Return of the Spider

Chapter 1

Alexandria, Virginia

Gary Soneji pulled his black 1985 Saab into the faculty lot of the Charles School, a private college-prep academy.

Before getting out, he paused to assess himself in the rearview mirror.

The balding dark brown wig flawlessly covered his naturally curly blond hair, which he’d cut short. His mustache was darkened with brown wax and shaped into a droop that swallowed his upper lip. Green-colored contacts, English-schoolboy glasses, and facial prosthetics he’d bought from a movie makeup artist completed a disguise that made him look at least ten years older.

Soneji smiled. His own dear wife, Missy, would not have recognized him.

His real name was Gary Murphy. But he had taken on a new identity — Gary Soneji — who so far lived only in his mind.

He stepped out of the Saab, opened the back door, and retrieved a faded blue blazer. He put it on over his blue button-down dress shirt and adjusted the knot of his blue and red rep tie to make himself look even more disheveled.

He slung his canvas messenger bag over one shoulder and checked his watch. Seven forty. Classes did not start at the Charles School until eight.

Twenty minutes. A chance to practice.

Soneji scanned the faculty parking lot. Two teachers were climbing the stone staircase to the verdant main campus. He spotted a tan Dodge sedan, empty, with a vacant spot next to it.

He walked in a loop until the Dodge was three rows in front of him, took another look around, saw the teachers were gone, and prepared his final stalk. Soneji imagined himself at night and studied the driver’s-side mirror until he had calculated how to come at it through a blind spot.

Then he crouched, hurried forward to the next row, and peered through the back window of the tan sedan to the rearview mirror, making certain he would not be seen. When he was sure, he checked all around once more.

Convinced he was unseen, Soneji moved quickly to the left rear corner of the empty parking space. He walked to within five feet of the sedan, raised his hand like a pistol, aimed it where a driver would be, and said, slowly and deliberately, “Bang. Bang.”

Not bad, he thought as he turned and headed toward the staircase to campus. He’d practice again later. And then he’d repeat it until he was sure.

A white Jeep Grand Wagoneer pulled into a space by the stairs.

Headmistress Jenny Wolcott.

Soneji cursed his luck. He didn’t like Wolcott. She was — well, nosy.

He pasted a plastic smile on his lips as he passed the Jeep and started to climb the stairs, hoping she’d have some rearranging to do before getting out. But her door opened behind him.

“Is that you again, Mr. Murphy, on this fine October day?” Jenny Wolcott called.

Soneji tried not to stiffen as he stopped on the stairs and looked back, smiling and thinking how very much he would like to throttle her. He said, “Me again, Headmistress. It seems Ms. Porter has a world-class flu.”

A tiny dynamo of a woman in her late forties, Wolcott had taught English before turning to administration. “What does she have you covering today?”

“‘The Lagoon,’” he said.

“Ah, Joseph Conrad. I know you went to Penn, but your degree is in computer science. You feel up to this?”

He managed a smile and said, “I reread it last night. At first the tale seems incoherent, like a dream, but then you start seeing what the author does with light and darkness when the white guy goes up the canal into the jungle lagoon, and then it becomes a nightmare when the one Malay boy abandons his brother to the raja’s men hunting them.”

“To save his dying girlfriend,” the headmistress said. “It’s a moral-quandary story that suggests many of the themes later amplified in Heart of Darkness.”

“That’s how I plan to teach it,” Soneji replied. “A sketch for them to consider before Heart of Darkness.”

“Let me know how it goes,” Wolcott said as they reached the top of the stairs. She headed toward the administration offices.

“I will,” Soneji said, and he turned toward Fowler Hall on the quadrangle, thinking once again how deeply satisfying it would be to snuff out her sanctimonious life.

The halls of Fowler were bustling with teenagers in school uniforms, clutching books, heading toward their first-period classes. Ms. Porter’s classroom was on the second floor.

