The Red Queen Dies

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Book: Read The Red Queen Dies for Free Online
Authors: Frankie Y. Bailey
commander. We’d better get Jacoby in on this, too.”
    He stepped away from them and started making his calls.
    McCabe said. “Pete, this location … the K-9 training facility is out there. Where’s the crime scene in relation to that?”
    â€œYou’ve got the farm with the community garden and the dog park—”
    â€œAnd the horse patrol has stables there,” McCabe said. “But where is—”
    Sullivan tapped the screen. “The road down to this ramp was put in last spring. Compliments of Ted Thornton. He wanted a convenient boat ramp on the Albany side of the bridge. He paid, and the city approved.”
    â€œI must have missed that.”
    â€œMost people did. They put it in while some construction was going on up on Delaware. They put a couple of picnic tables down there and stuck up a sign about it being a public ramp, in case anyone noticed and asked questions.”
    McCabe nodded. “Okay. So you’re the killer and you’re driving around with a body in your car and you see a side road—”
    â€œNo problem about the dog park being nearby,” Sullivan said. “Nobody likely to be down there walking their dog at night. No hikers following the ‘yellow brick road’ through the woods and over the old bridge. And probably no cops hanging around at the facilities.”
    â€œThe ‘yellow brick road,’” McCabe said, her head coming up.
    â€œThe bricks … when they were building the old turnpike road, the bricks they used had a yellow hue—”
    â€œI know about that. When I was a kid, a teacher told us that Albany once had its own yellow brick road and that a portion of it was still visible.… If the victim is Vivian Jessup—”
    â€œWrong movie. She was in Alice. ”
    â€œI know that. But both Alice and The Wizard of Oz were stories about little girls who—”
    â€œBut what do the first two victims have to do with the stories? They were in their early twenties, not little girls. The first vic was found beside her car after she left a club. The second vic got a flat tire on her way home from work. And if this is Jessup, even if the killer knew about the yellow brick road, he didn’t dump her body there, either. He left her on the—”
    McCabe held up her hands. “Okay. You’re right. I’m having a wacky brainstorm. So the killer manages to find Ted Thornton’s new road down to a boat ramp. But if it is our guy, why did he move the body in the first place? He didn’t move the other two.”
    Lieutenant Dole spoke behind her. “McCabe, you’re assuming he killed her somewhere else.” He held up his ORB. “Jacoby put me on hold. Get moving and take that kid Baxter with you. The CO was in a meeting, but he’s on his way. As soon as he gets here, we’ll be over there.”
    Sullivan said, “I hope Jacoby can keep Clarence Redfield away from this. That’s all we need, to have Redfield threading about this.”
    â€œSee you at the scene, Lou,” McCabe said.
    She was already going over what she had seen on-camera as she started down the hall in search of Baxter. If it was Vivian Jessup … if she was the third victim … then a Broadway actress had become the victim of a serial killer while visiting Albany.
    That was not going to thrill the mayor.
    Even with the fast train—ninety minutes instead of the two and a half hours it used to take—cosmopolitan types from Manhattan had not been making Albany their destination of choice. City dwellers had not rushed to relocate to Albany to take advantage of the cheaper real estate market. Most of them seemed uninterested in even coming up to spend a day or a weekend in the capital. The mayor had been spending serious money—much of it from corporate benefactors like Ted Thornton—on a campaign to sell the attractions of Albany to the rest of

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