When the Storm Breaks Read online

  Claire rounded a corner and saw a dark shape about ten feet away. When lightning flashed, she saw the shape was a man. He had his back to her and was leaning over something. Abruptly he bent down and moved his right arm in several precise, controlled motions. As he rose and turned toward her, she saw that he was standing over a woman sprawled on her back, dead eyes open to the rain-filled sky.

  Claire’s heart stopped. An icy-hot feeling slithered through her belly. Her pulse pounded in her ears, blocking out the sound of wind and thunder.

  As lightning flashed again, her stunned eyes shifted from the body on the ground to the man. He was looking directly at her, holding a long object in his right hand. Slowly his lips turned up into an odd, closed-mouth smile. She stared in shock, focused on his mouth, as the image of a photo flashed in her mind. Her paralyzed lungs filled with a gasp.

  She had seen his smile before.

  The man lunged toward her.

  A knife. He has a knife.

  Claire’s survival instinct kicked in, along with a dozen years of urban-woman-living-alone advice. She blasted the man with her pepper spray and flung the useless umbrella at him in an awkward left-handed throw.

  He made a hoarse sound as the spray hit his forehead and splashed his eyes.

  Run, Claire. Run!

  Heeding the voice screaming inside her head, she dropped her purse and the now useless canister and ran. When she looked back for a second, she saw that the killer was holding his hands to his eyes as he turned his face up to the steady rain.

  She knew the spray would only buy her five seconds, ten at most, since she’d missed hitting his eyes directly. She kicked off her low business pumps and hit her full running speed within a few strides. Soon her breath was rasping in and out of her lungs. When she risked one more glance back, she saw the killer running after her.

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  She snapped her head forward and refused to look again.

  Where should I go? Back to Camelot and the pudgy security guard?

  She paused for a heartbeat, then decided to take her chances with the Friday night crowds at Dupont Circle’s restaurants and clubs.

  Feet pounded closer behind her.

  She pushed her burning legs into running faster. She was in decent shape from regular workouts, but sprinting wasn’t part of her routine. Her bare feet slapped on the slick pavement as fast as she could make them move. Raindrops hit her mouth as she tried to breathe. They tasted sweet, and eased the dryness of her lips.

  She could feel the force of the man’s will reaching out to her. It was almost a physical touch. She was terrified that she would feel his hand grab her shoulder or hair at any second.

  With a tight sound of fear and exertion, she turned left and raced down a dark backstreet filled with Dumpsters and cardboard boxes. She thought there was a bar or something on the corner at the end of the alley.

  It never occurred to Claire to call for help. With her body in pure survival mode and her throat paralyzed by fear, she focused on escape. She had to get to a safe place before he caught up with her.

  God, how long is this street?

  She felt as if she were running flat out yet standing still. The end of the alley seemed no closer than when she’d started. For the first time she wondered if she would get away. Then she heard the sawing breath of the man behind her and knew if he caught her she would die.

  Fresh adrenaline shot through her, giving her a rush of strength. She opened the gap between herself and the man chasing her.

  When she finally reached the street, Claire’s instincts took her to the right. Her heart sank when she saw that the area was empty—no cars, no pedestrians, everyone had been driven inside by the summer rain that continued to pour down in wind-driven waves.

  But the faint pulsing beat of music drew her forward. Two doors up the street she saw neon lights coming from windows set at basement level—a nightclub. A set of dark metal stairs was all that separated Claire from safety. She threw herself down the steps as fast as she could force her trembling legs to move.

  Risking one more glance behind her, Claire didn’t see any sign of the man chasing her, but she knew he could come around the corner at any moment. She paused to look again, and the momentary break in her rhythm caused her bare feet to slip on the metal stairs.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, her feet went out from under her. With a defeated cry, she felt herself falling. When she struck the back of her head with brutal force on the metal edge of a stair, the world went briefly white, then black.

  Chapter 3

  Bitch.

  The man couldn’t believe she had outrun him.

  What was she, a fucking gazelle?

  He’d planned the evening perfectly—things were supposed to go smoothly, just like the other times. And everything had, until she’d shown up.

  Frustrated rage gave him strength. He threw himself around the corner of the alley and into the street. A moment of rational thought slowed him down. He looked around; the woman was gone.

  Did she get away?

  He paused to calm his breathing. His other senses began to process the surrounding environment—the wet pavement smell and the steam rising lazily off the street. The thunderstorm was moving to the east, leaving behind cooler temperatures.

  As his breathing slowed, he heard music nearby, a throbbing undertone of bass that penetrated the sound of the rain. The volume increased. Doors opened, and a rush of voices added to the din. The man slowly approached a stairway that led down to the source of the music. He glanced up at the sign over the entrance.

  Suds ’n Studs—Ladies Only.

  A strip bar. How very tacky. Cautiously looking around the corner and down the stairway, he saw a mass of women huddled around something on the steps. The gazelle, apparently.

  “Is she breathing?”

  “God, what happened?”

  “Her eyes are twitching, is she having a seizure?”