Soneji loved taking on a substitute-teaching role from time to time. It was a break from his boring real job, selling heating oil. A chance to be someone else, someone who by necessity was surrounded by youth. And here at the Charles School, they were the youth of privilege, though not of super-wealth or super-power.

Still, these were elite youth, and they interested Soneji very much. So much promise to be toyed with. So much potential to—

He reached the second floor and spotted seventeen-year-old Abby Howard leaning back against the wall, laughing with Conrad Talbot, who wore his Charles School lacrosse captain jacket and stood very close to her.

Soneji had met Abby in class two days ago, and she reminded him of Joyce Adams, a freshman at Princeton who’d mysteriously vanished years ago. He had fond memories of Joyce, how long and lean she’d been, the first to sate a particular craving in him. But now, years later, the hunger was coming again. Every time he glanced at Abby, he thought of Joyce and how wonderful it would be to repeat that sweet episode.

A knot of students came down the hall, causing Soneji to take a few steps to his right. He stopped with his back almost to Conrad and Abby, close enough to overhear them.

“C’mon, Abs,” the boy said. “I’ve got my brother’s Bronco for the week.”

“You know my mom doesn’t let me go out on school nights.”

“Tomorrow morning everyone’s doing SAT prep, but we don’t need to retake them, so we don’t have to be here until noon.”

“I did score well already,” Abby said.

“You scored through the roof, and so did I. C’mon, Abs, we’ll get something to eat in Georgetown and then go to this place my brother told me about on Bear Island, off the canal bicycle path.”

“On our bikes?” she asked skeptically.

“No, in the Bronco,” he said.

“Is that, like, legal?”

“Nah. But it’s okay if you go late enough that no one’s there and you drive with just your running lights across the bridge and down the wide dirt path there. My brother’s done it a bunch of times. Bet we don’t even need the lights tonight. There’s a full moon and there’s this cutoff to a maintenance road that goes right above the river. You can see Little Falls from there. We’ll look at the falls and the moon.”

“No, we won’t,” Abby said playfully. “At least I hope not.”

“No moon-gazing, then,” Conrad said and laughed.

Soneji wanted to linger, longed to hear more. But he had a class to teach.

He moved on, thinking about the young lovers, thinking about Joyce Adams, and wondering how the genius he’d been studying might handle the situation.

Chapter 2

Washington, DC

I was a rookie homicide detective on that fine October day, standing in front of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Southeast DC, listening to organ music, and taking the first case of my new job hard.

John Sampson put his hand on my shoulder. “First one’s tough.”

Sampson and I had been friends since childhood, but he’d joined the DC Metropolitan Police Department long before me and had been a detective with their major-crimes unit for more than a year. I graduated from Johns Hopkins with a PhD in psychology and started a private practice, but recently I’d left it to join the same investigative unit as Sampson, and this was my first case.

Profiling was all the rage in law enforcement circles at the time. Though I was green as a street investigator in those days, I was experienced as a researcher. Over the course of writing my dissertation, I had interviewed hundreds of hardened murderers in prisons across the country as well as the families of their victims and even a few people who’d been attacked but had managed to survive.

Struggling with my emotions, I cleared my throat and looked at my oldest friend. “Chief Pittman said I would be expected to offer you and the other guys insight into the minds of possible perpetrators, John. But I honestly don’t know how the mind of someone who’s willing to kill like this works.”

Four nights earlier, my friend and I had had to inform Maxine Miller that the body of her fourteen-year-old son, Tony, had been found floating in the Potomac, stabbed multiple times, his face beaten to a pulp.

Sampson squeezed my shoulder. “You will, Alex. Today, it’s not all about grief. Maxine wants this to be a celebration of Tony’s life. Afterward, you can get clinical about it and point us in the right direction.”

I nodded without conviction, then saw my grandmother coming down the sidewalk, dressed in black. Nana Mama worked as a vice principal at Tony’s high school.

