Cross My Heart

CHAPTER 19

Around midnight I was icing my stomach in the dining room while Bree heated up leftover chicken stew on the portable electric double burner I’d bought to get us through the remodel. Heavy plastic sheeting closed off the kitchen area, which looked like a bomb had gone off inside.

“The guy was long gone by the time I could stand up,” I said.

“You get a good look at him?” Bree asked, spooning stew into bowls.

“Some dirty, crazy homeless guy with wild, frizzy hair,” I replied. “Probably lives in that room. I found a mattress, ratty blankets, fresh McDonald’s wrappers, and three bags of clothes, including something you’re not going to want to see.”

Bree set the bowl of steaming chicken stew in front of me. “What?”

I reached down, groaned at the ache in my stomach, and got the plastic grocery bag sitting beside me. I pulled out a large Ziploc evidence bag that contained a teal-blue sweater with distinctive little brass buttons.

“That’s Ava’s!” Bree cried, her hands going to her mouth.

“Her Christmas present from Nana Mama.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Have it analyzed, give the loony who hit me a couple of days to settle back into his nest, and then go back in there after him.”

“I’m going with you next time,” Bree said.

“Probably a good idea,” I said, reached out and squeezed her hand.

She held on to it while we ate, and when she finished, said, “Do you know how lucky we are, Alex?”

“Of course,” I said, rubbing her knuckles with my thumb. “We’ve got our health, each other, the kids, the jobs, a house. I’m grateful.”

“So am I,” she replied. “Sometimes I forget, but then I see people like the Bransons losing their baby daughter, and …”

Tears began to drip down her cheeks.

“Any ransom note?” I asked.

“No,” Bree said, frustrated. “And she was smart, the kidnapper. She didn’t seem to touch anything in that day care other than Joss. Just in, out, vanish.”

“Woman that age, could be the ticking clock drove her to it.”

“I thought of that,” Bree said. “No ransom note will be coming, in that case, and we’ve got way too little to go on. I don’t know how I’m going to tell the Bransons that tomorrow.”

“You’ll get her back for them,” I said, standing up to hug her.

But as I moved into her arms I found myself looking over my wife’s shoulder at Ava’s sweater and wondering if that was true.

CHAPTER 20

At two that Saturday morning, Marcus Sunday checked to make sure that the sperm from Preston’s used condom was triple-wrapped in Baggies and hidden in a cold cuts drawer in the fridge. Then he tied a rope around the computer genius’s ankles.

Lights off in the apartment, he and Acadia pushed the corpse out the window and lowered it until the head was about three feet shy of the alley pavement. Sunday tied the rope off around a heating pipe and went down the back stairs to the alley. He backed up the van, got out, and opened the rear door.

Getting hold of the dead programmer’s torso, he made a meowing sound and soon felt the rope slacken. He had the body inside and under a carpet in less than a minute. Before he moved on, he changed the magnetic signs on the sides of the van. It now belonged to the Ralston Feed Company.

That was the thing about embracing an existential lifestyle, Sunday mused as he shut the doors and started to drive. With an existential lifestyle you ascribe no meaning to anything, even your identity, so you can be anyone you want, at any moment you want.

A corollary of this philosophy was that the writer did not believe in good or evil. Nor did he believe in justice. Like crime, justice was an abstract, something cooked up by men. It wasn’t intrinsic to the universe. Life just was. It happened, sometimes meagerly, sometimes abundantly, sometimes in violent excess. There was no right or wrong about any of it.

As far as Sunday was concerned, there was no recipe that ensured a good life, and virtue was a joke. So was Karma. Life slapped down the righteous and the spiritual just as easily as the wicked and the free. The trick was to embrace this reality wholeheartedly. In so doing the smart man, the perfect man, the free man could act without fear of consequences.

Bolstered by these thoughts, Sunday drove to Purcellville, Virginia. It took him an hour. He drove another fifteen minutes toward Berryville before he took a side road south through farm country.

As the writer drove the Berryville Road, he kept thinking back to Acadia and how wild she’d become sexually after they’d let the computer genius’s body crumple to the floor between them, as if murder was her aphrodisiac, which of course it was. It was Sunday’s aphrodisiac, too. Once you were free, killing became a turn-on, the strongest he’d ever known.

Reaching the four-mile marker, Sunday pulled into a grassy lane on the right and drove into the woods far enough not to be seen. He put on a headlamp, turned on the red light, and got out, aware of a familiar, terrible smell almost immediately. Cutting Preston Elliot’s body free of the garbage bags, he turned off his headlamp and got the corpse up on his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He set off into the wind toward the stench.

With a half-moon to guide him, Sunday soon reached the edge of a clearing. He peered out at a farmhouse a solid half-mile away and down the hill. A farmyard light shone, but no other, and he knew there likely would not be any real activity for another hour, maybe longer. It was only three thirty, after all.

Turning his attention toward the long, low-roofed building in front of him, Sunday hurried to a door, dropped Preston’s body, and pushed the door open. He heard only a few muffled grunts as he dragged the corpse up onto a narrow catwalk with rails and low steel mesh fencing on either side.

The smell inside was ungodly. Closing off his nasal passages with practiced ease, Sunday pulled the programmer’s body a solid twenty-five feet across the catwalk. Sweating, he turned on the red headlamp again and saw more than a thousand young pigs crammed wall to wall below him.

Most of the shoats in the feedlot were lying all over each other, less than a hundred pounds each, covered in crap and sleeping. But then a few of the pigs that were awake saw his light and began grunting noisily, waking others.

As Sunday struggled to lift the programmer’s body up onto the catwalk rail, he flashed again on himself at eighteen, fighting to get another body over into the pigsty on the farm where he grew up in West Virginia. Both bodies tipped and fell over the side.

The stutterer’s corpse landed on pigs that screamed and squealed in alarm. But other young hogs sensed a meal and began to crowd in.

Sunday remembered how the pigs his father fed for years had attacked the old man’s dead body with similar enthusiasm. Pigs will eat you — clothes, skin, meat, and bones — if you give enough of them enough time. Not even a piranha will do that.

It’s the endless story, he thought, turning off his headlamp. One life takes another, consuming it, ending it. There’s nothing good or bad about that at all.

Creeping from the building, Sunday listened as the squealing and grunting behind him built into a blind bloody riot that seized the pigsty from one end to the other. But he crossed back to the forest relatively unconcerned, knowing from personal experience that the farmers would not come out to investigate.

This kind of feeding frenzy went on all the time inside commercial hog operations, especially when one pig died and the others turned cannibal.

CHAPTER 21

The problem with cases like the Mad Man Murders, as the New York tabloids were now calling the killings, is that there are too many angles, too many potential avenues of investigation to run down in that critical first forty-eight hours, especially if there is only a team of two working full-time.

Which is why I was at work early Saturday morning with Sampson, waiting for Captain Quintus to arrive.

“Tell me something good, Alex,” Quintus said by way of greeting.

“We need help,” I said.

“Still bucking for that slot on Letterman?”

Sampson grimaced, said, “Guess you’re ready to take the heat, explain why the killing of Pete Francones doesn’t merit more manpower?”

“It’s the damn murder rate,” Quintus fumed. “If I put more people on him, I’ll have relatives of every victim we got in here ready to wring my neck!”

“You don’t get it,” I said. “The Francones murder is the murder rate, at least to everyone else in the world. You give us the legs, we’ll close the case. And everyone will think you’re acting boldly.”

Quintus studied me. “Comedian and master strategist?”

I smiled. “A man of many dimensions.”

The homicide captain sighed. “I’ll give you two more men part-time, in their spare time.”

“Cap,” Sampson started to complain.

“It’s the best I can do.”

“You’ll be able to claim a task force is on the case,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Close this, Cross,” Quintus said.

“Fast as we can, Captain,” I assured him.

Sampson and I made a list of what we wanted the other detectives to run down, including the location of Trenton Wiggs, the massage parlor owner, and Cam Nguyen, who was now officially a missing person. Just after two that afternoon, we got good news: a Virginia judge had given us a warrant to search the Mad Man’s home in McLean. On the way there we stopped for a meeting with the Mad Man’s agent and business manager at the Willard Hotel.

“Maybe these guys will give us someone who wanted Francones dead,” I said before we entered the lobby.

“Maybe,” Sampson said. “Unless it was just random, some crazy fucker, and the Mad Man just got unlucky.”

“In which case, every victim was the target, and our shooter is a psychotic,” I said. “But until we determine that, we need to focus on Francones.”

“Best way to keep the heat off us,” Sampson agreed as we went in.

We found Alan Snyder, the Mad Man’s agent, and J. Barrett Timmons, his business manager, waiting for us in the lobby, a grand, elegant space. Snyder, a short, intense man who was constantly checking his phone, suggested we have coffee in the restaurant.

But Timmons, a puckered sort in his fifties, shook his head.

“I’d rather we did this privately,” he said. “The press has been hounding me nonstop. They’re not above trying to eavesdrop in a public restaurant.”

Sampson spoke with the head of security, an old friend, and within ten minutes we were locked inside an unused office with a full pot of coffee and a plate of pastries.

“I wish to say that I’m pleased you two are on the case,” said Snyder, the agent. “We’ve heard of you, Dr. Cross. And you, Detective Sampson.”

“Flattering,” I said. “Tell me why Mad Man would be in a place like the Superior Spa, and why he would be the primary target of a mass murderer.”

Timmons frowned and shook his head as if he still could not believe the circumstances of his client’s death.

“I can’t square it any way I look at it,” Snyder said. “The Pete Francones I represented the last fifteen years is not the person who died in that massage parlor. And the primary target? No, I can’t believe that. What could possibly be the motive?”

“Money problems?”

“Hardly,” Snyder snorted. “He had plenty. Thirty million.”

“Death beneficiary?” I asked.

Timmons’s eyes crinkled up. “Two nephews, his sister’s sons, are provided for in well-endowed trusts. Otherwise, all money is to be divided among the various charities Mad Man tirelessly championed.”

I figured it was time to drop the bomb. “Tell us about his cocaine use.”

“You’ve lost your mind if you think Pete Francones used drugs of any kind,” Snyder snapped at me without hesitation. “He was the cleanest guy I knew. Had his head on straight. That high? It was life, Detective.”

Francones’s manager nodded softly, but there was something in his posture that made me say, “That your assessment, Mr. Timmons?”

Timmons hesitated, cleared his throat, and said, “I have no personal knowledge of drug use.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming,” Sampson said.

Timmons struggled until I said, “You didn’t hear it from us, but Mad Man died with three grams of high-grade blow in his pocket, and a gram at least up his nose. According to our medical examiner, the condition of his upper respiratory tract indicates he was a chronic user. And the size of his heart said he wasn’t going to last long because of the coke use.”

The agent looked stunned, bewildered by all this, but the manager sat forward, cupped his face in his hand. “For Christ’s sake. It’s one of those things you choose to look away from.”

“Tell us,” Sampson said.

Timmons described Francones’s “slush fund.” It was the Mad Man’s mad money, which amounted to quite a lot: ten thousand a month, which bumped to twenty grand a month in his latter years as a player, and bumped again to thirty K a month after he landed the gig with Monday Night Football.

“Even if he spent twenty percent of that, it’s a lot of blow,” I said.

“Yes, but that’s not what I’m …” The manager stopped, then said, “Beginning shortly before Christmas, Mad Man started burning through money and asking for supplements. Ten, sometimes twenty thousand.”

“In cash?” I asked.

