Page 87 of The Family Cross

Another body. “You have someone to take care of Willow?”

“Not until school starts at eight,” he said.

“Bring her here,” I said. “Bree or Damon can take her to school.”

“See you in twenty,” Sampson said.

I took a fast shower and woke Bree with the news before dressing. The nurses said Nana had had a good night and was resting peacefully, for which I was grateful. After grabbing a go-cup of coffee, I went out onto the front porch.

It was warm already and the trees up and down my street were in full greenery, leaves rustling in the breeze. The sweet scent of flowers blooming hung in the air.

I closed my eyes for a second, breathing them in, thinking about how unfair and incongruous it was that I could be experiencing beauty at the same time as some new trauma was unfolding beneath the ghost ramp.

I heard Sampson’s car pull up. He jumped out and got Willow and her school bag from the back seat. Bree appeared at the door behind me.

“We’ve got to move,” Sampson said as Willow sleepwalked by me to the house.

“I’ll drive,” I said and got behind the wheel of Sampson’s car while he rode shotgun, our usual roles reversed. We heard sirens heading toward the Bridge to Nowhere.

We got there at ten minutes to seven. Two empty patrol cars were already in the alley behind the lumberyard when we pulled up and got out. We headed through the brush to the bridge and the homeless encampment.

The closer we got, the more we could see of the high trolls’ world. Lainey Locket was on a girder high up on the north embankment, watching us. No one was up on what used to be Hawk’s aerie. Where is Sean Brundage?

A disheveled woman pushed a cart piled with her things toward us.

“You looking for the body?” she asked.

“We are,” I said.

“Other side of the ramp,” she said. “Closer to the river.”

“You the one who called it in?” Sampson asked.

“Hell no, some kid did,” she said. “But this is the second dead body in a week. Time for this old gal to move on.”

We stood aside to let her pass, then hurried on, feeling, as we had on every visit, that eyes were trained on us. We walked into the dark shadows of the ghost ramp, past where the Audi and Reverend Sentinel had burned. A female patrol officer met us on the other side.

“Unidentified female back there in the thick stuff close to the river,” she said, pointing to the south. “They’re taping it off for you.”

We thanked her and went over to where three officers were stringing yellow tape around saplings growing in a tangle of brush about sixty yards from the east bank of the Anacostia.

“Where is she?” Sampson asked.

“About ten feet ahead and to my one o’clock,” one of the officers replied, gesturing. “She’s got no purse and she has no identification on her.”

“Did you move the body?” I asked.

“No, sir!” he said emphatically. “Just checked pockets with my gloves on.”

Sampson said, “You talk to who found her?”

The officer shook his head. “Anonymous call. We had to look for her when we got here.”

“Cross!”

I turned to see Detectives Judy Winthrop and Tommy Hayes coming toward us.

“We were called on this,” Hayes said. “This is our case.”