She and I hugged. She and Sampson hugged. “A sad, sad day,” she said.

“We’ll find his killer. We’re doing everything we can with limited resources,” John said.

Her expression hardened. “You mean because of his color, there are limited resources.”

“I’m telling you, Nana, Tony Miller won’t be forgotten. We will find who did this.”

My grandmother nodded and let her shoulders relax. “I know, John. It’s just hard when you’ve known a boy since kindergarten.”

“We understand, Nana,” I said. “How are the kids at school holding up?”

“We’re bringing in counselors,” Nana Mama said. “A lot of students will be here. He was well liked. How’s Maria doing?” she asked me, changing the subject. “What is she, six months along now?”

“That’s right. Baby’s kicking a lot, but otherwise, Maria’s great.”

“And my great-grandson?”

“Damon was toddling around the kitchen when I left.”

A hearse pulled up, followed by the funeral home’s limousine. Dressed in black, Maxine Miller got out of the back of the limo with the help of her older son, Thomas.

She saw us and walked over, smiling weakly. “Thank you for coming, Detectives. And you too, Mrs. Cross. It means a lot.”

Nana Mama hugged Maxine, and we all walked into the church. The place was packed with students, family, and community members.

Thomas and five other young men carried the casket from the hearse to the front of the church.

Father Nathan Barry, an old family friend of ours, had also known Tony Miller. He was visibly moved as he began the service. He talked about how Tony had lived in one of the toughest, most gang-infested neighborhoods in the nation’s capital, the parts the tourists rarely saw; about how Tony’s mother worked two jobs; about how he’d tried to resist the gangs and had spoken out against them.

“We don’t know who killed this brave young man,” Father Barry said. “But we know who his enemies were. We know because he told us. The gangs did this because he would not join them. The gangs did this because he was their vocal opponent.”

Sitting in the pews surrounded by almost a hundred people, I saw the priest’s stare and knew he was talking directly to me and Sampson, asking us to find Tony’s killer.

Chapter 3

At ten that evening, the full moon brilliant overhead, Gary Soneji was four vehicles behind the old red-and-black Ford Bronco carrying Conrad Talbot and Abby Howard north on the Canal Road from Georgetown through the Palisades area of the District of Columbia.

Soneji was not driving his Saab; he drove a white utility van full of junk and trash on the floor in the back.

He wore leather gloves, a brown workman’s jumpsuit, and a black ball cap pulled down low. The green contacts were in their storage case back in the Saab. The wig was packed away there as well, along with the round wire-rimmed glasses and facial prosthetics. The sometime substitute teacher was now just some doughy blond guy with a mustache.

Before donning the jumpsuit, Soneji had sat at the counter of the Georgetown café where Abby and Conrad were eating dessert. They’d had no idea who he was. Abby had walked by Soneji twice on her way to the bathroom and hadn’t given him a second glance.

The Bronco approached the traffic lights where the Chain Bridge from Virginia met the Canal Road. The light turned yellow and the Bronco sped through, leaving Soneji three cars behind as the light turned red. He watched the Bronco’s taillights vanish north on the Clara Barton Parkway.

It didn’t matter. Soneji knew exactly where they were headed. He’d looked it up in an atlas of national parks in the school library.

North of the bridge, on the Maryland side of the parkway, there was a pull-off at lock five of the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that allowed canoers and kayakers access to the Potomac River.

Bikers, hikers, National Park Service vehicles and equipment, and, evidently, the odd Bronco could cross the top of the lock and take a short bridge to Bear Island and the old towpath heading south.

Roughly a mile south on the towpath, still on Bear Island but back in the District of Columbia, was a maintenance road of sorts that ran down to a large concrete platform above the Potomac River. Little Falls and the rapids were right upstream.

Most of the traffic was heading across the Chain Bridge to Virginia; there were few cars north of the Maryland state line. Soneji checked his rearview and saw no one behind him. Headlights came at him as he neared the pull-out for lock five.

