tried to push him out of the way, Murphy reached out with his right hand and jabbed two fingers into the base of the cop’s throat.The man stumbled back, gasping as he clutched his throat.“I told you to stop,” Murphy said.He could see the man had tears in his eyes, and they weren’t from the finger jab.“Is that Sandra up there?” he croaked.“We don’t know yet.”The cop tried to walk around Murphy, but Gaudet stepped in to block him.“Tell me if it’s her,” the cop shouted.Gaudet laid a hand on the man’s shoulder [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]