Split Second Read Free

white finger to her cheek. “I’ll walk you home. You live close, right? That’s what the bartender told me.”
    She nodded, smiling, and she stumbled. “Whoa, what’s this? I only had three ales, and they weren’t that strong.”
    “Maybe it was all those peanuts.” He laughed, told her not to worry about it, pulled her closer, and walked her to her building on Hudson Avenue. He walked her up two flights of stairs, down a long, well-lit corridor. “Give me your key.”
    She knew you didn’t give a guy your key, not a guy you’d just met, even though he was funny and really nice. It just wasn’t smart. But wasn’t he about her size? Didn’t that make him safe enough? Alana was feeling really sick now, nausea churning in her stomach, sneaking up in her throat, and she swallowed, but it didn’t help. She knew she was going to throw up, and she hated that. She tried to focus on getting inside and popping two Alka-Seltzer tablets in a glass of water from her bathroom sink, watching them dissolve. She gave him her key.
    When he helped her inside her apartment, she knew she wasn’t going to make it to the Alka-Seltzer, she was going to throw up now. She pulled away from him, fell to her knees, and vomited on the highly polished oak floor of her small entry hall. She felt like her insides were churning backward, spewing out bile that would choke her. She huddled there, her knees drawn up to her chest.
    He knelt down beside her, laid his palm on her forehead. His hand felt warm and soft. She whispered, “I’m sorry, Thaddeus, I’m feeling really sick.”
    He stroked her forehead. “That’s all right, Alana. I’m the one who made you sick, and now it’s time to end it.”
    “You made me sick? But how? Why?” She saw him twist a loop of wire in his hands, saw him reach down over her as she vomited again, beer and peanuts all over the front of him. She heard him curse as the wire went around her neck.

CHAPTER 3
    Washington, D.C.
Hoover Building, Criminal Apprehension Unit
Thursday morning, two days later
     
    Lucy Carlyle addressed the group of five agents seated with her around the CAU conference table. “Her name was Alana Rafferty, age thirty-one, divorced, no children. She was a graphic artist for Bloomfield Designs in Cleveland, Ohio. She was outgoing, loaded with talent, and just plain old nice, according to her coworkers and friends, and she met the wrong person at Nielson’s Bar and Grill on West Blake Street Tuesday night. The bartender, who’s also the owner, said she left with a guy all duded up in black, even a black beret, said he looked sort of gay, at about nine o’clock Tuesday night. Another couple saw the guy wave down a taxi, but the cabbie was off duty. Then the guy yelled out an insult, even kicked the tire. The couple said Alana looked a bit tipsy, and when they walked away, the guy was holding her arm because she wasn’t all that steady on her feet. They walked west, toward her apartment, two blocks farther on, at the corner of Hudson Avenue.” She nodded a bit unwillingly at Agent Cooper McKnight, wanting to continue and not turn it over to him, but she said, “Coop.”
    Coop said, “Her body was found in her apartment at noon yesterday by the manager and a coworker from Bloomfield Designs. The Cleveland PD put a rush on the autopsy since the murder bore some similarities to four recent murders, two in San Francisco and two in Chicago. This was the first victim in Cleveland.
    “The bartenders in all three cities describe the guy as looking arty, maybe gay, in his late twenties, early thirties, with longish black hair under a black beret, tall, thin to gaunt. Two of the bartenders said he looked like he’d dusted his face with white powder, and he had long white hands that he seemed to like to show off, you know, picking out individual pretzels or nuts from a bowl.
    “The bartenders told police none of the women seemed to know him, but they all appeared to hit it off with him