  The questions came rapid fire, directed at no one in particular. Bellowing for someone inside to call 911, a muscled bouncer tried to clear the excited patrons away from the stairs. From just inside the doors, a woman pushed through the crowd, shouting that she was a doctor. The music stopped abruptly.

  The killer took in the scene, assessing his options. Too many witnesses. He’d better cut his losses. The injured woman wouldn’t be able to clearly identify him—it had been rainy and dark.

  Besides, he’d take care of her soon enough.

  He turned away from the strip bar and headed down the street towards Dupont Circle. Once he was a few blocks away, he paused under a streetlight to pull the gazelle’s small purse from his jacket. He’d stopped to pick up the handbag, which was one of the reasons she’d outrun him.

  At least that’s what he told himself.

  He flipped open the wallet, quickly reading through the information on her driver’s license. Marie Claire Lambert, 30, Georgetown address. And keys to let him in.

  The man’s mouth twisted upward in a cruel smile. “You’re dead, Marie Claire.”

  Chapter 4

  Officer Reggie Garfield had responded to calls at the Suds ’n Studs before. When it came over the radio that a woman was down in front of the entrance, he figured this would be a fairly routine incident involving Friday night, alcohol, and a boisterous strip club. Backup was on the way, and the ambulance was a couple of minutes behind him. It should be an open-and-shut report. He figured to be back on the streets before 2 A.M.

  Garfield stepped out of his patrol car. He automatically moved to put the nightstick in its belt loop, shifting his love handles briefly when they interfered with this process. He grabbed the shoulder microphone to radio back that he had arrived on the scene. His first job would be to find someone who knew what had happened. He went down the stairs to get a look at the victim and start gathering information.

  “Stand back, everybody, coming through.” The words came automatically from Garfield’s mouth.

/>   He saw a huge, heavily muscled guy in a sea of females. “You the bouncer? Get everyone back in the club and clear the way for the paramedics.” He pitched his voice louder. “Ladies, the show is over, please go back inside and let us do our job.”

  The crowd reluctantly began breaking up. Most of the women stopped just inside the open double doors to the club, milling and chatting about how awful it was, stretching their necks to get one last glimpse of the scene.

  “You a nurse?” he asked a woman who had remained crouched next to the unconscious victim, monitoring her pulse.

  The woman looked up in brief irritation but kept a hand on the victim’s shoulder as if to hold her down. “No, I’m a doctor. Third-year resident.” When the officer looked surprised, she rolled her eyes. “They do have female doctors, you know.”

  He sighed. Great—attitude to go along with his late-night call. He got out his notebook. “She slip down the steps, then?”

  “I don’t know. Some women came out of the club and said they found her at the bottom of the stairs. Nobody knows her. She took a hell of a blow to the back of her head, but I’m not sure if it was on the stairs.”

  Garfield raised his eyebrows. “You don’t think she just fell in the rain? Maybe had too much to drink?”

  “I’ll tell you what I do know—the victim has a serious head wound. She was disoriented and incoherent, and kept trying to get up when I first arrived. She’s got no ID, no purse. And look here—she’s barefoot and there are cuts all over the soles of her feet.” The doctor lifted a white bar towel that had been wrapped around the victim’s feet. She paused, then spoke softly. “She was also saying some pretty scary stuff.”

  The cop came to attention. Leaning over to look at the woman’s dirty, bloodied feet, he made notes in his book.

  “What kinda stuff?”

  “They were broken phrases. Like I said, she was disoriented. I did catch a couple of them, though. ‘He killed her. I saw them, at the school. Run!’ She repeated that last one while struggling to sit up. We had to get the bouncer to hold her down.”

  “She seems quiet now—think she’ll be all right?” Garfield paused in his note-taking.

  “I don’t know.” The young doctor reached again to take the victim’s pulse. “I’m not a neurologist. She lost consciousness just before you arrived, but her vital signs are stable. She needs to get to a hospital and have a CT scan done. If the injury is severe enough, she might need surgery.”

  The doctor gently pushed back wet black curls from the woman’s white face, then checked her pupils with the bouncer’s flashlight.

  Garfield left the steps and went to talk to one of the officers that had arrived as backup. “Start talking to witnesses inside. I’ll get the doc’s contact info and get the vic on her way to the hospital.”

  An ambulance siren grew slowly louder, its sound distorted by the humid night air.

  Garfield cleared the crowd that had begun to form again by the time the ambulance arrived. The doctor was giving two paramedics instructions as they strapped the victim onto a backboard, and several firemen waited to help carry the unconscious woman up the stairs. As the group reached the ambulance doors, the doctor approached him.

  “I’m going to ride to the hospital with her.” She stopped, took a deep breath, and then spoke before she lost her nerve. “Look, there’s a school a couple of blocks from here. A middle school or something. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but if you’d seen how scared she was….” The woman’s voice trailed off.

  “Don’t worry, Doc. I’m on my way over there right now. We’ll check it out.”

  Garfield helped the doctor into the ambulance and closed the doors, banging his fist twice on the side in a signal for the driver to take off.

  Chapter 5

  Washington, D.C.

  Saturday morning

  Detective Sean Richter swore luridly when his pager went off in the darkness, sounding like a crazed hornet as it buzzed on the nightstand. His curses became more creative when he saw the time. 2 A.M. He’d worked until an hour ago on one of the cases he was investigating.

