Джеймс Паттерсон - The 18th Abduction

We were two blocks from the location and arrived in under a minute. Frazer braked the car, turned off the engine. The headlights went out. Without the headlights, the only illumination was one small light coming from a high window in a nearby apartment.

It threw just enough wattage to shadow the victim, lying spread-eagle in the street.

I jumped out of the car and got to the victim first. I took one look and called our street sergeant, Pat Correa, saying that we were on the scene and needed clear air, an ambulance, and CSI.

She said, “I’m on it. I should be there in three, four minutes.”

Thank God it was Correa. She was an old hand and a role model.

Meanwhile, Frazer and I had work to do. By our flashlight beams, what I could see through the dark and fog looked to be the work of a serial psycho known around the Hall as the Bloodsucker. No one had ever seen him up close, so the man was also a myth, but he did cut throats, drink his victims’ blood, and leave his signature behind.

My hand was shaking as I shined my light on the victim and said, “I’m Lindsay. I’m a cop,” and I asked her to hang in. An ambulance was en route. She groaned softly but didn’t open her eyes and didn’t move.

The victim appeared to be a street person, middle aged, with knotted hair and rags for clothes. The plastic bag she used to carry her possessions was still looped over her left wrist.

I sorted through it for ID and found an apple, a wad of tissues, a ball of tinfoil, and miscellaneous odds and ends, but no wallet, no ID.

The four-inch-long gash to the side of the victim’s neck looked like a knife wound, and an artery had been cut. No mistake about it, she was bleeding out. So much blood was puddling around her, it was separating, and the iron smell of it blended with the urine stink coming up from the street.

Frazer was quick to render aid, pressing her gloved hand to the victim’s pulsing wound.

She said, “I’ve got her, Boxer. Preserve the scene.”

The victim was still alive. Just.

Was the Bloodsucker hanging back, watching us?

I looked at the faces of the gathering crowd of bystanders. Gangbangers who ran the neighborhood, I thought. We didn’t have cell phones then, so I took pictures with my mind, memorizing what little I could see of the rubberneckers even as I ordered them away from the immediate area.

One of the onlookers was a husky guy with big hands, and he just wouldn’t step back. I warned him off. I got in his face and blocked his access, but he mocked me, crouched into a boxer’s stance, and danced on the balls of his feet, daring me to take him on.

And then he rushed me.

My father was a bad father, a worse husband, and also a dirty cop. Maybe I was trying to make up for all that by becoming a cop myself. One thing Marty Boxer did teach me: “With the name Boxer, you better know how to box.”

I thought the husky guy could hurt me, but I was more afraid that he’d corrupt the scene. So I drew back my fist and punched him in the face with all my strength.

He howled, staggered backward holding his hands over his nose. The crowd I had shooed away reassembled and began hooting, catcalling me and Frazer, “Here, piggy, piggy.”

I was worried that this mob was getting out of control. Two of us. More than a dozen of them. I fired a shot into the air to get their attention. I remembered, too late, that warning shots were illegal, but I figured I’d explain later. We were outnumbered and I was afraid for my life.

It was almost pure bravado when I yelled, “Who wants to go to jail for interfering with law enforcement?”

There was laughter. This was bad. A menacing scrum of kids was having a good time with the lady cop. They might have weapons. I would be surprised if they didn’t. The crime scene was still exposed, and it was just me holding off gangbangers, and Frazer standing between the victim and death.

I pushed through the hecklers, and when I got to the car, I called dispatch, demanding backup forthwith.

Correa’s voice came over the radio. “I’m on Mission and Twentieth. Watch for my lights.”

The gangbangers heard Correa’s voice over the radio saying that she was three blocks away, and it backed them off. I’d bought a minute to tape off the street and I got to it.

Frazer said, “I’m sorry I can’t help with this.”

I said, “Do you see that? ”

I flashed my light on the brick wall, and there, finger-painted in blood, was the Bloodsucker’s signature, the sketch of a grinning face, blood running down his chin.

Frazer was asking the victim for her name, telling her to stay with us, repeating her promise that she would be all right.

The guy I’d punched was sitting with his back against a car, holding his nose and howling. I prayed that we’d gotten to the victim in time. That someone had seen the victim’s attacker.

I took out my notepad and shouted to the ominous and growing crowd. Not just young men anymore, thank God. “Did anyone see the attack on this woman?”

One old man raised his hand. He was wearing a Giants cap and a plastic bag over his clothes. I felt mist on my face. It was starting to rain.

“I saw him,” he said.

I said, “Come with me.”

Chapter 52

I still remembered how it had seemed to me, then, as though everything were working against Lisa and me, and most of all, against the victim, who hadn’t yet been able to tell us her name.

But there was a witness.

I steered the elderly man to a place where we could speak outside the tape. I stood with my back to the wall.

I asked him for his name and address.

He pointed to his chest and said, “I’m Sam Winkler.” Then he pointed to a large cardboard box halfway down the block, leaning against the wall of a building, and said, “My centrally located, eco-friendly, multipurpose abode.”

He was deadpan, but I had to smile.

While keeping my eyes on the street, I asked Sam to tell me what he had seen.

He said, “This strange guy passed right by me—four feet away. He was talking to himself, very loud and very crazy. I didn’t understand him. I don’t think it was English. Maybe Swedish. I never saw him before. I was just glad he kept going. I didn’t mess with him.”

“Tall? Short? Black? White? Young? Old?”

Sam Winkler shrugged, then said, “Medium-sized and skinny.”

I made a note. “And you saw the attack?”

“Some of it. I stood up to make sure he was gone, and Rona was sitting right there against the building when this dude came up to her. He hunched down. She cried out, and I couldn’t see what he did from where I was. But I saw when he wrote on the wall with his finger.”

“You did?”

Sam said, “That was him, right? The Bloodsucking bastard?”

“The victim’s name is Rona?”

“Yeah. That’s what she calls herself.”

“Last name?”

He shrugged for the second time.

I said, “Do you see that man here now?”

“No, he took off thataway.” He pointed southbound toward Twenty-First Street. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”

“Would you recognize him from a picture?”

“I wanna help,” Sam told me. “But my eyes aren’t good. And it’s blacker than black here, right?”

He was right. Almost total darkness with a chilly froth of fog.

The bystanders were getting rowdy again and a half dozen of them began to rock our car. It was a dangerous situation. I pictured ordering them to line up with their faces to the wall, frisking them, cuffing them.

I’d never pull that off. It was not a one-cop job and Frazer was occupied.

Where was our sergeant? Where was backup?

I turned to see Frazer still keeping pressure on the fire hose that was Rona’s severed carotid artery. She was saying, “Hang on, please, dear. Help is on the way. I promise.”