The General's Daughter by Nelson DeMille Read Free Book Online Page B

wheel of her Mustang and I got in the passenger seat. I said to Kent, “I may call you from there. Think
     positive.”
    Cynthia threw the five-liter Mustang into first gear, made a U-turn, and we were off, zero to sixty in about six seconds,
     along the lonely Rifle Range Road.
    I listened to the engine for a while and neither of us spoke, then Cynthia said, “I feel queasy.”
    “Pretty awful,” I agreed.
    “Disgusting.” She glanced at me. “Are you used to it?”
    “God, no.” I added, “I don’t see that many homicides and not many like this.”
    She nodded, then took a deep breath. “I think I can help you on this one. But I don’t want it to be awkward.”
    “No problem,” I said. “But we’ll always have Brussels.”
    “Where?”
    “Belgium. The capital.”
Bitch.
    We sat in silence, then Cynthia asked, “Why?”
    “Why is Brussels the capital? Or why will we always have it?”
    “No, Paul, why was she
murdered?”
    “Oh… well, the possible motives in homicide cases,” I replied, “are profit, revenge, jealousy, to conceal a crime, to avoid
     humiliation or disgrace, and homicidal mania. Says so in the manual.”
    “And what do you think?”
    “Well, when rape precedes homicide, it usually comes down to revenge or jealousy or possibly to conceal the identity of the
     rapist. She may have known him, or she could have identified him afterward if he wasn’t wearing a mask or disguise.” I added,
     “On the other hand, this certainly looks like a lust murder, the work of a homicidal rapist—a person who gets his sexual release
     from the killing itself, and he may not even have penetrated her with his penis. That’s what it looks like, but we don’t know
     yet.”
    Cynthia nodded, but offered nothing.
    I asked her, “What do
you
think?”
    She let a few seconds go by, then replied, “Obviously premeditated. The perpetrator had a rape kit—the tent pegs, rope, and
     presumably something to drive the pegs into the ground. The perpetrator must have been armed in order to overcome the victim’s
     own weapon.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, the perpetrator got the drop on her, then made her toss away her weapon, then made her strip and walk out on the rifle
     range.”
    “Okay. I’m trying to picture how he managed to stake her out and still keep her under his control. I don’t think she was the
     submissive type.”
    Cynthia replied, “Neither do I. But there may have been two of them. And I wouldn’t make the assumption that the perpetrator
     or perpetrators was a
he
until we have some lab evidence.”
    “Okay.” I was obviously having trouble with personal pronouns this morning. “Why weren’t there any signs of struggle on her
     part, or brutalization on his—on the perpetrator’s part?”
    She shook her head. “Don’t know. You usually get some brutalization… The ligature isn’t what you’d call friendly, however.”
    “No,” I replied, “but the guy didn’t hate her.”
    “He didn’t like her much, either.”
    “He may have. Look, Cynthia, you do this stuff for a living. Does this resemble any rape you’ve ever seen or heard about?”
    She mulled that over, then said, “It has some of the elements of what we call an organized rape. The assailant planned a rape.
     But I don’t know if the assailant knew her, or if the assailant was just cruising and she was a victim of opportunity.”
    “The assailant may have been in uniform,” I suggested, “which was why she was not on her guard.”
    “Possible.”
    I looked out the open window, smelled the morning dews and damps among the thick pines, and felt the rising sun on my face.
     I rolled up the window and sat back, trying to picture what preceded what I had just seen, like running the film backward;
     Ann Campbell staked out on the ground, then standing naked, then walking from the jeep, and so on. A lot of it didn’t compute.
    Cynthia broke into my thoughts. “Paul, the uniform had her name tag on it, and so