“Transferred to his cash accounts, yes,” Timmons said.

“He a gambler?” Sampson asked.

“Well, before today I would have told you not a chance,” said Snyder, shrugging. “But now? Who knows?”

“Gambling wasn’t the issue, in my opinion,” the manager said, glancing at Snyder. “Mandy was the—”

On the table in front of him, his cell phone rang. He sat forward, frowned. “I’m sorry, this must be an emergency of some kind. I asked them not to call unless it was.”

Timmons picked the phone up, answered.

“He was talking about Mandy Bell Lee?” Sampson said to Snyder.

The agent’s face soured, but before he could reply, Timmons roared, “That conniving bitch!”

He slammed his phone down, his face beet red. “Mandy Bell’s holding a live press conference out at the house. She’s claiming that she and the Mad Man were married secretly last month, and that she plans to contest the will!”

CHAPTER 22

We got to the gates of Francones’s sprawling manor in McLean, Virginia, around four p.m. Satellite TV trucks were parked up and down the road, with reporters gushing into cameras about the latest turn of events.

A Fairfax County deputy sheriff sat in a patrol car to the left of the gate, facing the road. She climbed out when we pulled up and showed her our badges.

“She’s in there, waiting for you,” the deputy said. “Mandy Bell.”

“Wait, you let her in?” I demanded.

“Not like it’s a crime scene,” she replied defensively. “And she has a marriage license that’s clear: she was the Mad Man’s wife, which means she has a right to be in her home.”

Sampson said, “What, did she give you an autograph, or promise you concert tickets?”

The deputy reddened, then said, “She’s a widow, Detective. I tried to show her some respect in her grief.”

I sighed. I didn’t like the fact that Francones’s alleged wife had had access to the house, but it was water under the bridge. “Let us in, please.”

The deputy nodded, walked to the right side of the gate, and pressed a button. The gate swung back. We drove up a winding driveway to a house Tony Soprano would have loved. I half expected to see Carmela opening the front door. Instead, a long, lanky man answered. He wore a dark suit, no tie, and black cowboy boots, and sported a jaw that looked straight out of central casting.

“Tim Jackson,” he said in a Tennessee twang, extending his hand. “I’m Ms. Lee’s attorney. How can I help you, Officers?”

“We’re running the investigation into Mr. Francones’s death,” Sampson said. “We’d like to ask Ms. Lee some questions.”

“Is Ms. Lee a suspect?”

“She claims to be the deceased’s wife,” I said.

“She is the deceased’s wife,” the attorney said, bristling. “We’ve got documents, witnesses. It’s iron-clad.”

“All the more reason for us to want to talk to her,” Sampson said.

“As you might imagine, this has been a terrible blow, having to keep the depth of their relationship secret, and then to have him die, well, she’s devastated and exhausted. Could we—?”

“She wasn’t too devastated and exhausted to hold a press conference,” I observed. “In any case, it’s not your call, Counselor.”

Sampson reached into his jacket, pulled out the search warrant, and handed it to the attorney. I pushed by him into the house, which was not at all like its exterior. Either the decorator or Francones had a strong interest in modern art, because there were pieces of it in every room except the library, which was a shrine to the Mad Man, with all his trophies, framed photographs, game balls, and other sports memorabilia.

In there we found Mandy Bell Lee, curled up on a leather couch and drinking bourbon neat, and not quite three sheets to the wind.

CHAPTER 23

Mandy Bell Lee was, as Sampson later described her, built for speed.

Tall, curvy, and busty, Mandy Bell had a hairdo that screamed Texas, but her face looked straight out of Vogue. Her skintight jumpsuit in mourning black looked ready to pop every time she moved, which was often. And the diamond engagement ring on her right hand was, well, huge.

Her attorney moved to her side, saying, “Mandy, these detectives would like to talk to you. I would advise against doing that in your present condition.”

She blinked blurry eyes at us. She’d clearly been crying.

“You investigating my M&M’s death?” she asked in a soft, soulful voice.

“We are,” I said, identified myself, and introduced Sampson.

“How can I help y’all?”

“Mandy—” her attorney began.

“I got nothing to hide, Timmy,” she snapped, and then tried to refocus on us. “Whaddya wanna know?”

“When did you and Mad Man get married?” Sampson asked.

“She already covered that in the press conference,” Jackson complained.

“Unthinkable, I know, but we missed it,” I said.

“Last month, March twelfth, in Playa Del Carmen,” Mandy Bell said dully.

“A spur-of-the-moment kind of thing,” her attorney explained, handing me a wedding certificate and several photographs of a simple service by the sea at sunset. “Their families didn’t even know.”

“You both look happy,” I said.

“Isn’t that what you look like on your wedding day?” she asked as if I’d implied something, and began to cry.

“I was saying it out of compassion, Mrs. Francones,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a balled-up Kleenex. “I’m sorry. I just never lost somebody I loved like this.”

“Newlywed and all,” the attorney said. “Not even used to being called Mrs. Francones.”

Over the next half hour, the Widow Francones explained that she’d met the Mad Man by chance at a bar in Nashville where she was singing. Despite their twenty-year age difference, there’d been a strong, immediate attraction.

“We’ve heard he had that effect on women,” Sampson said.

Mandy Bell thought that was funny. “He did. And I know what you’re thinking, ’bout all those girls in his past. Tell you the truth, at the beginning I figured I’d just be one more gal to him, and decided to have some fun. He was a fun guy. That’s what I’ll miss most about him. M&M lived like his hair was on fire.”

“Whose idea was it to get married?”

“His,” she replied firmly. “We were down in Cancún, drinking a little tequila, and he just looked over at me and said that he hadn’t been happy like this ever and he wanted to marry me. So we did.”

“Why not just announce it?” Sampson asked.

“It would of broke my mama’s heart she didn’t get to have a big wedding for me,” Mandy Bell said, glancing at her attorney. “We just figured to marry twice, you know, before football started up and he had to go on the road.”

“What about where he died?” I asked.

“You don’t have to answer that,” her attorney said.

“Why not, Timmy? He’s dead,” she said, and took a long sip of the bourbon. “If you’re asking if I knew M&M went to places like that, the answer is no. But I can understand why he did.”

“Why?”

“He was a sex addict,” she said. “Told me so himself.”

CHAPTER 24

Mandy Bell Lee uncoiled off the couch in the Mad Man’s library, crossed to an open bottle of Maker’s Mark, and poured herself another two fingers. She had something about her, star quality, I guess. You couldn’t take your eyes off her.

Sampson cleared his throat. “Sex addict, huh? How’d you react to that?”

She sighed as she came back to the couch, sat with one leg pulled up under her. “I appreciated his honesty because he promised he was gonna change, be a one-woman man.” Her face rippled with pain. “Guess not.”

“Tell us about his cocaine use.”

Mandy Bell’s eyes shot to her attorney, who said, “She only recently discovered that.”

“I flew up from Nashville the other day to surprise him and caught him snorting lines right on that table there,” she said, gesturing with her chin. “He said he used it like that Sherlock Holmes did.”

“And how was that?” I asked.

“M&M said he thought better when he did small amounts. I didn’t know what to think about that. Still don’t. Why?”

“He was high at the time of death, and we found several grams in his pockets,” I said.

Mandy Bell took a deep breath, shrugged. “I don’t know what to say.”

“His business manager said he was spending a lot of cash in the past few months,” Sampson said.

She drank and shrugged again. “Probably on me. He liked going out with lots of money and blowing it. Big tips. Anything we wanted.”

“Where were you Thursday night?”

She shook her head. “Nashville. I called Timmy the second I heard and we flew up last night.”

“And called a press conference?” I asked, not understanding that fully.

“That was Timmy’s idea,” she said.

Her attorney looked uncomfortable but said, “I felt we needed to state her claim right away. That seemed the best way to do it. Get it out in the open.”

“And how long have you known Timmy?” I asked Mandy Bell.

“Fifteen years,” she said. “We went to the same high school. He was a senior when I was a freshman.”

“You two an item back then?” Sampson asked, wagging his finger between them.

Mandy Bell blushed, said softly, “That was a long time ago, Detective. I called him because these days he’s the best attorney in Nashville.”

“Sure,” I said, smiling at them both. “Makes sense. But now I’m going to have to ask you both to vacate the premises for the time being.”

“But the house is hers,” Jackson protested.

“I’ve got an evidence team on the way, Counselor, and for the sake of finding out who killed Mr. Francones, I’d prefer you not be here.”

The attorney looked ready to argue, but Mandy Bell drained her glass, said, “It’s okay, Timmy. We’ll just go get rooms at a hotel. Good one. Four stars. Five stars. Why not?”

CHAPTER 25

At a quarter to seven that evening, Marcus Sunday watched Mandy Bell Lee and her attorney spill out of a taxi in front of the new Mandarin Oriental Hotel overlooking the Tidal Basin.

She must be a handful between the sheets, the writer thought, maybe as crazy as Acadia. He had been following the pair since they left Francones’s house, not quite sure why, relying on instinct rather than clear purpose in his decision to abandon his surveillance of Cross in favor of these two.

He had the valet take his van.

“Checking in, sir?” the doorman asked.

“Going to the bar,” Sunday replied. “Heard it’s nice.”

“Yes, sir. Empress Lounge, top of the stairs.”

Given her wobbly state exiting the taxi, he figured the lobby bar as the most likely place to spot the pair, and he was right, or at least half right. While the attorney was checking in, Mandy Bell Lee was causing quite the stir in the sunken lounge area. She had every guy in the place gaping as she sashayed up to the bar, leaned over, and placed an order with one hip cocked provocatively.

Sunday glanced back in the attorney’s direction and wondered for a moment about the connection. Were those two monkeying around? Did it matter?

And right then he understood why his instincts had driven him here: it would matter to Alex Cross whether or not the singer and her lawyer were involved, because a love triangle is a proven motive for murder.

But that’s nonsense, Sunday thought, taking a seat where he could see the entire bar. At least, in this case it seemed obvious to him from the news coverage that Francones should not be the focus of the Superior Spa investigation. Yes, the Mad Man was a celebrity, a lady-killer, a football god and all that. But those were just pegs for the news guys to hang on to, things they could worry to death for the sake of ratings.

Everything he’d read about the slayings said “freak” to Sunday, even the way the killer had taken the hard drive that recorded the feeds from the interior security cameras. The Post story this morning had described that as “the shooter covering his tracks.” Nonsense again.

This killer was not perfect. He believed in something — in this case, himself. In Sunday’s mind the murderer became a narcissist who wanted to see himself in action, wanted to relive every moment of mayhem again and again. At some level, the writer understood that compulsion, but he also realized that it was a terrible flaw, one that could easily get the killer caught and convicted.

Watching Mandy Bell Lee eagerly tossing back a shot that set her body swaying to the lounge music, Sunday realized there was something else he knew about the killer in light of the missing surveillance tapes.

The Superior Spa was not a one-time deal, the writer thought. He’s done this before! He could feel it: somewhere, somehow, this imperfect killer had left carnage and evidence behind him. He was also sure that Cross, blinded by the Mad Man’s celebrity, was not considering this angle.

That got Sunday excited intellectually. He fervently believed he understood murder, crime, and violent chaos at a much deeper level than Alex Cross ever could. What did Cross know, really, about cold-blooded killing? The lust that rose in an active murderer? The addictive desire to end lives?

He was certain that Dr. Alex had all sorts of half-baked theories, while he, Marcus Sunday, had insight, true insight into what made men kill.

