Free Worst Case by James Patterson Page B

said. “We don’t have a moment to waste.”

Chapter 28
    THE SIDE ALLEY Yassin showed us was appalling. Water—from a busted sewage line, judging by its stench—cascaded down the brick wall of the building under construction next door. A faded blue tarp flapped from a hole on its third floor.
    You knew you were in a bad section of Manhattan when even the real-estate flippers had abandoned ship.
    The piles of debris in the dim alley looked like something out of a photography book about the Great Depression. I rushed ahead, wishing we’d brought a pair of wading boots as I slogged over garbage bags, old bricks, the rusted door of a car.
    I was coming back from the rear of the alley when I almost tripped over a fridge discarded on its back with the door still attached. By law, supers were supposed to remove the doors because of the notorious suffocation death-trap threat to curious kids.
    My breath caught as a thought suddenly occurred to me.
    I flipped up the fridge’s freezer door with the heel of my shoe.
    Something went loose in my chest as I stared down.
    I didn’t want to be seeing what I was seeing, yet I had to drag my eyes away. Then I reeled back to the alley’s fence behind me. With a shaking hand held over my mouth, I stood staring at the broken glass glittering in the rubble-strewn field beyond the alley. A train creaked and clattered in the distance. The wind played with a plastic bag.
    I went back only when Emily got to the spot. We stood beside the open fridge, solemn and silent like mourners beside a strange white casket.
    From inside, Chelsea Skinner stared back at us.
    Her neck must have been broken when she’d been crammed in, because her body was twisted, facing the ground. It looked like her legs had been broken as well in order to fit her inside.
    There was a bullet hole in the top of her head, and she had a cross made of ashes on her forehead.
    Emily placed her gloved hand on the dead girl’s cheek.
    “I’m going to catch the man who did this to you,” she promised the girl as she took out her phone.

Chapter 29
    THE SUBWOOFER THUMPING of the low-flying PD chopper seemed to echo through my raging blood as I left Emily and threaded the narrow alley back to the sidewalk.
    I stared at the line of decrepit three- and four-story brick town houses across the street. The ground floors of many of the buildings bore the closed steel shutters of abandoned stores, but I could see curtains and blinds in many of the upstairs windows that faced the alley. Somebody must have seen something.
    A crowd had gathered around the just-arrived Emergency Service Unit truck, which was parked in front of the mosque. I could see Lieutenant Montana through the windshield, working the radio, calling for backup. Around the truck were many mosquegoers, men in kufis and some women wearing hijab head scarves. But others—local non-Muslim street folk looking for some stimulation—also seemed to be arriving by the minute.
    I took out a picture of Chelsea as I walked over to the throng of people. “This girl was found dead in the alley back there,” I announced, holding it up. “Did anyone see anything this morning?”
    “Oh, a white girl. That’s what all the fuss is about. Figures,” said a pudgy young woman, laughing between bites of her takeout.
    “Word,” said a large man in cornrows beside her. “Why you cops messing around this mosque for? These are God-fearin’ people. This is harassment. Religious and racial discrimination. We don’t know anything about any white girl!”
    From the way the large man stood, half turned, unconsciously shielding his right side, I would have bet my paycheck that he was carrying under his XXL Giants jersey. I wanted to bust him right there and then. Make the wiseass the recipient of the anger that was still reeling through me. l almost didn’t care that it would probably incite the rest of the gathering crowd.
    I exhaled a long breath and let it go as a couple of Twenty-fifth