Visions in Death (In Death #19)(72)

Hell, she was ridiculously happy now.

She tossed back her hair, and hesitated at the northwest corner of Greenpeace Park. She always cut through the park, knew the route through like she knew the route from her own kitchen to her own bedroom.

A very short walk, she admitted, until that pay raise.

But two women had been killed in city parks in the last week, so a shortcut at one in the morning might not be a smart move.

That was ridiculous. Greenpeace was practically her backyard. She'd be through it in five minutes, and home safe, tucked into her own little bed and counting sheep before two.

She was a native New Yorker, for God's sake, she reminded herself as she veered off the sidewalk and into the leafy shadows. She knew how to handle herself, how to stay aware. She'd taken self-defense courses, stayed in shape. And she had Anti-Mugger spray with panic alarm in her pocket.

She loved this park, day or night. The trees, the little play areas for kids, the co-op gardens for vegetables or flowers. It showed, to Annalisa, just how diverse the city was. Concrete and cucumbers, spreading within feet of each other.

The image made her laugh as she walked quickly along the path toward home.

She heard the kitten mewing before she saw it. It wasn't unusual to find a stray cat, even a feral one in the park. But this one, she saw as she walked closer, wasn't a cat. It was just a kitten, a little ball of gray fur, curled on the path and crying pitifully.

"Poor little thing. Where's your mama, you poor little thing?"

She crouched down, picked it up. It was only when she held it she realized it was a droid. She thought: Weird.

The shadow fell over her. Her hand dived into her pocket for the spray even as she started to spring back to her feet.

But the blow to the back of her head sent her sprawling.

The droid continued to mew and cry as blows rained down on her.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

At seven hundred and twenty hours the next morning, Eve stood over Annalisa Sommers. The park smelled green. Verdant—she thought that was the word. Sort of alive and burgeoning.

You could hear the morning traffic, on the street and overhead, but here, there was a small slice of countrified with a vegetable patch spread out in tidy rows behind a screen of pest and vandal fence. She didn't know what the hell was growing in it. Leafy stuff and viney stuff and things that sprawled over small, neat hills.

Part of that verdant smell was probably fertilizer or manure or whatever the hell these people mixed in the dirt to grow things they'd eventually put in their mouths and call natural.

Well, come to think of it, there wasn't anything much more natural than shit.

Except blood and death.

At the end of the patch, behind the odd little vertical triangles where vines grew, behind the screen to keep dogs and street people out, was a statue of a man and a woman. Each wore a hat. He carried some sort of hoe or rake, and she a basket loaded with what was meant to be the fruits of their labor. A harvest.

Harvest was the name of the statue, she knew, but everyone called it Ma and Pa Farmer. Or just Ma and Pa.

Annalisalay at their feet, like an offering to the gods with her hands clasped between her naked br**sts. Her face was bloody and ruined, her body covered with bruises.

"Crappy way to start the day," Peabody commented.

"Yeah. A lot crappier for her."

Eve fixed on her goggles, got out her gauges. "Get her ID."

She began to recite what the recorder could already see.

"Victim is Caucasian female. Evidence of violence on face, torso, limbs. Broken clavicle. No defensive wounds evident. Red corded ribbon at the throat apparent murder weapon. Strangulation. There is evidence of sexual assault. Bruising and lacerations on the thighs and genitals."

" ID'das Annalisa Sommers, age thirty-two. Resides Fifteen West Thirty-first."

"Identification now on record. Victim's eyes have been removed in a manner similar to previous victims Maplewood and Napier. Manner of assault, death, mutilation, location type, and position of body all in accordance with previous victims."

"He doesn't vary much from pattern," Peabody said.

"Not much. Why mess with success? Got some hair fibers. On her right hand, adhering to the dried blood."

She tweezed them off, bagged them. And sat back on her haunches.

"What was she doing in here, Dallas? Walking through here in the middle of the damn night. They four-walled the media conference. She had to know this guy trolls the parks."

"Not going to happen to her. People always think it can't happen to them, instead of thinking it's going to happen to somebody, why not me."

She studied the body. "She lives close. That fits with the others, too. Odds are she had a pattern, coming through here, on her way home, or away from home. She cuts through, knows her way around. Hair's not right," Eve muttered.

"A little shorter than the others, a little darker. But still in the ballpark."

"Yeah."

"He'd have to be a little flexible, wouldn't he?"

"Apparently."

With the scene on record, the body's position logged, she turned the victim's head, lifted it. "Took a blow to the back of the head. Hard blow. Maybe he comes up behind her, comes up, hits her, takes her down. She's got some scrapes at the knees, grass and dirt in the cuts. She goes down, hands and knees."