Then he had a thought, a delicious thought. Wouldn’t it be enjoyable to see Cross one-upped before he was destroyed? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to see him groveling in failure just as his life began to disintegrate?

Yes. Yes, it would. And in a flash, an impromptu plan developed quite organically in Sunday’s fertile mind. That’s it, he thought after several moments’ reflection, that would do it.

Mandy Bell Lee’s attorney returned to the bar, spotting the country-western star ready to toss back another shot of Maker’s Mark. Jackson crossed to his client. They had an intense conversation. The attorney signaled to the bartender that she was cut off.

He led her by her elbow out of the bar. The whole place was watching the scene. As they passed Sunday, who was acting interested in the drink menu, the singer said in a slurred voice, “You’re an asshole, Timmy. You always were. I don’t know why I called you. I must have been out of my mind to think you were my friend.”

“I’m your lawyer, dear,” Jackson said. “There’s a big, big difference.”

As the pair disappeared toward the elevators, Sunday nodded with satisfaction at a new thought, a new plan, risky, reckless, but overwhelmingly attractive.

This will completely throw Cross, the writer thought, fighting against a smile. He’ll never, ever see this one coming.

CHAPTER 26

I finally got home around nine forty that Saturday evening. Ali was already asleep, but Jannie was still up, eating strawberry ice cream and watching The Colbert Report, her favorite show, on TiVo.

“Hey, stranger,” I said, and kissed her on the forehead.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Don’t you think Stephen Colbert is the fastest thinker ever?”

“He’s lightning quick with the comebacks,” I agreed. “But a guy named Johnny Carson could have given him a run for his money.”

“Who’s Johnny Carson?”

“Poor girl,” I said, feeling older by the minute.

“I got an A on my history paper,” she boasted. “And Coach says my times are really dropping in the four hundred.”

I bumped knuckles with her and said, “See? Good things do happen to people who work hard.”

She rolled her head to one side as if she didn’t want to agree, but she nodded, said, “I’m going to do that with all my classes and sports now.”

“Excellent move,” I said.

Jannie was a freshman and the transition into high school life at Benjamin Banneker had been a little rough at first. She hadn’t known how to handle the workload. It was nice to hear she’d figured out that working harder might help.

“Bree home yet?” I asked.

“Taking a shower,” Jannie replied.

“Ali and Nana?”

“Gone to sleep. Dad?”

“Yeah,” I said, going to one of the coolers that we were now using instead of a refrigerator and getting a beer.

“Did you notice that Nana Mama seems sad these days? I thought she’d be happy about the new kitchen and the addition. But today when she found out they were going to cut out the back wall in a few days, I thought she was going to start crying.”

“I think she will be happy once it’s all done, but this kind of thing, living in a construction site, and everything new and chaotic, it’s tough for a lady her age.”

“I don’t like other people walking around in our house.”

“Necessary evil,” I said, hearing Bree coming down the stairs.

The Colbert Report came back on, seizing Jannie’s attention, and I went to my wife and wrapped her up in my arms.

“You smell so good,” I said.

“And you smell so bad,” she replied, giving me a peck on the lips and then pulling back to head into the dining room.

“I’ll take a shower before bed,” I said, following. “Good day?”

“Tough day,” she allowed, getting herself a beer. “But we made progress.”

“You got hits on the AMBER alert?”

“No, nothing that positive, unfortunately. But we’ve got an artist’s sketch of the woman based on the descriptions the two women at the day care center gave us.”

“Got it with you?”

“I do,” she said, crossing to her purse and pulling out a folded composite drawing of a woman I figured must be in her early thirties.

“She’s got soft features in some ways, but her eyes and lips are hard-looking,” I observed.

“I guess you’d have to have hard-looking eyes or lips to be brazen enough to steal a baby out of a day care center,” Bree replied before sighing. “Anyway, am I wrong to feel guilty about not going out to look for Ava tonight?”

“I told you, we’ve got something solid with her sweater and the guy who hit me. Let’s give it another night for him to come back.”

She made a puffing noise but then shrugged and nodded before gesturing at the plastic sheeting the contractors had put up to seal off the construction site. “Do we dare look?”

“Why not?” I said, grabbed a second beer.

Bree had already peeled back enough duct tape to slip through and turn on the lights. I followed her and got an immediate sense of why my grandmother was so upset.

The appliances and fixtures were long gone. The linoleum had been torn out. The Sheetrock was gone, too, leaving only the skeleton of the load-bearing walls. Red chalk marked the area where the back wall would be cut out to accommodate the addition.

“They’ll be kicking us out of our room before you know it,” I said.

“Not tonight,” Bree said. “I’ve got plans.”

I arched an eyebrow. “That right?”

She smiled. “I’ve been thinking about you all day, baby. So why don’t you get upstairs and take that shower already?”

I saluted her, did an about-face, and headed quickly back into the house.

CHAPTER 27

Nearing midnight, Marcus Sunday roamed the bars of Old Town Alexandria, across the Potomac from DC. After a quick trip to the apartment, where Acadia was already asleep, he’d retrieved Preston Elliot’s chilled condom and come here, where single young professionals gathered in search of anonymous hookups on Saturday night.

The writer had spotted several likely candidates, all of them in their late twenties, early thirties. But when he’d slipped past them and sniffed the trailing air, he’d failed to catch the specific aroma he was seeking.

Sunday was about to give up and return to the apartment for a few hours, when he spotted a prospect leaving Bilbo Baggins pub on Queen Street. Long, willowy, with pale skin and sandy hair that hung well down her back, she wore a tight black skirt and was laughing and hanging on to one of those long-jawed, sculpted-haircut types who seemed to populate the DC area.

The writer walked at them, head down, a man with places to be, as she said, “Let’s walk to my place, Richie. It’s not that far.”

Sunday went past without eye contact and caught her scent. It smelled of sweat, lilacs, and fertility. In an instant, he knew she was the one. Walking on twenty more yards, he jogged across the street and ambled in the other direction, watching the couple take a right off the main drag onto North Lee Street.

Tailing them six blocks to a brick-faced town house with steep stairs that climbed off a sidewalk shadowed by old oak trees, Sunday timed his approach almost perfectly.

As she fumbled for her keys, her hookup nuzzled her ear, causing her to giggle and say, “Give me a chance, Richie.”

Sunday bounded up the stairs, drawing a small Colt pistol, which he jammed against the back of the young man’s head.

“If either of you so much as thinks of turning to look at me, I’m going to blow poor little Richie’s head off,” he growled in a thick accent.

“Rich?” the woman cried softly.

“Claudia, please,” Richie said, shaking now. “Do what he says.”

“Go inside, now, Claudia,” the writer ordered.

Claudia pulled open the front door.

Keeping the brim of his cap and his face pointed at the floor in case there were cameras, Sunday pushed them inside a small vestibule with three mailboxes and three buzzers.

That makes things more manageable, Sunday thought. Unless …

“Roommates?” he demanded as Claudia put her key into the second door.

“What? N-no,” she stammered as she pushed the door open. “I live alone.”

“Where?”

“Right here,” Richie said, nodding at the door at the bottom of the stairs.

“Go inside,” the writer ordered.

“What are you going to do?” Claudia whimpered.

“It’s a surprise,” Sunday said.

Trembling now, the woman opened her apartment door, stepped in, and flipped on a light switch.

The writer pushed Richie forward and then hit him hard behind the ear with the butt of his pistol, watched his knees go to quicksand as he buckled to the floor. The writer turned off the light. He could see the woman’s silhouette starting to turn, held up the gun, and said, “Freeze.”

She did. Sunday stepped up directly behind her and set the gun to the back of her head.

“Please,” she said.

“I am pleased,” Sunday said, and he moved her toward a couch. “Very Mulch pleased at how you smell tonight, Claudia.”

“Oh, God,” she whined.

“So you understand you are ovulating,” he said appreciatively as he kicked her feet apart and wrenched up her skirt. “There’s only one thing you can’t deny about the absurdity of life — it’s meant to go on and on.”

“Please,” Claudia sobbed softly.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Mulch won’t hurt you,” Sunday soothed as he got out Preston’s used condom and turned it inside out. Unzipping his pants, he slid the open end of the condom over his penis, leaving the stutterer’s DNA exposed.

“Mulch will steal something from you so you don’t have to tell Richie what we’ve done. But afterward, Mulch will know what’s in your womb, Claudia, because he will be watching you.”

She was choking and weeping now.

“And because Mulch will be watching you, knowing what we share, you’re not going to the police. No, you’re going to love our little future life. You hear that, Claudia? You are going to love our future life.”

Sunday thrust a little way into her and moaned and shuddered as if in immediate climax. Then he hit her, knocked her out, and left her there, skirt up over her hips, sprawled over the back of the couch.

Excellent, the writer thought, peeling the condom off and gingerly returning it to the Baggie. I think that will do the trick rather nicely.

CHAPTER 28

“Alex? Wake up.”

I felt Bree shake me and opened my eyes groggily to find the lights blazing in our bedroom. It felt like I’d only just drifted off.

“Time is it?” I asked blearily. “What day is it?”

“Nearly five,” she said. “Sunday morning.”

“Five? C’mon, Bree. I need a few more hours of—”

“I can’t wait anymore,” my wife insisted. “I’m going to that building with or without you. Now.”

“Bree, I told you—”

“You said give him another night,” Bree said. “We gave him one. He could be in there sleeping as we speak.”

I was hopelessly awake by then and I could see by the way she held her jaw slightly to the right that it was useless to argue anymore.

“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “We’ll go, but then I’m coming back for a nap.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said, jumped out of bed, and started to dress.

I moved a little more slowly, but within fifteen minutes we were driving through the back streets of Southeast and then heading across the river into Anacostia. Dawn was still just a shade of gray when I stopped at a coffee shack.

“Do we have time for this?” Bree demanded.

“I don’t want to go prowling around in there until I can at least see a little,” I replied. “That old building is his home. He can walk around it in the dark easy. I can’t. And neither can you. And if we go in with our flashlights, he’ll probably just spook out of there, and at that point he might be gone forever.”

She looked at me a long moment before saying, “Hazelnut latte. Double shot of espresso.”

By the time I parked us down the street from the abandoned factory building, it was cracking light and the caffeine had done its work. I was alert and on edge when I climbed out of the car.

I described the layout to Bree, including the room where the burned body had been found, the other room where the homeless guy was camped, and the escape route I thought he’d taken up the stairs and out a rear window. Then I told her what I wanted her to do.

“Sure you want to go in there alone?” she asked.

“I think I can handle it. You?”

She smiled. “You just flush him. I’ll take care of the rest.”

We split up as we approached the building. Bree looped around the back. I went in the same way I had two nights before, through the front door, making no effort at all to be quiet. Instead, I kicked cans and made small bursts of racket as I looked for the near staircase to the basement.

It was almost full light outside, but in the old condemned building it was still twilight. Then again, I didn’t need to see the homeless guy run anyway.

I heard him go when I was almost to the bottom of the stairs, right by the room where Jane Doe’s body had been burned.

He pounded up the far stairs. I ran after him at a more leisurely pace, giving him time to make his preferred exit.

By the time I reached the broken window and looked out, he was cursing at the fact that Bree had him facedown, a knee on his back and zip-ties going around his wrists. The Louisville Slugger lay on the ground behind her.

CHAPTER 29

“That’s quite the swing you’ve got there,” I said to the homeless guy, whom Bree had dragged back into the building along with the baseball bat.

