Criss Cross

Chapter 58

I found Mahoney and Sampson eating cheeseburgers in a booth at Ned’s favorite saloon on Capitol Hill. I slid a manila envelope to the center of the table.

“Pseudo-Craig paid a visit to Marty Forbes at the Alexandria detention center earlier. A deputy there helped me get some stills from the security footage.”

“Really? Why Forbes?” Ned asked as he drew out the pictures. He put on his reading glasses and studied the stills, his eyebrows rising, then handed two of them to Sampson. “Jesus, you weren’t kidding, Alex,” Mahoney said, shaking his head. “This guy looks exactly like an older Kyle Craig. Same sandy-blond hair, same haircut.”

“Uncanny,” John said.

“Check out the last page. There’s a copy of his ID.”

Mahoney flipped ahead and peered at the Pennsylvania driver’s license.

“Gordon Harris, twenty-seven Flintlock Lane, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Looks legit.”

“Almost legit. There was a Gordon Harris who lived at twenty-seven Flintlock Lane in Lancaster until he was found strangled to death in his garage five months ago.”

“With a tie?” Sampson asked.

“Piano wire. I haven’t talked to the homicide investigators up there yet, but I’m assuming his driver’s license was missing.”

Mahoney thought about that. “Why did you visit Forbes?”

I explained the message from M, and Forbes’s contention that someone with the same initial had set him up for the deaths of the sex traffickers off the coast of Florida.

“You never told me that,” Mahoney said.

“Me either,” Sampson said.

“I went to see Marty the first two times as his therapist. I couldn’t share anything he told me in those sessions.”

Ned didn’t like that but let it slide and again studied the pictures of Pseudo-Craig.

I said, “See the second picture? The one where he has his hand on the counter in front of Deputy Maines? That was the only time we saw him touch anything inside the facility. Maines called in a tech to try to pull his prints, although it’s a long shot because God knows how many people put their hands there in the course of a day.”

“There have to be cameras in the streets outside that facility,” Sampson said.

Mahoney said, “In multiple positions.”

“Then we can follow him on tape as he leaves the jail.”

“Maybe to his car,” I said. “Black BMW.”

Ned’s phone dinged. He looked at the screen, thumbed it, and held the phone to his ear.

“You want something to eat?” Sampson asked me.

I checked my watch: two p.m. “I’ll eat at home. I promised Nana I’d take her to her doctor at three.”

Mahoney hung up, looking bewildered. “That was the lab with the results on the blood they took off your windshield last night, Alex.”

“Human?” Sampson said.

“Definitely,” he said. “But not just one. There was blood from eight different people in that balloon.”