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Kyle s crimes ?
Victim s name is Abby Courlevais. Thirty-two years old. White woman, tourist
from France. Worst thing about it, she was five or six months pregnant, Cook
told Sampson and me.
The murder had taken place inside the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, which
showed museum fare during the day but sometimes Hollywood blockbuster stuff at
night. The actual killing had occurred right in the middle of my Baltimore
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speech. And then I d gotten the note:Guess again, smart guy. I m not
psychotic! . . . See you back in DC, where it s all happening. . . .
He was really going out of his way to mock us now getting into it good. And
the killer seemed to be topping each act with the next.Who was the woman in
Baltimore? The Indy race-car driver who had taken me on a wild-goose chase,
only to get away on I-95 .
A pregnant victim, a visitor from another country and a more civilized
one would capture media attention in a new way, and that wasn t the half of
it. The killer had just pulled off another very public execution inside a
national institution. In a post-9/11 world, that meant a new level of
intensity for everything press coverage, public paranoia, pressure on the
police to get this thing under control, to end it before anyone else died. No
one would care that it was an almost impossible assignment. How many years had
it taken them to get the Green River Killer and had they ever gotten the
Zodiac?
As to where DCAK might try to take things from here, I didn t even want to
speculate about it.
Right now, I had a body to see.
Two bodies, actually.
Mother and child.
Chapter 72
GODDAMN HIM TO HELL! Sampson said in an angry voice that he managed to keep
under his breath. That son-ofabitch! That miserable fucker!
As homicide scenes go, this one was particularly obscene and troubling. This
was a place where families went to be entertained. The IMAX theater had
soaring walls, textured only with directional lighting. The rows of
high-backed seats were steeply raked in a concave arch across the auditorium,
like a modern take on an old medical-lecture theater right down to the
cadaver, right?
The victim had apparently been killed near the base of the five-story-high
movie screen. That seemed odd to me, but it was the advance word we d gotten
from Gil Cook, and no one else was questioning it so far. I probably shouldn t
have either. Not yet.
The poor woman s body lay faceup now. Her hands had been tied behind her
back, and even from a distance, I could see silver duct tape wrapped across
her mouth.Just like at the Riverwalk . I also spotted a wedding band on her
hand.
As I got closer, I saw that the tape was stained dark over her lips where
blood had been unable to escape. Probably after internal injuries. Mrs.
Courlevais s white dress was discolored and looked rusty brown all over. She d
obviously been stabbed . . . repeatedly.
Next to the mutilated body was an oversize canvas rucksack. There were metal
grommets around the top. The sack was laced with a thick cord, presumably for
tying it closed.
Another present from DCAK? Another clue for us to follow nowhere?
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More bloodstains and several perforations showed me what I already knew
instinctively, that the victim had been stabbedinside the sack. The vicious
killer had left Abby Courlevais in there, either dead or dying. The EMTs had
taken her out in hopes of reviving her, but it was obviously too late.
When I lifted the empty bag to look for markings, I foundU.S. POSTAL SERVICE
and a long string of numbers stenciled on the side in faded black letters.
So was this the latest calling card? Had to be. But what was it supposed to
mean? What was DCAK saying to us this time? And was this murder committed by
him or possibly his copycat?
Witness accounts had already described a blue uniform and cap on the killer.
Maybe that was DCAK s version of an in-joke he d gone postal on us. He had
also left us holding the bag.
I walked to the far side of the floor, near the entrance the killer had used
to come in. From here, I tried to imagine the events as Detective Cook had
described them. The killer had needed to catch Mrs. Courlevais unaware long
enough to bind her hands and mouth and to get the cloth bag over her head. A
mat of dried blood in her hair indicated some kind of blunt trauma but
probably not enough to knock her out. Conscious would be better, anyway. More
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