He said nothing as we returned him to his nest and set him down on his filthy mattress. In the light of day he bore more than a passing resemblance to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, with that wild tangle of hair and beard, and pale-blue eyes that tracked out of sync.

“Name?” I asked, noticing small twigs and bits of leaf in his beard.

“You cops?”

“As a matter of fact, we are,” I said, showing him my badge and ID.

“I need a lawyer?” he asked.

“I could arrest you for criminal trespass and assaulting a police officer,” I said. “Or you can answer our questions.”

He studied us with those weird eyes for several moments before saying, “Everett Prough.”

“Where are you from, Everett?” I asked.

“You’re looking at it,” he said.

“This where you’ve always lived?” Bree asked in a kind tone.

“Does it matter how I got here?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. “How long’ve you lived here?”

“I dunno, off and on. What do you want, I mean for real?”

I held out Ava’s blue sweater in the plastic evidence bag. Everett Prough blinked, looked at it for several seconds and then at me, feigning a lack of interest. “So?”

“I took it from your grocery cart the night before last, right after you hit me.”

“Yeah. That sounds right. Thief.”

“Where did you get it, Everett? This sweater.”

The homeless man squirmed as if something had crawled up his pant leg, said, “Don’t remember.”

“Sure you do,” Bree said. “Do you know who that sweater belongs to?”

Prough cringed, looked at the floor as if it contained secrets that only he could decipher, and then nodded. “I know her anywhere.”

I felt a terrible sensation suddenly in my gut, a hollow feeling like no other. What was this guy to Ava? What had he done to her?

“Who does the sweater belong to?” Bree pressed.

Prough squinted and set his jaw as if he were being forced to relive some best-forgotten horror.

“Belongs to the girl,” he said. “The girl who killed that other girl and lit her body on fire.”

CHAPTER 30

Two hours earlier, and pulsing again with the thrill of anticipation, Sunday sat in the van parked down the street from the service entrance of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, drinking yet another can of Red Bull to stay fully awake. He’d been there ever since his escapade in Alexandria.

The writer figured to make his move around a quarter to five. To pass the time, he stuffed cotton into his cheeks, put in brown contact lenses, and pulled on a dark-brown pompadour wig and a pair of flesh-colored latex gloves. He used the gloves to smear self-tanning liquid all over his face and then wiped them dry with Kleenex.

Four forty-five went by, and nothing.

So did four fifty.

Sunday began to doubt his instincts, a rare event. But then he spotted a late-model Toyota sedan driving by the service entrance, passing his van, and parking down the street. A man climbed out wearing black slacks, black shoes, a white shirt, and a tie. He carried a white server’s jacket. The first breakfast waiter was arriving for work.

Without hesitation, Sunday got out of his van. He, too, wore black slacks and black shoes, a white shirt, and a tie.

Sunday crossed the street, angling at the waiter: late twenties, looking barely awake.

“’Scuse me, mate,” the writer called in a decent Australian accent. “First day on the job.”

“Follow me,” the waiter said dully as he passed.

“Right you are,” Sunday said, and hit the back of the waiter’s skull hard with a sap.

The waiter pitched forward, but the writer caught him by the back of his shirt before he could face-plant on the sidewalk. Dragging him behind one of the hotel’s Dumpsters, Sunday rifled through his pockets, found his hotel ID. He stuck it in his pocket and put on the jacket. Not a bad fit.

He hit the waiter again and hard enough that he wouldn’t move for hours. Then he threw trash on the man, went directly to the service entrance, and used the ID in the electronic security box. He grinned when it opened.

Entering the empty service hall in the basement at the rear of the hotel, Sunday smelled bread baking, bacon frying, and coffee brewing. Fighting off the nausea the smell of bacon provoked, he grabbed one of three room service carts parked to one side of the hall, pushed it into a less well-lit part of the hallway. He threw his gym bag on the cart’s lower shelf. He found a white tablecloth and then several plates. He tossed on a napkin and silverware, a steak knife, two drinking glasses, and an empty coffee carafe.

“Java’s almost up,” a woman commented.

The writer turned, smiling in welcome. Fifteen feet down the hall, in her early fifties, wearing a flour-dusted apron, she shook a cigarette from a pack.

“Excellent,” Sunday said agreeably.

“New?” she asked, squinting as if she couldn’t see him very well.

“I am,” he said. “A temporary gig, but could turn permanent. Happy here?”

Her laugh became a smoker’s cough. “Happy as you can be slaving at a four-hundred-degree oven at four a.m. on Sunday morning. Good luck. Gotta have a cig.”

“Enjoy.”

The service door opened and shut. Sunday waited and then went to the doorway where the woman had appeared. He found a staging area outside the already bustling main kitchen, which was visible through a pass-through window. Three coffeemakers were bubbling to the right of the pass-through. He grabbed a carafe, walked over, and was filling it when a man called from the kitchen, “Denver omelet, bacon, and no potatoes up.”

The writer filled the carafe three-quarters full and waited for the chef to leave before grabbing the breakfast plate and hustling back to the hall. He set the plate under the stainless cover and hurried ahead, looking for a service elevator.

He found one around the corner, got in, and pushed the button for the fourteenth floor, keeping his head down. When the doors closed, he squatted, got the gym bag, and unzipped it, hoping he had the correct room.

Shortly after leaving the hotel the evening before, he’d used a throwaway phone to call the Mandarin Oriental and ask to be connected to Timothy Jackson’s room. Jackson had answered and Sunday had affected a British accent, saying, “This is Mr. Mulch with the front desk. We’ve been getting reports of loud noise and music in room 604, next door to you, sir, and wanted to—”

“You’re way off, Mulch. I’m in 1401,” Jackson said, irritated. “But while I’ve got you on the line, I want breakfast at six forty-five. I’ll hang the order on the door.”

“Very good sir,” Sunday had said, and rung off.

From the gym bag, the writer removed a white 120-milliliter bottle with a label that read:

Seeing that the elevator had already passed the seventh floor, Sunday quickly opened the bottle. Happy again for the latex gloves he was wearing, he poured several ounces into the coffee.

Ding! The elevator doors opened. The fourteenth floor.

The writer glanced at his watch. It was 5:25 when he set off. He felt no fear, had no thought of capture, only pure intent. He spotted the security camera high up on the first corner, pulled a small can of Pam out of the gym bag, and sprayed the lens with vegetable oil as he passed.

He did the same with the three other cameras on the floor before going to room 1401, where he knocked sharply.

As Sunday half expected, he got no answer the first time, so he knocked even more loudly and said in a Hispanic accent, “Room service.”

He heard cursing inside and then someone coming to the door. The writer smiled at the peephole with total confidence. The bolt threw, the door opened. A pissed-off Timothy Jackson looked out at him.

“I said six forty-five,” Jackson complained. “It’s five twenty-five.”

Sunday acted flustered. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. They write down wrong?”

“So much for the five-star rating,” Jackson snapped.

“You want I should come back?” the writer asked.

Jackson took a deep breath, then shook his head. “No, I’m up already. Bring it in. It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, sir,” Sunday said, acting the deferential servant as he wheeled the cart into the room, one of those executive affairs with a king-size bed, a sofa, and a desk for the traveling businessman.

Jackson walked behind him, letting the door shut. The writer parked the cart by the sofa, said, “This good?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” the attorney replied, and yawned. Sunday knelt as if to lock the cart’s wheels while swiping the exterior and interior of Preston Elliot’s used condom on the leg of Jackson’s suit pants, which were lying on a chair. Pocketing the condom, the writer stood, picked up the coffee carafe.

“That’s not decaf, is it?” Jackson asked.

“French roast, sir,” Sunday said.

“Good, that’s what I—” The attorney had lifted the cover over the omelet. “What the fuck? I asked for three eggs sunny side up, bacon, and wheat toast.”

Sunday did his best to grovel. “I am so sorry, sir. I take and get you right away the right breakfast.”

“What?” the attorney groused. “Yes, please do that. This isn’t what I ordered at all.”

“I leave you coffee, though, and be right back.”

“Sugar and milk, too. And get me a copy of the Washington Post.”

Sunday bowed and set the cup, saucer, carafe, milk, and sugar bowl on the table. “I apologize again, sir. There will be no charge for breakfast.”

“Well,” Jackson said as Sunday wheeled the cart away. “That’s good.”

“It’s the least the Mandarin Oriental could do,” the writer replied, and let the door shut behind him.

CHAPTER 31

Bree and I left the old factory building shaken and depressed, with Everett Prough following us in a slow homeless-person shuffle.

“I can’t believe it,” Bree said in a low pained voice.

“His story’s plausible,” I replied, not liking the sour taste of it any better.

“But convincing?”

I struggled to answer. We’d shown the homeless man a photograph of Ava, and he’d fingered her as a killer and a mutilator. Prough said Ava was one of six or seven runaway girls he’d encountered squatting and using drugs in the old factory over the past few months. He moved his nest often, rotating among several places so as not to attract attention. When he returned to the factory around dusk the night of the murder, it had been a month since he’d last slept in the basement.

Approaching the abandoned building, Prough claimed he heard girls arguing over money and meth. They were high on something for sure. Prough said he snuck in and watched from the shadows as Ava and another girl with Goth black hair got into a screaming match that became a hair-pulling catfight.

“She tripped the other girl and then hit her like this with her elbow,” Prough told us, holding his wrist and driving the elbow of that same arm sharply to the side and behind him in a move I sadly recognized.

I’d taught it to Ava. I’d taught it to all my kids.

Prough said the Goth girl had fallen hard at the blow. Her head had struck a post. She never moved again.

“The one who hit her started crying once she realized what she’d done,” Prough said. “Then she got a can of gasoline and poured it over the Goth girl, and lit a cigarette and threw it on the gas.”

Prough said Ava had a blue backpack when she ran from the factory. Not wanting to be around when the body was found, he said he followed Ava several minutes later and found the sweater lying in her escape path.

Several things had bothered me about the story. “Where’d the gas come from?” I asked.

Prough shrugged. “She had it in there for some reason.”

“That would mean premeditation if she brought it with her,” Bree said.

Prough was puzzled by that but then shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“How many times had you seen her before that night?”

“More than once,” Prough said.

“She talk to you?” Bree asked.

“She didn’t know I was there, ever,” Prough said. “I don’t like people.”

“But you spy on them?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted.

“You’re willing to testify to what you saw?” I asked.

He hesitated, nodded, said, “If that’s what it takes.”

I had recorded most of our conversation. But we were taking Prough downtown to make a sworn statement. We put him in the backseat and had to roll the windows down, he smelled so bad. I started the car, feeling numbed by the idea that the shy girl who’d lived under our roof for so long might have run away, gotten caught up in the world of street drugs, murdered another girl, and then desecrated her body.

My cell rang before I’d driven a block. Sampson. I answered, said, “John?”

“Alex, Timmy Jackson was just found dead at the Mandarin Oriental.”

CHAPTER 32

Mandy Lee Francones’s attorney lay sprawled at the foot of the king-size bed. A coffee cup was spilled beside him. The attorney’s eyes were severely bloodshot and looked buggy. His mouth was open as if gasping.

“First glance, I’d say a massive heart attack, Detectives,” said Tony Bracket, the ME on the scene.

“This guy’s like thirty-four,” Sampson said. “And he’s built like a bull.”

“Bulls need bull hearts,” Bracket said. “He under a lot of stress?”

“You could say that,” I replied. I’d left Bree to take Prough in to make his statement and had taken a cab straight to the hotel.

