Criss Cross

Chapter 49

Rivers said the recordings should show that, shortly after four that afternoon, in a rainstorm, he left his property to go to Madison to buy a bow saw to prune apple trees, bleach to disinfect a part of his anthill that had become rodent-infested over the winter, and plastic tarps for a paint job he had planned.

Rivers said he returned to the estate and drove directly to his bunker with his purchases, exactly as we’d seen on the feed from my drone camera. He went inside the bunker and saw three shipping boxes in the front hall by the hatch door.

He left them for later, climbed to the third floor of the upper bunker to make sure his security cameras were all working, and then went down to his workshop three floors belowground.

“That’s when I saw the reciprocating saw covered in blood and...” Rivers trailed off, sounding subdued. “And then that... that head.”

He closed his eyes for several moments. “I’ve never been so rocked in my life.”

Rivers claimed he stood there on wobbly legs for a long time, staring at the head and trying to figure out who’d put it there and what he should do.

“Then I heard people coming down the staircase,” Rivers said, “coming to the door to the workshop, and I figured they were the killers, the ones who’d put the head there, and they were coming for me.”

He said he ran for the exit at the opposite end of the workshop, got to the ladder, and scrambled up it to get to the tunnel to his basement in the house.

I closed my eyes for a second when I understood that we had chased him out of that workshop. We had been the people coming down the staircase.

I said, “Is there another exit from that tunnel?”

“No,” Rivers said. “Why?”

I’d been thinking about the fact that we’d been locked inside the anthill, and I hoped to pin that on Rivers, shake up his story. “Just trying to get the lay of the land,” I said.

Rivers said that when he reached the basement of his house, he considered calling 911, but then he decided it was smarter to go straight to the sheriff’s office in Madison.

“I got in my Porsche, pulled out of the garage, and there they were,” he said. “Headlights right in my eyes and coming hard from the anthill. In the Porsche, I knew I could outrun them, but I took that turn too fast for the slick road and flipped the car.” Rivers grimaced. “That’s all I know. I mean, I’m surprised I’m even alive.”

I felt my stomach churn. I’d been the one chasing him, not whoever put the head in his subbasement.

His attorney cocked her head and gazed at Sampson and then me. “How was it that you came upon my client so soon after the crash?”

“They’ll answer that in due time, Counselor,” Mahoney said a little too quickly. He looked at Rivers. “Where do you think those heads came from?”

Rivers took a sip of water through a straw, said, “I’ve been thinking about that. It had to be that delivery driver or someone else who came onto my property while I was at the hardware store. Look at the tapes.”

“We will,” Mahoney promised. “Any reason someone would want to frame you, Mr. Rivers? Enemies?”

“Two ex-wives? Three or four angry ex-girlfriends? Actually, nah. They might want to cut my testicles off for whatever reason, but I can’t see any of them sawing off people’s heads to get at me.”

I said, “Who’s Maxine?”

Rivers frowned. “My cat?”

“Your cat?” Sampson said.

I closed my eyes again.

“Yeah,” Rivers said. “She lives in the anthill and kills the mice. She can be a real pain, though. Almost impossible to catch when I need to give her her medicine.”

Rivers’s attorney was taking notes and studying us. “I’ve got a question for all of you.”

“If we can answer, we will,” Mahoney said.

She said, “This is connected to that woman’s kidnapping in Ohio, isn’t it? Diane Jenkins? There was a head left in an FBI car there during a ransom drop. The agents weren’t named, but it was you, wasn’t it, Special Agent Mahoney?”

“And me,” I said, looking at her evenly.

Nodding, Cowles said, “So is this the work of the mysterious M?”

Rivers said, “Who’s M?”

“We can’t answer that question because we don’t know,” Mahoney told Cowles.

“But the cases are related?” the attorney said.

“Yes,” I said.

She straightened. “I knew it. Why would M put two heads on my client’s property? And, again, why were you in the area at all, Dr. Cross? Detective Sampson?”

“Counselor, this is a complicated federal investigation—” Mahoney began.

“But the truth alone will set us free,” I said, and I held up my hands, palms out. “Mr. Rivers, Ms. Cowles, you deserve to know exactly what happened, regardless of the consequences to me.”