Along Came A Spider

CHAPTER 34

AMPSON AND I raced down C Street in the heart of

Capitol Hill. I could hear the breath inside my nose as I ran. My arms and legs felt disjointed.

Squad cars from the department and EMS ambulances had the street completely blocked off. We'd had to park on F Street and sprint the last couple of blocks. WJLATV was already there. So was CNN. Sirens screamed everywhere.

I spotted a clique of reporters up ahead. They saw Sampson and me coming. We're about as hard to miss as the Harlem Globetrotters in Tokyo.

“Detective Cross? Dr. Cross?” the reporters called out, trying to slow us down.

“No comment,” I waved them off. “From either of us - Get the fuck out of the way.”

Inside Vivian Kim's apartment, Sampson and I passed all the familiar faces-techies, forensics, the DOA gang in their ghoulish element.

“I don't want to do this anymore,” Sampson said.

“Whole world's flowing down the piss-tubes. It's too much, even for me.”

“We burn out,” I mumbled to him, “we burn out together. ”

Sampson grabbed my hand and held it. That told me he was as fucked up about this as he got. We went inside the first bedroom on the right side of the hallway. I tried to be still inside. I couldn't do it.

Vivian Kim's bedroom was beautifully laid out. Lots of exquisite, black-and-white family photographs and art posters covered most of the wall space. An antique violin was hung on one wall. I didn't want to look at the reason I was there. Finally, I had to.

Vivian Kim was pinned to the bed with a long hunting knife. It was driven through her stomach. Both her breasts had been removed. Her pubic hair had been shaved. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, as if she had seen something unfathomable during her last moments.

I let my eyes wander around the bedroom. I couldn't look at Vivian Kim's mutilated body. I stared at a splash of bright color on the floor. I caught my breath. Nobody had said anything about it on the way up. Nobody had noticed the most important clue. Fortunately, nobody had moved the evidence. “Look at this here.” I showed Sampson.

Maggie Rose Dunne's second sneaker was lying on Vivian Kim's bedroom floor. The killer was leaving what the pathologists call “artistic touches.” He'd left an overt message this time-the signature of signatures. I was shaking as I bent down over the little girl's sneaker. Here was the most sadistic humor at work. The pink sneaker, in shocking contrast to the bloody crime scene.

Gary Soneji had been in the bedroom. Soneji was the project killer, too. He was The Thing. And he was back in town.