I scanned the room now. Coffee carafe on the table. Ripped and empty raw sugar packet. Used creamers. The pants and jacket of the suit we’d seen the attorney wearing. Using latex gloves, I picked up the pieces of the suit, saw the smear of something on the leg right away.

“That’s fresh,” I said, handing it to a tech for bagging.

Then I picked up the creamer containers and the sugar packet. I tasted them. Nothing. When I twisted the carafe open and sniffed the contents, I smelled only coffee. I almost stuck my finger in it, but the sudden racing of my heart stopped me.

Dizzy, I set the carafe down and had to hold on to the table a moment before my heart slowed and that upended feeling went away.

“Sorry, Doc,” I said to Bracket, who was taking the corpse’s temperature. “We’re treating this as a murder until proved otherwise.”

“Why?” asked Sampson, who was going through the closets.

I gestured at the coffee carafe. “I’m not going near that again without a gas mask, but either I just had a coincidental heart arrhythmia or the coffee was laced with something mucho bad.”

“Where’d he get the coffee?” Sampson asked, coming over and looking at the carafe as if it smelled gross.

“Exactly,” I said.

From digital records provided by the security staff at the Mandarin Oriental, we knew almost immediately that Jackson’s hotel room door was opened at 5:25 a.m., and again at 5:29, about an hour and eighteen minutes before room service discovered the body.

We also found that someone had sprayed some kind of goo on the security camera lenses a few minutes before the door to Jackson’s room was opened, leaving the feed a blur. Was that what was on the attorney’s pants?

In any case, while the crime scene techs worked and the hotel security staff made copies of all closed-circuit feeds for the last five hours, Sampson and I went to find Mandy Bell Lee Francones. The country-western star was in her room two floors below Jackson’s, wearing the same clothes we’d seen her in the night before, sitting up against the headboard with her feet drawn up under her. She was tear-streaked, mascara-streaked, nursing a hangover, in shock and grieving.

“People dying all around me,” she said in a trembling voice.

“We wondered about that,” Sampson said.

“Someone said it was a heart attack?” she asked.

“We don’t know exactly,” I said. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Jackson?”

“I don’t know. Nine? Ten? I’d had a lot to drink.”

“Here the entire night?” Sampson asked.

“Yes, I …” Mandy Bell stared at her lap, looking lost. “I passed out in my clothes, woke up when security came knocking.”

Knowing that the electronic records backed up her timeline, I said, “For the moment, let’s say it wasn’t a heart attack. I’m not saying it wasn’t, but I have to ask in any case. Do you have any stalkers? Someone who’d want Mad Man and Mr. Jackson out of your life?”

The country-western star began to weep softly. “Two or three. I got restraining orders on all of … Timmy had a son, you know? From before the divorce? Garth’s only two and now he’s never gonna know his daddy. And I …”

That last thought seemed to crush the spirit out of her and she started to sob. “’Scuse me,” she said, got up and went to the bathroom, and shut the door.

She returned several moments later, having cleaned the makeup off her face and looking pale and bedraggled.

“Can you give us the names of the stalkers?” Sampson asked.

She nodded numbly, sat on the bed again, said, “I hate them.”

“You got someone you want us to call?” I asked.

“You mean like another lawyer?” She sniffled.

“Like someone who could be with you,” Sampson offered. “This is kind of a lot to deal with, don’t you think?”

“My parents are dead,” she said dully. “Got a sister in Omaha. Cindy Bell.”

“Give me Cindy Bell’s number,” I said.

Ten minutes later, I hung up, said, “She’s catching the next—”

There was a knock at the hotel room door. I went and opened it to see the hotel’s security chief, a small man named Waters.

“One of our waiters just staggered in here bleeding from the head,” Waters said. “He says a guy who looked like Elvis knocked him out.”

We found Carl Raynor being attended to by EMTs in a locker room off the hotel kitchen. Raynor told us it was still dark out when Elvis came up claiming that he was arriving for his first day of work.

“Next thing I know,” Raynor said, “I come to in the bushes, my head feels like World War Three … and my ID’s gone.”

Now we had an even better time frame, and using electronic records and the cameras in and around the security entrance, we were able to get several looks at the man we believed had killed Mandy Bell Lee’s childhood sweetheart.

Elvis was smart, though. Like the suspect we’d seen in street camera footage near the Superior Spa, he walked hunched over, seemingly aware of the lenses trying to capture his image. We saw him wheeling a food cart and heading to Jackson’s floor. We saw him leave through the service entrance fifteen minutes later. But we never got a solid look at his face.

One of the hotel’s bakers came forward, said she’d come face to face with the killer, talked to him even, and gave us a much better sense of his features after looking at still shots of him from the surveillance cameras.

“He seemed like a nice guy,” she said. “Cheerful, you know?”

Sampson nodded sadly. “We’ve been investigating murders a long time, ma’am, and I’m sorry to say that you almost never hear someone say they met someone who turned out to be a killer and they just knew from the get-go that he was an out-and-out psychopath.”

CHAPTER 33

Around a quarter to eight the next morning, Kelli Adams blinked at the dregs of a migraine, checked her makeup, and then walked confidently to the door of a luxury row house in Georgetown, near Foggy Bottom. Gone was her conservative blue suit. Today she was dressed as a recent graduate of Catholic University, at least according to her Windbreaker.

Adams pulled her right hand into the sleeve of the jacket and used her knuckle through the fabric to press the doorbell. She heard a man shouting almost immediately. No one came. She rang again and this time heard feet stomping before the door swung wide, revealing a harried-looking professional woman in her thirties, carrying an eight-month-old baby boy in her arms.

“Kelli?” the woman asked.

“Hi,” Adams said brightly. “Dr. Lancaster?”

“Ellen,” Dr. Lancaster replied, extending her hand. “Come in?”

“Yes, please,” Adams said, shaking her hand, stepping across the threshold, and winking at the boy, who took to sucking furiously on his thumb.

“This is Evan,” Dr. Lancaster said. “He’s fallen in love with his thumb.”

Adams tickled the boy, said, “Hi, Evan. We’re going to be great friends.”

Evan giggled and ducked his head shyly.

“This is good,” his mother said. “We’ve tried a couple of other nannies before this. It’s difficult for him to attach at first, but he seems to like you.”

“That’s what you mentioned,” Adams said. “But we’ll do fine.”

“So good of you to be available on short notice,” Dr. Lancaster said, handing over her son. “The last one gave us no warning she was quitting.”

Adams began to rock the baby expertly in her arms. “I saw the ad go up on the jobs board and called you immediately.”

“Well, I’m glad you did. Your references gave you rave reviews.”

“Both families were wonderful to babysit for, but I am looking for full-time work now.”

Dr. Lancaster’s hand covered her heart as if she were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. “Perfect. You don’t know what a hassle it is finding someone to—”

“Got to go, gonna be late!” cried a man in a business suit, crisp white shirt, and rep tie, who was hustling down the stairs while looking at his iPhone.

“Bill, this is Kelli,” Dr. Lancaster began.

“Charmed, but I’m due in Senator McCord’s office in twenty minutes,” her husband said, charging past and out the door.

Dr. Lancaster glanced after her husband, said, “Say good-bye to Daddy, Evan. And I have to hurry, too. Don’t want anyone dying of a broken heart, do we?”

“What time should I expect you?” Adams asked.

“I’ve left you a list on the kitchen table, my phone numbers, my husband’s numbers, Evan’s likes and dislikes, his routine. I pumped enough milk for the day. It’s in the fridge. Oh, and there’s medicine for the earache he’s been fighting. The rest is self-explanatory.”

“I’m sure,” Adams said.

Dr. Lancaster blew her son a kiss. “Mommy’s only working until two.”

She went out the door and Adams followed, cradling little Evan, holding his forearm, which she waved at his mother’s retreating figure.

Softly, she whispered in the baby’s ear, “Say bye-bye, Evan. Say bye-bye to Mommy.”

CHAPTER 34

I got to my desk late that Monday morning to find two reports from Detective Paul Brefka, one of the part-time detectives Captain Quintus had promised us.

Brefka was obviously an efficient and intuitive investigator. Given the name of the holding company that owned the Superior Spa — Relax LLC — he followed a hunch and searched for other limited-liability corporations with the word relax in their name. He found nineteen, all registered in Delaware.

Trenton Wiggs — the listed owner of the Superior Spa — was not named in connection with any of those companies. But a Harold Trenton and a Charles Wiggs were. According to the papers, the men were partners in Total Relaxation Ventures, with offices in Reston, Virginia. It sounded to Brefka and it sounded to me as if one person was using at least three identities to control a massage parlor empire. I jotted a note: Pay a visit to Total Relaxation.

Detective Brefka’s second report focused on Cam Nguyen.

Using the texts and recent phone calls on her iPhone, he identified and talked to many of her friends and fellow students, all of whom claimed to be dumbfounded when they learned she’d been working as a prostitute. So did her boyfriend, a GW student who’d been washing dishes at the Froggy Bottom Pub the night of the killings. He and the rest of Cam Nguyen’s friends had not heard from her since.

A check of her bank account showed she had nearly fifteen thousand dollars in savings. According to her debit card records, the missing girl had a history of spending freely, a history that had come to a screeching halt the night of the murders.

“Are they connected?” Captain Quintus asked, startling me as I stared at the reports. “The shooting of Francones and the poisoning of Jackson?”

“Got to be a hell of a lot more than a coincidence.”

“Security tapes?” the homicide supervisor said, moving to take a seat.

“Elvis was good,” I replied. “Real good. Never gave us a decent look at his face, and he must have been wearing gloves because he left nothing in Jackson’s hotel room. At least so far.”

“Who would want Francones and his widow’s lawyer dead?”

“Maybe the Mad Man’s widow, though I doubt it,” said Sampson, coming in with coffee. “Or maybe one of the three creeps who’ve been stalking Mandy Bell. Or Francones’s agent and manager.”

“Snyder and Timmons,” I said, nodding. “They did have a strong reaction when they found out Mandy had married Mad Man.”

“They trying to control her in some way, killing Jackson?” Quintus asked.

“Seems heavy-handed,” Sampson replied. “I mean, their future earnings were tied to Mad Man, not her.”

“Check it,” Quintus said. “Check all of it.”

I smiled wearily. “We always do, Captain.”

CHAPTER 35

While Sampson tried to reconnect with Mad Man Francones’s agent and manager, I got a car and drove toward the Fourteenth Street Bridge, bound for the offices of Total Relaxation Ventures in Reston, Virginia.

Until my cell phone rang. It was Bree.

“Hey, you,” I said. “Finish with Prough’s statement?”

“Yes, but I haven’t turned it in, and I still feel shitty about letting Prough go yesterday.”

“No reason to hold him,” I said.

There was a pause. “Hold on a second.”

There was silence for several moments, and then she came back on the line with urgency in her voice. “Where are you?”

“Heading toward Reston. What’s wrong?”

“There’s been another kidnapping,” she replied. “And this time it’s high-profile. He’s the baby boy of a cardiologist at GW and a big-time lobbyist on the Hill. I need you on this.”

“I’m working four capital cases as it is, and I’m getting nowhere on all of them,” I said in a strained voice.

“Just the initial interviews,” Bree insisted. “I believe this could be a serial kidnapper now. Isn’t that one of your areas of expertise?”

“I’ve dealt with one other,” I said. “Doesn’t make me exactly an expert.”

“More expert than I am,” Bree said. “The kidnapped boy is only eight months old, Alex. He’s their only child.”

