23

Lauren had the first officers on the scene keep it quiet that it was a cop who was the victim. The first thing she did was have them call their supervisor, Lieutenant Duluth, to the scene and cancel the ambulance. “Are you sure you don’t want to get checked out?” Duluth asked as she sat next to him in his patrol car.

She gingerly touched her neck with the tips of her fingers. “I’m all right. It’s my hand that hurts most, but what are they going to do? Put a bandage on it? I can do that back at the district house.”

Duluth was young for a supervisor. Lauren figured him to be in his late twenties. He was one of those quiet guys who never went to parties and took everything very seriously. “You want to use your maiden name for the report. That’s what my guys told me.”

She nodded. “The press has access to our incident reports. With all the attention on the task force, I don’t want them focusing on me.”

“I’ll have them do that, but you still have to come to the district and give Grace Harvey a statement. If we have some crazy guy attacking women in the park, we have to get it out there, whether you’re the victim or not. And I called the commissioner’s office and left a message for her. I’m sure she’s going to want to know about this.”

She’d deal with Commissioner Bennett later. She just wanted to get the district stuff out of the way. Grace Harvey, or Harvey as she liked to be called, was one of the older Delta District detectives. She and Lauren were well acquainted, and she’d know how to handle the situation once Lauren explained things to her.

All around them, joggers and moms with strollers stood just outside the crime scene tape, trying to figure out what was going on. The sun had come up, but the overcast sky filtered out anything resembling sunshine. Three police cars blocking one of the jogging paths was going to attract attention, even if it was one of the lesser-used paths.

She opened and closed her hand, wincing at the sting. That’s going to leave a mark, she thought, looking down at the crimson rope burn across her palm.

Lauren sat in the lieutenant’s car and waited for Evidence and Photography to come out. She watched them take the rope and bag it, after Andy Knowles took pictures of it.

She’d always thought being the police photographer was the best job in the department. You came in, snapped some pictures, and left. You didn’t have to touch anything, didn’t have to figure anything out. Andy Knowles had been on the job for years, so he knew exactly what to photograph as soon as someone explained the scene to him. Lauren watched as he bent down, giant camera to his eye, zooming in to get a better look at something on the ground. He took some photos of boot prints that were most likely the attacker’s.

Other than that, there wasn’t much in the way of physical evidence for the techs to collect. The lab would try to get something off the rope, but Lauren was doubtful. If David had used gloves, the only DNA the lab was going to get was Lauren’s and possibly some from the guy who helped her after he picked it up and dropped it back onto the ground.

The poor kid had to go down to the district station house to give a statement too. Thankfully, Harvey took her first. She recounted everything she could remember, and Harvey took it down, asking clarifying questions at the end, exactly the way Lauren used to do in her victim interviews. Working Cold Case homicides, she never did those anymore, just witness and suspect statements. She’d forgotten how exacting a victim’s statement could be. And, if you got stuck with a shitty detective, how painful it could be as well.

When she got to the part about the suspect, Lauren held back, describing the attacker as best she could and not like David Spencer specifically. Though she didn’t believe it for a second, there was always the outside chance that it was a random attack. Still, the height and weight and build were a match to David.

Cops stuck their heads in the detective office with bullshit questions for Harvey. Lauren knew they’d already heard about what happened through the departmental grapevine and just wanted to see what had happened to the infamous Detective Riley now. She could hear the chatter in the breakroom: She got strangled this time; what else is going to happen to that broad? Cops could be brutal to each other.

Lauren went to the bathroom to try to clean up after her interview was done. Her hair, which had mostly come loose from its ponytail, hung limply around her face. She used her fingers to comb it back and twisted the black band into place at the base of her neck. She had a deep scratch on her left cheek she hadn’t noticed when she checked herself out in Lieutenant Duluth’s rear-view mirror.

The red line around her throat was faint but visible. Andy had taken pictures of both her neck and her hand at the scene. Her hand hurt like hell, but Harvey had managed to find a first-aid kit and put some antibiotic cream on it. “Leave it open,” Harvey had told her. “Don’t bandage it up, and keep it clean. It’ll heal faster.”

Lauren definitely had doubts about her medical advice, but she went along with it because she just wanted to get back to the task force office as soon as possible.

The kid who had helped her was sitting on a bench in the hallway when she came out of the bathroom. When she stopped to thank him again, he told her that Harvey had to give him a note to take to work stating he’d been late due to official police business. He was convinced he was going to get fired. “I’ve been late twice this week,” he told Lauren. “That’s why I was cutting through the park in the first place.”

Lauren fished her business card out of her pocket with her good hand and gave it to him. “If he gives you any problems, have him call me.”

The kid tucked the card away and smiled at her. “Thanks, lady.”

Harvey had arranged for one of the patrol officers to take her back to her car. As she was being driven back over to the park, she thought about what just happened to her.

David Spencer hadn’t meant to kill her; this she knew. Just like she had gone to a place he felt safe and in control, so had he. Leaving the white rope was a message. Katherine Vine had been strangled with a white silk scarf. He was warning her to back off.

Which meant she was getting close.