Deadly Intersections by Ann Roberts Page A

hallway. A junkie’s paradise. She pulled a flashlight from her pocket and veered left. The air was thick with dust particles swirling in front of her face as they caught the sunlight. From above they heard a noise—the quick movement of feet. Andre withdrew his gun and flew back down the hallway, passing the entry and flying up the stairs. She stayed on his heels, their loafers pounding the ancient linoleum. 
    At the top of the steps they looked left and right but saw no one. Suddenly the clank of metal echoed from the first story. She darted into a classroom and stared out the window. A figure in an Army jacket, jeans and a black baseball cap bolted across the field and through the hole in the fence. 
    “Can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman,” Andre said.
    “Nope,” she agreed. “But we know that people spend time here during the day. It’s very possible someone, maybe even that person, saw something.”
    “Or did something,” he added. “I can’t imagine anyone coming after that little girl intentionally. Who’d want to kill a kid?”
    She shook her head and they headed toward the west corner of the building.
    “Are we gonna search all of these rooms?” Andre asked, and Molly could already hear the whine in his voice again.
    “No,” she said, gesturing to the doors that faced the playground. “Just these. The first floor windows are too low.”
    They surveyed the five rooms, automatically eliminating the last two where the floor was rotted out. They were uninhabitable unless someone wanted a quick exit to the first floor. They found nothing in the next two rooms and she began to worry they wouldn’t find a clue.
    The end room was the biggest and contained the most trash. She peered through the dirty windows. “This is the best view of the swing set. If anyone saw anything, or if the killer was watching, he was doing it from this window.”
    “How do you know it was a man? Aren’t you being a little chauvinistic?”
    Molly scowled. “Do you really want me to cite the statistics on female killers to you?”
    Andre waved his hand. “Only if you do it after we leave.”
    They stepped carefully, avoiding the trash and broken glass that littered the floor. A shabby mattress lay in the corner, the cracks of the hardwood planks littered with hundreds of hypodermic needles. She pulled on a pair of heavy gloves and paced the room, sometimes carefully picking up pieces of debris for examination or pushing them aside with an old yardstick she found in the corner.
    Andre remained by the door trying to stay out of the way, clearly hesitant to soil his expensive suit.  “Why do we care what they eat?” he complained when she emptied an old McDonald’s bag.
    “It’s not what they eat that matters,” she replied, ignoring his impatience. She’d vowed not to let him get on her nerves, but sometimes it was all she could do not to turn around and bark at him. She knew he hated dirty places because he always wore tailored suits. Ironically he had no problem tackling a suspect in his good clothes even if it meant a rip in his expensive pants, but standing in a dusty room made him nervous.
    Eventually she wound up underneath the window where she meticulously sorted the trash, spreading it out, separating all of the wrappers from each other. Amid the mess she found what she was looking for. 
    “Check it out,” she said with a smile. “I think we just got really lucky.”
    He stared at the white strip of paper in her hand, a receipt from the Jack in the Box down the street. The customer had purchased three plain hamburgers and a chocolate shake. It took him a second to realize why she cared—the date and the time of the purchase.  Someone had purchased the food on Sunday at ten-thirty, not long before Maria Perez arrived at the playground.
    “So the killer buys the food and comes here to eat it, probably getting his jollies watching Maria the whole time. Then he goes down and kills her.”
    “Hmm.