I sighed, checked my watch, saw it was nearly three, and said, “Give me the address.”

When I called Quintus and told him I was going to Georgetown to help for two hours maximum, he reluctantly agreed and said he’d send Detective Brefka to pay the massage parlor tycoons a visit.

I got turned around, heading back toward Georgetown, thinking, Eight months old? In turn, I flashed on each of my children at that age: Ali, Jannie, and Damon, wide-eyed, full of contradictions, delighted one minute and hysterical the next. What if one of mine had been taken at that age?

A pit soured in my stomach. I had the sudden urge to hear my kids’ voices, especially Damon’s. We hadn’t spoken in a week. Midterms, he’d said.

I pulled out my phone and punched in his number.

The phone rang and rang and rang. I called him six times, and six times I got voice mail. Parking and getting out down the street from the yellow tape that surrounded the town house, I couldn’t help thinking how annoying the whole cell phone and teenager thing was. You buy them a phone. You pay for a national plan so they can keep in touch, and they’ve never got the damn thing on. Then again, midterms were coming up and—

“Dr. Cross?” someone called as I got near the tape.

I looked to my right and recognized the eager baby-faced patrolman who’d so smartly sealed off the Superior Spa when he’d seen the bodies.

“Officer Carney, right?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” the patrolman said, beaming. “I thought you worked homicide?”

“I do,” I replied, ducking under the tape. “Just doing a colleague a favor.”

“Sounds like they’ll need the help,” Carney said, glancing over at the house. “Scary, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“You know, some psycho stealing babies?”

“You’re right, Carney. It is scary. Something no parent should go through.”

“But they’ll catch her, right? The nanny?”

“Sure going to try,” I said. “Hold down the fort.”

“Yes, sir,” Carney said, and I moved on.

Another patrolman stood at the door, opened it to let me in.

Even from the foyer, I could hear a woman sobbing.

CHAPTER 36

On the kraft school campus in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, Damon Cross ignored the phone whining in his pocket and gestured at an ivy-covered building. “This will be our first stop. Commons, where all students eat.”

Damon was leading the final campus tour of the day for seven prospective students and their parents. He enjoyed being a tour guide. He’d been doing it since sophomore year.

He held the door to the school dining hall open as his group filed inside and was about to follow them when he heard a woman cry in a southern accent, “Hold that door, sugar. Am I too late to join the tour?”

Damon looked back over his shoulder and saw a seriously attractive woman with wild blond hair and the kind of body that … well, the black stirrup pants and the white turtleneck clung to her beneath a smart leather jacket and sunglasses. She was hurrying across the quad toward him.

“It’s not too late,” he said. “We’re just starting.”

“So good,” she said, clapping her hands and coming right up to him. She smelled faintly of perfume. “You are a tall one, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Damon said, embarrassed. “I’m on the basketball team.”

“‘Ma’am’?” she drawled, sounding offended. “You make me sound like some old crone. I’m only twenty-six. You?”

Damon glanced inside the Commons door, where one of the dads was eyeing him and the woman. “I’ll be eighteen in January.”

“Almost a man,” she said.

“Right,” he said, feeling his cheeks flush. “We should go in.”

“Of course,” she said gaily, and started through the door. “What is your name, tall boy tour guide?”

“Damon,” he said, following her. “Damon Cross.”

“I’m Karla Mepps. Don’t you forget my name now, Damon. Karla Mepps,” she drawled, and sidled into the dining hall, leaving the light scent of perfume in her wake.

Damon followed, fascinated. He’d never had anyone like Karla Mepps on a campus tour before. He’d never smelled anyone like her before.

But instead of engaging her in further conversation, he returned to the task at hand, describing the meal plans and the times of day when Commons was open. After answering several questions about lactose intolerance and the availability of gluten-free items, he ushered his group outside again, heading toward the library.

“You do this a long time?” Karla Mepps asked, sliding alongside him.

“Two years,” Damon said, feeling flushed again. “It’s fun.”

“You are very good at it,” she replied. “You make me want to tell my nephew to come to school here.”

“Nephew?”

“My sister’s son, Jack, who’s fourteen,” she explained. “They live in New Orleans, but they knew I was in the area and asked me to come have a look.”

“We have students from all over,” he said. “Sorry, I’ve got to—”

“No, no,” Karla Mepps said, smiling warmly at him. “You go ahead, finish. I’m enjoying your presentation.”

Damon got in front of the tour group and began delivering his usual spiel about the library, the number of volumes, the databases, Internet access, hours of operation, and the like. Then he led them through one of the dorms, showed them a typical room for underclassmen, before a trip through the sports complex.

Karla Mepps didn’t talk to him at all the rest of the tour, but Damon kept looking her way to find her gazing at him with a knowing little smile, as if she found him funny, amusing. He lost sight of her after he’d returned the group to the admissions office and started talking about the interview process and what they could expect on the application.

Where had she gone? Damon wondered, then shrugged it off.

Ten minutes later, after signing out with the tour coordinator, Damon went outside. It was almost four, and a chilly breeze was blowing. He’d go to the gym for an hour or so, eat, and then hit the books. He always studied better after working out and he had a tough test coming up in—

“Oh, there you are, Damon!” Karla Mepps cried.

The boy turned to see her coming toward him with that knowing little smile again. “Sorry, I had to use the ladies’ toilet, but I have some more questions. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, sugar?”

He hesitated.

“Oh,” she said, crestfallen. “You have somewhere important to go?”

“No,” Damon said. “No, nothing like that. Of course we can go get coffee. There’s a shop just off campus, across the street.”

“You are such a good tour guide,” Karla Mepps said, falling in beside him. “Tell me, how is the social life here at Kraft?”

“It’s mostly class, books, and athletics for me,” he replied. “But we have dances with our sister school, Beech Glen, outside Tanglewood.”

“You have a girlfriend there at Beech Glen?”

“Me?” Damon said, feeling his phone buzz in his pocket again. “Uh, no.”

“But you are so handsome, how is this possible?” she cried softly, while smoothly taking his arm. “Come, you must tell Karla everything.”

CHAPTER 37

When i found the kitchen, Bree was consoling Dr. Lancaster, who was sobbing from the depths of her soul. Her husband’s expression was one I recognized. I’d seen variations of it on the faces of the survivors fighting the zombies on that show Ali liked so much.

“Mr. Lancaster, I’m Alex Cross,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand.

A lobbyist, Lancaster shook hands for a living, but now he gave my hand the faintest of squeezes, looked at me with yearning, and said, “Can you find her?”

A familiar male voice behind me said, “We can and we will, Bill.”

I looked over my shoulder. Special Agent Ned Mahoney, an old and dear friend and colleague from my days at the FBI, was coming into the kitchen.

“Ned?”

“Bill’s my cousin, Alex,” Mahoney said, patting me on the shoulder and then going around me to hug Lancaster. “I promise you we will do everything possible to get Evan back.”

The missing boy’s father lost that yearning look. His lower lip trembled. “Ned, I’ve been so goddamned busy lately. I hardly know him.”

I glanced at his wife, who looked at the floor as if it held answers.

Gently patting Dr. Lancaster’s back, Bree said, “With the three of us working the case, it’s only a matter of time before we find him.”

“Unless she’s killed him already,” Dr. Lancaster moaned.

“That’s highly unlikely,” I said. “Young women who do this sort of thing are more often than not motivated by their inability to conceive. They are so desperate for a baby, they’ll steal one.”

“He’s right,” Mahoney said.

“Could you look at the drawing again?” Bree asked. “Tell us if that’s Kelli Adams?”

“I barely saw her on my way out to work,” Lancaster said.

But his wife wiped her eyes, picked the sketch off the counter, and studied it carefully before saying in a thick voice, “Could be. She wore a lot of makeup. The eyes are the right shape but the wrong color. The hair’s different, and her cheeks were not so full as this. My God, she had references. I spoke to them myself.”

“We’ll need those names and phone numbers,” Mahoney said.

Dr. Lancaster nodded and reached for her phone.

“Did she touch anything?” I asked.

The missing boy’s mother looked up at me with that dazed expression I’d seen only moments before on her husband’s face.

“She was only here a few minutes and yet she’s touched everything,” Dr. Lancaster replied, beginning to cry again. “That woman’s touched and ruined everything in my entire home!”

CHAPTER 38

“So, no girls?” Karla Mepps asked, setting a coffee in front of Damon. “I’m sorry, but the former LSU cheerleader in me is saying, ‘How is that possible?’ ”

Damon smiled, glanced over at some other boys from the school who were staring at him dumbly, and squirmed a little. He’d never had a girl, much less a beautiful woman, talk to him like this. “I dunno,” he said. “Just too busy, I guess.”

Karla Mepps took off her leather jacket, revealing just how tightly the long-sleeved white turtleneck clung to her breasts. She cocked her head coyly, as if she’d caught him looking, and said, “But you like girls, right?”

“Well, yeah. Sure,” he said, feeling his cheeks burn and happening to glance at the back of her left hand where the sleeve had pulled back. She had some kind of tattoo there, like the tail of some animal.

“Well, yeah, sure,” she said, and laughed. “Good. The other way would have been such a tragic waste to womanhood.”

Damon didn’t understand at first, but then did, and his ears burned, too. He couldn’t look at her and instead turned his gaze back to that tattoo of a tail slinking out from under her sleeve. What kind of tail? He wondered what the rest of the tattoo looked like.

“You wanted to ask more about the school?” he said finally.

“I do,” Karla Mepps said.

And for the next half hour, she kept the conversation squarely on school life, asking first about housing. He explained that the annual housing lottery was at the end of the school year, with seniors having first draw. He’d picked tenth and gotten one of the nicest rooms on campus, a single with a fireplace on the first floor of North Dorm, looking toward the woods, where he often saw deer in the morning.

“Can you show me this North Dorm on the map?” she asked, getting the school’s brochure out of her jacket pocket.

Damon did and then said, “We didn’t get over there on the tour. Here’s a picture of North, though.”

He pushed the brochure back to her and tapped a photograph of a granite-faced building that looked more than a hundred years old. “That’s my room there on the far left corner.”

“Yes?” she said, and studied it carefully. “Very lucky.”

“I was. Yes.”

When Karla Mepps asked about the quality of the teaching at the school, Damon replied that every teacher he’d had at Kraft was tough but seemed to care about him, and that the teachers were almost always available.

“Your parents?” she asked. “They’re happy, too?”

Damon hadn’t really thought about it before, but he nodded. “I think they would say so. My dad says I’ve grown up a lot the past couple of years.”

“You see them often?”

“Every six or seven weeks,” Damon replied. “Either they come up here for a long weekend, or I go home on vacations. And summers, of course.”

“How many vacations do students get?”

Damon had to think about that. “Four — three long, one short at Thanksgiving. Then three weeks at Christmas, and like ten days at Easter.”

Karla Mepps found that interesting. “So you have a vacation soon?”

“I leave a week from Friday morning,” he replied, nodding.

“And how will you get home to …?”

“Washington?” Damon said. “I usually get a jitney in town that takes me over to Albany to catch the train.”

“Amtrak?”

He nodded. “Takes five or six hours.”

“That’s not bad,” she allowed. “But I wonder if my sister will want my nephew to fly all that way alone back to Louisiana on breaks.”

“They have, like, escorts and stuff for that,” Damon offered. “Some of the younger kids get them.”

She smiled again as she stood. “Well, thank you, Damon Cross. I must go. It’s getting dark and I have a long way to drive.”

