The salesman in charge of the concession waved the crowd away. His face was pale, his eyes wild, and he was shouting, “Stand back, please. Stand back. Get the hell away from here!”

People swarmed toward the Ferrari, then away from it, a riptide eddying around Jake and his boys.

Sharp screams pierced the peppy pop music, and Jake’s sons broke into tears. They pressed their faces into their father’s body, fiercely hugging his waist and legs.

His heart galloping, Jake hoisted the twins onto his hips and walked quickly toward the exit.

He spoke sternly to the wide-eyed ticket-taker at the door.

“Someone’s dead in there. A woman. You’d better call the police right now.”

Part Five: ONE-STOP SHOPPING

Part Five

ONE-STOP SHOPPING

Chapter 80

Chapter 80

THE CAR-SHOW VISITORS streamed out of the convention center looking like shell-shocked commuters who’d driven too close to the scene of a nasty, very bloody accident.

Jacobi was waiting for me just inside the big glass doors at the Howard Street entrance.

“Welcome to Groundhog Day,” Jacobi said.

“Tell me about it.”

Jacobi brought me up to date as we cut through the crowd, working our way toward the rear of the hall.

“White female, eighteen to twenty, blond, a hundred pounds soaking wet, ligature mark around the neck, parked inside a Ferrari.”

“My God. These freaks. What audacity, craziness. What nerve to do this in public. Look at all these kids at the auto show!”

“They’re messing with us, Boxer,” Jacobi said. “Thumbing their noses and laughing their asses off. That’s my read.”

He pointed out a couple of cops and CSU techs standing between the fast-food concessions and the European sports cars. A measly cordon of yellow crime scene tape circled a hinged partition of fiberboard.

As if sixty square feet could contain a murder scene.

I stepped behind the partition and saw a vignette that shocked me to the bone. The victim had been dressed, coiffed, and displayed as a still life: Blond Woman in Slick Silver Car. It was gallows humor, a sly inside joke, another pretty young girl, killed for someone’s sick pleasure.

“Get the manager,” I said to Jacobi. “I’m shutting this place down.”

I got the chief on my cell, asked him to assign every available cop to the convention center and to give a heads-up to the mayor. Soon there’d be satellite vans on Howard Street and news choppers overhead, no doubt about it.

Charlie Clapper stopped shooting the scene long enough to hand me a pair of latex gloves.

“We’re doing the best we can, Lindsay, but I’m going to take this car back to the lab. Give it our special detailing.”

“Any ID on the victim?”

“No wallet, no handbag, no nothing.”

I reached through the driver’s-side window, touched the girl’s cheek with the back of my wrist. She was still warm. The ambient temperature was about 68 degrees and dry.