Edge

Chapter 33

PEOPLE WANT TO avoid the past.

I suppose that’s natural. When we tally up all we’ve said and done over the years, despite the wonderful memories, the regrets may be fewer but stand out more prominently, glowing coals that we can never quite extinguish, try though we might.

Yet without the past my job wouldn’t exist. Whether it’s because of the good things that people like Ryan Kessler have selflessly done that land them in a lifter’s sights or the bloody histories of professional killers, they’re in my care as a consequence of what they did months or years earlier.

At the moment, though, driving as quickly as I could over the dusk-filled, slippery roads that would take me back to Loudoun County, I was thinking of the past for a different reason. Twenty minutes ahead lay the past of the man who was a threat to my principals, a past that could be very helpful in finding evidence of his present.

The past of a man who had tortured and murdered my mentor.

And I wanted so badly to flip back through the years and learn what I could about him.

From what his cousin had told me-that the family house sale was a scam, in effect-it was possible that inside were decades’ worth of family artifacts. Would I find pictures of Loving as a child? Would I find toys he once played with?

I thought again of one of duBois’s first assignments for me, before the run-in with Loving in Rhode Island. My protégée’s job had been to learn all she could about Marjorie, Loving’s sister. DuBois had leapt into the task with typical exhausting energy and had written a bio of the woman, who’d spent much time with her brother in their teen years, before he turned to crime and fled the family. I was convinced-incorrectly, it turned out-that details about his sister could somehow lead us to him. DuBois learned of her bouts with cancer, the remission, the onset once again… and then the tragic death in the Occoquan, the river feeding into the Chesapeake.

Nothing helpful in the pursuit, but I’d grown fascinated reading duBois’s notes about the one person with whom Loving had had some authentic and recurring connection.

I wanted to know more and hoped the old house would deliver.

Of course, when his parents found out about their son’s crimes, they might have eradicated any trace of him and the house would be as vacant as air. If I had a child as troubled as Loving, would I do so?

Claire duBois called. She’d run a title search and collected what information she could about the house. The single-family, eighty-year-old structure was on about two acres outside Ashburn, a large area of scattered town houses and single-family homes halfway between Dulles Airport and Leesburg, growing rapidly, as commuters moved farther and farther from D.C.

The Loving house had been unoccupied for nearly a year and a half, though the owner who’d been deeded the property sent a handyman occasionally to fix and prune. The owner reported that Loving hadn’t contacted him for years but had prepaid more than ten years’ rent.

“You didn’t find all that on Google,” I complimented duBois.

“It’s interesting, I could tell the owner was sort of guilty, even though he hadn’t done anything illegal. When you’re sort of guilty you sort of want to talk.”

Ten minutes later I slowed on the winding asphalt road, no streetlights, and checked numbers. I braked and pulled into a thick stand of bushes, about fifty yards from the house. There were six or seven houses in the vicinity, all of them set back some distance from the road. Trash littered the ground around me and a fragment of red brake light plastic attested to the treacherous curves and bad visibility.

I pulled out my mobile and placed a call to Freddy.

“You get the warrant?” I asked. There was an argument that we wouldn’t need one but in legal proceedings it’s best to avoid arguments in the first place and, in case we found helpful evidence inside, I wanted to make sure a good defense lawyer didn’t get it excluded.

“Yep.”

“Where are you?”

“About fifteen minutes away, probably less. You?”

“Just got here.”

“Jesus, Corte, your outfit doesn’t have those cars with flashing lights on the top. You’re gonna kill yourself driving like that.”

“I wanted to move fast. I thought there was a chance I might find him here.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. I’m looking at the house now,” I told him. “No lights, no movement. But there’re about fifty good shooting positions in the woods all the way around the place. You guys have thermals with you?”

“Sure, but mostly, if you’re talking forest, the deer’ll light up the equipment. And Bambi doesn’t do much sniping.”

Eyes on the house, I told him, “I’m going quiet.”

We disconnected and I climbed from the car. I removed my body armor vest from the trunk, strapped it on and donned a jumpsuit, the black one. I moved through the cool autumn air, stopping between two broad oak trees. Mist floated around the house, which was about two hundred feet off the road. I could hear the creak and groan of insects that had survived the end of summer. Frogs too. I sensed the faint flutter from invisible motion above me, bats.

I have no superstition within me whatsoever and I don’t believe that we can feel the spirits of the dead. But I don’t deny that there sometimes occurs a ripening of impressions, clues and the memories of experience that trigger an understanding within us that seems like a sixth sense. I had no sense of dread or foreboding but I suddenly knew that I had to draw my weapon immediately, kick my mind into a defensive mode and keep it there. I nearly got a crick in my neck as I spun behind me and saw the shape of a man. Finger on the trigger of my Glock, I drew a target. Breathing hard, I eased against the solid, rough tree trunk. Only a moment later the saplings that had configured themselves into the lifter separated in the breeze and then gently drifted back.

The shape of a man but not a man.

Which didn’t mean that my concern was unwarranted. Loving could easily be nearby.

I turned back to the house. The two-story country manse, gabled, was painted dark brown. The handyman the owner had hired was long on landscaping and short on woodwork and painting. The railing was sagging, the stairs dipped and three of the beige shutters hung from their last hinge. Scales of dull paint rolled from the siding. On the front porch, which extended across the front of the entire house, a swing was attached to the beams above by only a single chain.

Another look around me. No sign of human life. Gazing at the porch again, I wondered if Loving the boy had spent any time in the swing on summer or fall evenings. And with whom? I noted farmland behind the broken-down picket fence in the back. Would he have gone hunting small game there? I’d heard rumors that he’d tortured animals when he was young. But I didn’t believe that. There was no evidence suggesting that Loving was a sadist and enjoyed the physical pain he inflicted; when he set the sandpaper and alcohol bottle in front of the person he needed to extract information from, I knew that the main thought in his mind was my own: What’s your goal and what’s the most efficient way to achieve it?

I stared at the dark windows, two of which were broken from BB gunshots or maybe a.22. Unoccupied places like this would be, as the law said, attractive nuisances to local kids. I knew this from the house in Woodbridge that Peggy and I had owned. Two doors down from it was an abandoned Victorian and every neighborhood kid at some point tried to sneak inside the dangerous place. I’d gone to town hall to have the city put up better fences, which they ultimately did.

Once more I wondered if it was the Kesslers or Henry Loving conjuring these memories within me. I pushed them away. No more distractions, I resolved.

I heard cars approaching, though I spotted no lights. I gave Freddy a call to tell him where I was. A few minutes later he and the tactical officers joined me.

“Anything on a car at his cousin’s?” I asked Freddy.

The senior agent was looking over the lay of the land, as were the tactical officers, each covering a different quadrant. “We found a few drops of blood in a parking space about fifty feet away. Nothing else helpful. No tread marks. No trace. But what do you expect?”

True, with Loving, you weren’t going to find the quality of evidence that led you back to his hidey-hole.

“I want to get moving,” I said, gesturing at the house. I was uncharacteristically impatient. I glanced at the tactical agents and whispered, “I haven’t seen any sign of anyone since I’ve been here. Loving might not remember what he told his cousin-he was doped up-and he might’ve come back to go to ground or at least to pick up his things.” I regarded them gravely. “And it’s possible he said what he did to the cousin to make sure it was relayed to us. This could be a trap. And remember, he’s got a partner.”

They scanned the grounds, the trees, the black windows of the house with keen eyes.

We divided into three groups and, Freddy and I leading, moved forward.