“Oh, sure,” he said, struggling to get up. “Hope I’ve helped.”

“More than you know,” Karla Mepps replied, gazing at him, making a show of putting on her jacket. “C’mon. You walk me to my car? I’d feel safer.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, sure.”

Ignoring the gapes of the other boys in the coffee shop, Damon led her outside. The wind had picked up. Twice during the short walk to the visitors’ lot, she seemed to stumble against him and he had to hold her up.

“So strong,” she said the first time.

“So fast,” she said the second time.

When they reached the car, a blue Honda sedan, Karla Mepps pressed the unlock button, turned to him. “I very much liked meeting you, Damon.”

“Uh, yeah, me, too, Ms. Mepps.”

She reached out to shake his hand and held on to it a second too long, whispering, “Here’s a little something to keep you awake. Some night — who knows when? — Karla just might come out of the woods behind your dorm and climb in your window. So leave it unlocked and open.”

Damon blinked, pulled back his hand. She chuckled like a cat purring, climbed into the car, and started it.

Then Karla Mepps drove off into the gathering night.

CHAPTER 39

I watched a crime scene tech dusting the Lancasters’ doorbell for fingerprints. Little Evan aside, it was the only thing we knew for sure that the kidnapper had touched. Other techs were inside the foyer, working. Ned Mahoney was triggering an AMBER alert across Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Bree was with the Lancasters, going through the house, trying to determine whether the nanny had taken anything of note besides their only child.

I was about to join them when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. Tugging it out, I saw the caller ID: Damon.

“Your phone does work,” I answered, walking away from the front stoop. Television camera trucks were already camped out beyond the police tape, no doubt having come from outside the apartment building of Joss Branson’s parents. The only thing that will draw the media off a missing child case these days is another missing child.

“Well, sure my phone works,” Damon said.

“You don’t answer it much.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, I was leading a late tour and there was someone — a woman, the aunt of some kid from Louisiana who’s interested in applying. She stayed behind and, I don’t know, asked a lot of questions.”

I’d forgotten he was working as a campus tour guide.

“No problem,” I said.

“What did you call about? You didn’t leave a message.”

“Hate leaving messages,” I said.

“You could have sent a text.”

“I like hearing the sound of your voice in real time, is that okay?”

“Is that why you called six times?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Oh,” he said, and paused. “Well, what do you want me to say?”

“The alphabet.”

“Really?”

“No, I just … how was your day, kiddo?”

“Good. Real good.”

“Anything exciting or new happen?”

There was a pause longer than I expected before he said, “No, not really. Just that lady on the tour.” He hesitated. “And a lot of studying to do. I’ve got a big physics test tomorrow. First midterm.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “I won’t keep you. Just want to say I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Damon said. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever—”

“Alex!” Bree called to me. “They’ve found a few things.”

“Sorry, son,” I said. “Got to go. We’ll talk later, okay?”

I hung up before Damon could answer.

CHAPTER 40

As I headed toward my wife where she stood on the stoop of the Lancasters’ town house, my cell phone rang again. It was the medical examiner’s office. Exasperated, I held up a finger to Bree and answered, “Cross.”

It was Cynthia Wu from the ME’s office. She said, “Alex, that coffee from the Jackson crime scene you asked to have analyzed?”

“Yes?”

“Someone dumped nearly pure liquid nicotine into it, enough to give a horse a heart attack.”

“Liquid nicotine?” I said, puzzled. “Wait, wouldn’t you taste something like that? Wet cigarettes aren’t exactly appetizing. Smell gross, too.”

“Because they’re made from tobacco,” Wu replied. “This is extracted nicotine, the kind that people use in those electronic cigarettes, though that stuff is a hundred times more diluted than this was.”

“Any idea where you’d get something that pure?” I asked.

“Gotta be brokers somewhere,” Wu said.

“Anything else?”

“Preliminary report on that smear on the attorney’s suit pants,” she said. “Vaginal secretions. Some semen, too.”

I thought about that, came up with the most likely conclusion. “Order tests on the female DNA against the samples we got from Mandy Bell Lee and confirm the semen is Jackson’s.”

“Might take a while.”

“A while I’ve got,” I said. “And thanks, Cynthia, I owe you one.”

“Anytime, Alex,” she said, and hung up.

As soon as I entered the Lancasters’ foyer again, Bree pointed at the stairs. “They found synthetic hair on that second step. Cheap wig, I figure, which means Kelli’s changing her look, which means that sketch we put out of her had to have been close.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe it’s just part of a disguise. What else?”

“She took a diaper bag and a stack of diapers with her,” Bree replied.

“So she’s caring for Evan.”

My wife squinted. “You mean, the way a barren woman might?”

“Could be. Or maybe she just wants to care for him long enough to sell him to some couple desperate to have a—”

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, looked at the top of the staircase, and saw Dr. Lancaster staring at us with a horrified expression. “Sell?” she said. “Sell my baby?”

CHAPTER 41

It took us almost an hour to get the Lancasters to calm down after they’d overheard my frankly stupid remark. There was a chance that Kelli Adams had stolen the babies in order to sell them, but I should have had the good sense not to say so inside their house.

“The first scenario is much more likely,” I kept telling them. “This is probably a woman who has a history of psychiatric problems and infertility.”

“That’s right,” Mahoney said, and Bree nodded.

But the damage had been done. When my wife and I left around seven thirty that evening, I could see that both parents were still chewing on the idea that their baby boy was about to be sold to the highest bidder.

Mahoney stayed behind, repairing the damage.

I followed Bree back to police headquarters. I thought about going upstairs to get some more work done, letting her have my car and taking a cab home, but after parking, Bree climbed in the passenger side with me and said, “Let’s go find Ava.”

My wife had that look about her that indicated this was not a negotiable idea, so I nodded and said, “I’m going to need something to eat first.”

“Henry’s?” she said.

“That’ll do it,” I replied, and set off.

Ten minutes later we pulled up outside Henry’s Soul Café at Seventeenth and U Street. All the food’s good at Henry’s, but the fried chicken and sweet potato pie are the best in DC. And there’s something about the smell of the place and the good vibe of the people who work there that reminds me of a similar joint back in Winston-Salem, where I spent the first nine years of my life.

Bree covered my shirt in paper napkins and handed me pieces of fried chicken and an ice-cold Coke as we headed toward Anacostia. We were crossing the bridge when my phone rang.

“Are you purposely avoiding me, Alex?” Nana Mama said in greeting.

“Me? Never.”

“I haven’t seen you in days.”

“Late nights,” I said.

“Tonight?”

I glanced at Bree and replied, “About an hour or so.”

“I’ll wait up for you,” Nana Mama said. “I want you to see what they’ve done to the kitchen floor.”

“Who did what to the kitchen floor?”

“The workmen,” she said. “They ripped up the old floorboards today. It’s all gone!”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh, that was supposed to be a secret.”

“What?” she cried.

“I’ll explain when I get there, Nana,” I said, and hung up.

Bree said, “Told you not telling her was a bad idea.”

“I wanted to surprise her.”

“One thing I’ve figured out about your grandmother?”

“What’s that?”

“She doesn’t like surprises.”

Over the course of the next hour we drove once again past all the places Ava had mentioned during the time she lived with us. We talked to kids her age and showed them her picture. But as before, none of them said they’d seen her.

We were about to go home when I decided to swing past Owens Road Park. I’d never heard her talk about Owens Road, but I knew it was a hangout for kids as much as Seward Square was. As we drove past the park, I spotted a girl about Ava’s age sitting on a park bench and pulled over immediately, saying, “I know her. She came to the house to visit Ava once.”

CHAPTER 42

I searched my brain for the girl’s name and came up with it.

“Yolanda?” I called to her after getting out.

She looked at me, puzzled, until I got closer. Then her face clouded.

“You remember me?”

Yolanda nodded. “You’re the Man, right? After Ava?”

“Yes. But I’m looking for Ava as her friend. Not as the Man.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek before replying, “Lot of people looking for Ava, I hear.”

“Why?” asked Bree, who’d come up behind me.

Yolanda looked at her suspiciously, then said, “She owe people money.”

“Drug people?” I asked.

“Them, too,” she said.

“You know where we can find her?” Bree asked.

Yolanda pursed her lips, shook her head. “I ain’t seen that girl in two weeks. Last time she was dirty and smelled bad, like smoke. She was strung out, too, acting all paranoid, said somebody tried to kill her, and he still trying. I figured she was just in need of an oxy. But I gave her twenty bucks and told her to run.”

“So she was doing oxycodone?”

“And Percocet. Anything painkilling.”

“You see her, you give her a message,” Bree said in a strained voice. “You tell her Bree and Alex just want to talk to her. No judgments. No matter what time it is, she can call us. Okay?”

Yolanda shrugged. “Way I figure it, way I hope it, that girl is long gone, way out to California by now and got that monkey off her back. I know that’s how it would be I had that many people chasing my ass.”

Back in the car, heading home, I waited several minutes before I said, “Two weeks ago she was dirty and smelled like bad smoke.”

Bree closed her eyes and started rubbing her temples. “I know. Right about the time Jane Doe was set on fire.”

“I’ve got to tell the captain about this tomorrow. Show him Prough’s statement.”

My wife said nothing but nodded. We drove the rest of the way in silence.

It was nearly nine when I followed Bree up onto the porch, carrying the sweet potato pie from Henry’s. Nana Mama makes a mean sweet potato pie herself, but she loves Henry’s version. I figured to use it as a peace offering.

Bree said, “I’m going to take a shower.”

She opened the door and I watched her climb the stairs as if she had an anvil strapped to her shoulders. I felt similarly when I turned toward the front room, where the television was on.

My ninety-something grandmother, former English teacher and vice principal, was sitting on the couch in her pajamas and bathrobe, watching a bunch of zombies attack a family. I couldn’t help smiling.

“You’re watching The Walking Dead?” I asked incredulously.

Nana Mama acted as if she’d just noticed me, said, “Hush now, this is bad stuff going down.”

Two zombies had cornered the mother when the episode ended.

I looked at Nana Mama, still amused.

Nana Mama raised her chin defiantly, said, “Ali made me sit down and watch the first episode with him on DVD. He’s right. It’s not really about zombies. They’re sort of interchangeable. It’s the people who are running from the zombies who are interesting.”

“Right,” I said, and handed her the bag from Henry’s. “Your favorite.”

She didn’t take the bag. “What’s this secret?”

I sighed. “Remember that Italian tile you loved that I said we couldn’t afford?”

“Yes?”

“I figured out a way to afford it.”

That surprised her, and she softened. “Really?”

“I thought they weren’t going to rip up the old wood flooring until just before the appliances went in,” I said.

My grandmother got up. She’s a tiny woman. She reached up and stroked my cheek and said, “You are a good man, Alex.”

“Still friends, Nana?”

“Of course. Now let me get a plate so I can have some of Henry’s pie.”

We ate and talked until her eyelids started to droop. Then I went around and shut off the lights and helped her up the stairs. After she’d gone into her bedroom, I said good night to Jannie, who was still up studying, and looked in on Ali, fast asleep.

So was Bree when I climbed into our bed. My mind still swirled with all that had happened that day. I recalled my brief phone conversation with Damon, and how I’d had to cut him off in the middle of a question.

That kind of thing had happened too often in his life, and I felt a pang of guilt. Watch over him, God, I prayed as I drowsed into sleep. Keep my boy safe.

