Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

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 totell 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

D etective 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 listeningto 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 ’nStuds. That’s a male strip club on Dupont Circle. Accordingto 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,