Into the Tiger's Hour

Chapter Sixteen

Yellow crime scene tape marked off a corner of the Downtown District, keeping back the few people that were milling about so early on a Tuesday morning. Uniformed officers stood guard over the few witnesses they'd been able to gather and were keeping any preliminary questions to themselves, trusting that the homicide detectives would have their own way of interviewing those they'd grabbed.

Squad cars lined the curb, parked nose to bumper, and the crime scene van had been driven onto the sidewalk to let the techs reach the scene. An ambulance, the back doors open and the engine off, blocked off part of the street.

And homicide detective Tom Landsman looked down at the body that had been so carelessly, so uncaringly discarded like so much refuse.

She had been beautiful, he knew that much. Jonas Foster wasn't a personal friend, but he was a high profile person in Brandenburg and the police force had provided escort and protection to several black tie affairs. Iris Foster had always accompanied him, pale and smiling on her father's arm, and Landsman remembered how vivid, how striking her eyes had been when they were looking at people with keen interest.

Those eyes were glazed now, staring blankly at the grimy brick wall, as empty as doll's eyes. She hadn't been mutilated, for which he was eternally grateful, but he found it difficult to look at her. The lividity was already showing on her body and the medical examiner was taking far too long to get down to the scene. Every time the tech took another photo of the scene, the camera's flash reflected off of Iris's wide eyes and tricked Landsman into thinking that just... maybe... she was alive.

...even while knowing for a fact she wasn't.

He'd held his fingers against her slim wrist, waiting in silence for the pulse he knew he wasn't going to find. No one had ever survived having their throat opened the way hers had been. Without touching the body, Landsman could see the glint of white bone, the vertebrae visible between the wet tissues forming either side of the gaping hole in her neck.

Cataloguing the injuries would be done at the autopsy, but he'd done a once over, years of experience giving him a pretty good idea as to what had been done. When a body was dumped, it was clearly a murder. When the body was half-dressed and lividity showed bruises on the arms and legs, there had been a struggle.

...when the throat had been opened and there was blood coating nearly every surface within a six foot circumference, there was no other crime scene to look for. And that didn't bode well for his investigation at all.

The techs were doing a thorough job of covering the alley. They'd already picked through the usual city refuse, located several used condoms--too crusty to be of any real value to the case--and a pair of torn panties that... could have been hers. Identification had been officiated by Landsman himself, confirming what the uniform that had sent out the 10-82 had tentatively said.

"...detective?"

He was a man who looked far more tired than he ever really was, and considering Landsman's usual level of energy, that was saying something. When he turned towards the uniform, the man recoiled a step and frowned at the detective's heavily lined face, the broken blood vessels in his nose that were a clear sign of his excessive alcohol consumption. "What is it, son?"

"The ME radioed and said they can't get through. There's a 10-50 up the road that's blocking off traffic. They'll have to go around and come up through the Courthouse District. It'll be another twenty minutes or so."

"Did you get any answer at the Ebony Towers?"

The uniform's face went flat and he nodded. "Had to call the third number on the list you gave me, but yeah."