CHAPTER 43

The moon was high overhead around one that Tuesday morning. The wind was picking up, and the air smelled like coming rain when Acadia Le Duc prowled like a jaguar through branches and vines in the leafless woods between the county highway and the Kraft School campus.

Acadia often thought of herself as one kind of animal or another. She’d grown up in rural Louisiana surrounded by bayous and dense forests, with deer, ducks, goats, sheep, dogs, a monkey, and a cockatoo. Her father even kept several alligators in a penned backwater down the far bank from their home.

But Acadia was not a gator. She was a jaguar, a panther. She was always a big cat at moments like this, hunting for that darkest part of herself. She checked the compass app on her phone every few minutes to stay on a steady northward course over blown-down trees and through boggy bottoms until she hit an old two-track path she’d seen on Google Earth.

Following the path in the direction of the school, she could not help flashing on deep, dark secrets. In Acadia’s memories, cicadas thrummed in a terrible heated night. There were lightning, far-off thunder, and the patter of rain. Her mother screamed for mercy. Her drunken father’s fists gave none.

Acadia remembered it all as if it had been yesterday, but she roused from the memory when she passed several stacks of freshly cut wood before the way bent hard to the right beneath a giant spruce tree. She couldn’t be more than a quarter-mile from the North Dorm now.

She almost laughed. It all felt so delicious. How did Marcus describe this feeling? Free from restraint? Free enough to be authentic?

Whatever you called it, Acadia truly loved feeling like this, an outlaw of the body and the mind. The half-pint of vodka and the joint smoked in the car hadn’t hurt, either, and she flashed once again on that steaming night long ago when the lightning cracked over the bayou and the thunder almost drowned out the slamming of the porch door.

Acadia spotted three lights through the trees and soon saw that they were mounted on the roof of North Dorm, aiming down at the rear lawn.

Damon’s window was at the far end of the building.

Sticking to the dark shadows right next to the woods, she was soon opposite his room, which was dark. To her delight, she could see that his window was raised several inches above the sash.

A spotlight shone down brightly from above the window, revealing a metal pipe jutting out of the ground beside the dorm wall. She could climb up onto that pipe and be almost at chest height to the window sash. She’d push the window up, climb through, and rock that boy’s …

Intoxicated by the idea now, Acadia was nevertheless aware that she would be exposed as she moved across the lawn and when climbing through the window. She would have to be quick and precise. Noticing clouds smothering the moon, she took one last look around before bursting from her hiding place and racing across the lit-up lawn in less than ten seconds.

Acadia reached the pipe below Damon’s window and stepped up onto it, so focused on keeping her balance as she reached for the window sash that she didn’t notice the flashlight beam in the distance.

A man far to her left yelled, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

CHAPTER 44

Acadia spun at the shout, launched herself off the pipe, and hit the ground running. She used fear as a whip that drove her across the lawn, into the shadows, sprinting toward that two-track path she’d come in on.

Ten yards shy of where she figured the path would be, she glanced over her shoulder and saw to her astonishment that the security guard was racing right down the middle of the lawn, holding the flashlight like some goddamned Olympic track star’s baton and gaining ground on her by the second.

Terrified that she might get caught, she felt adrenaline spike through her. She dodged onto the two-track, found a higher gear, and accelerated into the woods.

But without the moon, the forest was much darker than before. Roots grabbed at her shoes and threw her off-balance several times in the first hundred yards. Behind her she heard a stick crack and heard the guard yell, “Hey, lady, stop!”

Acadia wasn’t stopping for anything or anybody. But she was a very, very smart woman, with a keen sense of logic and strategy; and it was instantly apparent to her that the guard was going to run her down. She flashed on the image of the hunting cat she’d carried in her mind earlier.

She felt the jaguar come up in her the same way it had the first time, when she was sixteen and her father had come out of the house through the door of the screened porch, his wife’s blood on his knuckles as he stumbled toward the bayou and the fenced-in pool where he kept his gators.

In the woods behind Damon’s dorm, Acadia spotted the looming shape of the huge spruce tree on the two-track and remembered that the way bent left beneath it, not far from where she’d left the deep woods.

Acting instinctually, before she’d even consciously devised her plan, Acadia sprinted around the tight curve in the road and cut hard left toward the dim shape of the stacked logs and limbs.

She snatched up a stout chunk of tree branch about six inches around and two feet long. It felt familiar and weighty in her hands when she darted behind the spruce tree and jammed her back against the trunk, already hearing the pounding of the guard’s footfalls, already seeing the slashing of his flashlight.

Seeing that cutting beam, Acadia remembered the lightning that long-ago night when she snuck up behind her father as he aimed his flashlight down the bank into the pool, calling his reptiles by name and laughing drunkenly. The hatchet she’d carried that night was almost the same weight as the chunk of wood in her hands now.

The guard had slowed to a trot. Acadia heard the patter of the first raindrops falling and tightened her grip when the flashlight beam played on the track right in front of her.

Acadia coiled her muscles, became the jaguar. The guard was walking and gasping for air now.

He took a step into her field of view and was swinging the light her way when Acadia uncoiled and whipped the primitive club as if it had a steel cutting edge. There was a dull cracking noise when it hit the guard square on his forehead. His went down in a heap, dropping his light.

Her heart pounding wildly, Acadia picked the light up and shined it on the guard. She’d opened up a nasty gash that gushed blood. His eyes were partly closed and rolled up in his head. He was wracked with twitches and spasms.

She crouched over him a few moments and watched, as fascinated as she’d been when she’d seen the first alligator attack her father and heard how he screamed for help and found none.

The skies opened up over the Berkshires. Rain poured down on the woods. Acadia stood and set off with the flashlight and her club, not giving the guard another look. He’d been in the way. He’d had to be removed. And for a few moments there, she’d been treated to those death throes. They’d made her legs grow weak and spawned a warm feeling that traveled in her lower tummy.

Acadia got out her phone, checked the compass heading, and turned into the deep forest. Even in the pouring rain, she’d be at her car in ten minutes.

In twenty, she’d be at the motel, gathering her things.

With luck she’d be back in bed with Marcus Sunday by dawn.

CHAPTER 45

Helmet on, facing the Kinect camera in the apartment’s storage room, Sunday moved ultraslowly as he crept into Alex Cross’s virtual home, trying to take in everything, studying the dimensions and quirks of the old house, imagining the rooms filled with furniture and people.

The writer moved as a ghost might, out through the kitchen under construction into the backyard, where the foundation for the addition was already curing. He saw the blueprint in his mind and realized that this would be the part of the house Cross would know least. That could matter, he reasoned, and he made a mental note to have Acadia advance the software the next time so he might experience the addition half done and then complete.

Sunday returned to the bottom of the virtual staircase. He practiced slipping up the stairs, seeing every riser, imagined himself silent, lethal. He moved from room to room, conjuring up Cross’s grandmother asleep, and his son and daughter, too.

Lingering in the great detective’s bedroom, Sunday fantasized Bree Stone in his mind so vividly that he swore he could smell her. But once again, he was drawn to the third floor and the detective’s home office.

He stayed up there for a long time, altering his perspective by inches, examining every bit of the space, especially the articles about the mass killings outside Omaha and Fort Worth. When Sunday saw his own name and the quotes he’d given the journalist, he could not help smiling.

Your doom is right here, Cross, and you have no clue.

Reluctantly, the writer turned from the office and went to stand in the doorway. Then he took off, bounding down the virtual staircases and landings and bursting out the front door. When he removed the helmet, he was sweaty, exhilarated, and disoriented. The virtual model was so real he felt like he’d just escaped the place.

Outside, the sun was rising. He shut the Kinect down, went to the fridge in his own kitchen, and found cold Ethiopian takeout food. Acadia’s, no doubt. She loved that kind of stuff. Anything strange.

But why hadn’t he heard from her since she’d gone to the Berkshires on a scouting assignment? Sunday had tried her cell several times and had gotten nothing but voice mail. He popped the food into the microwave, thinking that this silence wasn’t that unusual. Acadia often fell out of touch. Hell, he did, too.

But for a moment, thinking about her, Sunday remembered how electric it felt when he was with her, how it had been that way right from that first night. They’d wandered the French Quarter drinking, listening to music, and telling each other their life stories.

Around two in the morning, back in his hotel after they’d made passionate love for the first time, Acadia had asked him what his deepest, darkest secret was. Looking into her fathomless eyes, Sunday had felt compelled to tell her something he’d never told anyone else. He’d killed his father with a shovel. He’d fed the body to his father’s hogs.

When the writer had finished his story, Acadia had looked at him in wonder and said, “I think we were meant to be together, Marcus, to meet tonight.”

After hearing her explain how she’d killed her wife-beating father and destroyed the evidence by feeding her father to his pet alligators, Sunday had believed the same thing. He didn’t believe in souls or Kismet or Karma, but he did believe their meeting was destined somehow.

“How did you feel after you hit him?” he’d asked. “Your father.”

“Same way I do now,” she’d said, and rolled on top of him hungrily. “You?”

“Exactly the same way.”

The microwave dinged in the kitchen, waking him from his memories.

Sunday ate the leftover Ethiopian beef dish and got his mind off Acadia by thinking about Cross. He wondered whether he was moving too slowly, not putting enough pressure on the man. As he finished his meal, he ticked through the basic strategy once again.

After several minutes of detached analysis, he decided the overall plan still worked. It still did the job. He wasn’t going to try to short-circuit the process.

But perhaps there was more to be done in the short term.

The writer thought over everything he’d discovered about the Superior Spa killings in the last twenty-four hours. Could he use that information now? And then he saw how it might work, how it might dovetail nicely with his recent monkey business at the Mandarin Oriental.

Returning to the storage room, he sat at Preston Elliot’s laptop and called up Microsoft Word. He started futzing with the fonts, changing them every few words, until he had a letter that looked sufficiently bizarre but read rather well.

The writer considered it a moment and decided one more thing was needed. He put on leather gloves, fed his printer new paper. After printing the letter, he took the page into the living room, where he turned on the television and found a pen.

Sunday watched CNN as he doodled in the margins and along the top and bottom of the—

“Washington Metro police are treating the death of Mandy Bell Lee’s attorney as a murder,” the reporter on the television screen said, tearing Sunday away from his artwork.

He stared when a sketch appeared on the screen and the reporter said, “Police sources tell us they believe this man posed as a room service waiter and brought in coffee laced with pure liquid nicotine, which caused Jackson to suffer a massive heart attack.”

Sunday was unmoved by this news and by the police sketch of the suspected killer, which prominently featured the pompadour hairdo.

“Doesn’t look a thing like me,” he sniffed.

Another image appeared. A pretty young Vietnamese girl.

“Police are also looking for Cam Nguyen, a missing George Washington University student, in connection with the murder of Mad Man Francones at a notorious District massage parlor earlier this week.”

That interested Sunday, and he kept listening as he got an envelope, addressed it, and stuffed the letter inside. He wet the glue and the stamp with a sponge and decided to mail it straightaway.

But it was raining outside, and before he could get his coat on, he heard keys in the lock. The front door swung open.

Acadia came in all wired, like she’d been up all night partying on speed or cocaine. She carried a flashlight and a stout cut branch. When she saw Sunday, her nostrils flared and she kicked shut the door with the heel of her shoe.

She tossed the length of wood and the flashlight on the sofa and came at him, feverishly unbuttoning her blouse. He smelled her as she attacked him and knew all too well that particular odor oozing from her pores.

Acadia had killed again.

He knew it as surely as if he’d done the deed himself.