  He worked in the cold cases section of the Homicide Division for the DCPD. Along with his partner, Sean handled cases that had no clues, few leads, and no real suspects after six to twelve months of active investigation. He was assigned to these difficult cases full time, but there weren’t enough hours in the day to do the job, so he often worked nights as well.

  He grabbed his phone and dialed the number in the pager’s glowing display.

  “Richter. What’s up?” he said in a rusty voice.

  “Sean, my man, you owe me big for this.”

  The voice belonged to a cheerful night person. Officer Ambrose “Banjo” Caulley often sat up until dawn listening to his police scanner and monitoring the communications of other D.C. Police Department staff.

  “How about I be the judge of that, Banjo? What’ve you got?”

  “A call came through a little while ago. Murder at a school near Dupont Circle. Young female, multiple stab wounds. She was practically still warm.” Banjo drew his story out with relish.

  “I’m listening,” Sean said, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly.

  “Seems the victim, a dark-haired female in her mid-twenties, was stabbed in the lower abdomen three or four times with a real big knife. No other signs of trauma. No sexual assault, no robbery.”

  Sean’s pulse picked up. The preliminary description was similar to two other murders he was working with the Cold Cases Unit—cases he believed were related. But there wasn’t enough evidence to bear out this theory yet. His other cases involved prostitutes who were also drug addicts, women on the seamy edge of society.

  “Was the victim a working girl?”

  “Not clear yet. But here’s what you’re really going to like. They’ve got a witness, someone they think saw the crime.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Sean jumped to his feet and reached for the jeans he had left hanging over the back of a chair. “Who? Where is he right now?” He pulled the jeans on over his boxers, then put on and buttoned his shirt one-handed while feeling around blindly with his feet in search of shoes.

  “Hang on a second, I’m getting to it. The report is that an unidentified woman fell down the stairs at Suds ’n Studs. That’s a male strip club on Dupont Circle. According to people who helped her at the scene, she was incoherent and hysterical, saying something about seeing a man kill a woman at a school. The first officer on the scene went to a middle school off the Circle, just to check things out. He found the murder victim and called it in. Then I called you.”

  “Where’s the witness now?” Sean asked.

  He turned on the light, slipped on his shoulder harness, checked that the weapon on the nightstand was ready to go, and put it in the holster.

  “She knocked herself silly, probably from falling down the stairs. She was taken to GWU Hospital, but I don’t think you can see her yet. She was apparently unconscious when they left the club, so she’ll probably be tied up in the ER for a while.”

  “Damn. Is she going to be all right?”

  “Officer on the scene couldn’t say. Why don’t you head out to the school first, talk to him if he’s still there? Name’s Reggie Garfield. You can swing by the hospital in the morning.”

  “I’m on my way. What’s the address?” Sean scribbled the information on a tablet while attaching his pager and cell phone to his belt. “I owe you big time, buddy.”

  “I know.” Banjo’s tone said he would enjoy collecting. “You want me to call Burke for you?”

  “Not yet. His lady friend got back in town last night and is leaving again tomorrow, so he’s probably, ah, engaged right now. Anyway, I’ve been working the other two cases most recently. I’ll give him a call when I get a feel for whether this murder is related to the others. I’ll have my cell phone on if you hear anything more.”

  Sean hung up and headed out the door. He reached the scene of the
murder within thirty minutes. Despite the fact that it was nearly 3 A.M., gawkers were gathered around the site, drawn by the flashing lights and predawn activity. They were held back by yellow crime scene tape, with a uniformed officer on the other side.

  Sean pushed his way through a knot of milling teenagers. “Jesus, where are your parents? Let me get through, here—and go home!”

  Even though he was a head taller and much stronger than the teens, they gave him a lot of attitude. He ignored it, flipped open his ID for the uniform on duty, and asked, “Where’s Garfield?”

  “Over there,” the cop said, pointing toward a heavyset patrolman by the victim’s body.

  “Officer Garfield?” Sean called out to him.

  “Yeah.”

  Sean approached him, ID in hand. “Detective Sean Richter. I’m with the Homicide Cold Cases Unit. I want to see if there might be some overlap with this murder and a couple of ongoing investigations.”

  “What makes you think there’s any connection? Forensics hasn’t even assessed the scene yet.”

  Obviously Garfield was feeling a little protective of his crime scene. But if the cases were linked, Sean’s claim would take precedence.

  “Similarities in the victim’s physical profile, cause of death, and a hunch,” Sean said. “If you’ll tell me what you know about this victim, I’ll get out of your hair and wait for the report to come out. I just wanted to see the crime scene myself.”

  Garfield raised his eyebrows. “Victim is in her mid-twenties, dark hair, slender build. No sign of sexual assault, but we’ll wait for the medical examiner to confirm. Cause of death looks to be multiple stab wounds to the abdomen. Her purse was found nearby, wallet inside. Credit cards, driver’s license, and eighteen dollars in cash. She has gold jewelry as well, so I’m thinking robbery wasn’t the motive.”