Soneji slowed, put on his blinker, lowered the visor, and let the car go by, which left the road ahead empty. He turned into the parking lot at lock five, deserted at that hour. His headlights revealed trees and the entrance to the wide top of the lock.

There were signs warning that only pedestrians, bikes, and official vehicles were allowed to cross. But there was no gate.

With no cars coming in either direction behind him, Soneji turned off his headlights, waited several seconds to let his eyes adjust, then drove slowly over the top of the lock. It was a tight squeeze, but he made it. Conrad had been right — there was more than enough light from the moon to see, and he never touched the wooden rails.

Once he reached the other side, he glanced to his left and saw headlights flickering on the parkway. He crossed the second bridge much quicker and again without touching the rails.

Soneji was on the actual towpath now, which was easily wide enough to drive on, heading south. A broken line of trees and kudzu to his left partially blocked his view of the river and the parkway beyond. Feeling safe, he took a chance and briefly flicked the van’s fog lights on and off.

He smiled. The fog lights had revealed the Bronco’s big tire tracks on the gravel and dirt ahead.

As the map had shown and as Talbot’s tracks confirmed, a maintenance road branched off from the main trail and headed at an angle across the island toward the Potomac’s west branch.

Soneji pulled over just inside the road entry. He turned the van off, sat there a moment listening to the ticking of the engine, and climbed out.

It was a cool October night. The bright moon filtered through the trees, making the way forward much clearer than he’d expected.

Walking around to the back of the van, Soneji flashed on several memories of Joyce Adams in the basement of his uncle’s old cabin in the Pine Barrens. The images were all of one flavor: her eyes lit up with terror, his feeling of absolute control over her. He craved that feeling, the power of holding someone captive.

But he had much to learn before he took that kind of chance again. Stay focused, he told himself. You’re here to study.

He opened the van’s rear doors, eager now to find out what worked and what didn’t. The mechanics. The potential pitfalls of this particular modus operandi.

Soneji turned on a small penlight and put the back end of it in his mouth. His heart rate quickened as he opened a duffel bag he’d stowed there. He pulled out heavy wool socks and a black balaclava and stuffed them in the inner pockets of the jumpsuit.

Shining the light back into the duffel, he picked up a snub-nosed .44-caliber pistol in a quart-size plastic bag and slid it deep into the front right pocket of the coverall. Soneji shut the doors quietly, turned off the light, and started down the shadowed path to the west side of the island.

He tried to see the gun not as his salvation but as a tool. Focus on the gun, he told himself. You can bring a city to its knees with a gun like this. It’s been done before.

Chapter 4

Gravel crunched beneath Gary Soneji’s sneakers. When he saw the woods open ahead, he put the wool socks on over his sneakers and the balaclava over his curly blond hair.

He took a few steps into the clearing and spotted the old Bronco about forty yards away on a concrete pad above the river. It was parked facing away from him toward Little Falls. The moonlight had turned the scene a dusky blue.

Soneji felt a thrill shoot through him.

It wasn’t a Joyce scenario, but his heart was suddenly booming. He got out the weapon, breathless at the solid weight of the pistol in his hand.

After gauging where the moon would throw his shadow and locating the blind spot of the Bronco’s side-view mirror, Soneji padded forward. He heard the low roar of the nearby rapids and the distant wail of a siren somewhere on the Virginia side of the river.

Feeling the blood pound in his temples, he watched for movement in the car as he closed the distance. At five yards, he could see the silhouettes of the jock and his girlfriend in the moonlight and the glow of the radio, which was playing the intro to Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.”

At two feet away, he saw they were both topless and entwined in a kiss.

He flashed on an image of Joyce freed of her shirt and bra, then shook the memory off.

Soneji lifted the gun. He aimed through the side window at the back of the lacrosse captain’s head, thinking beyond what the genius had done, trying for two dead with one shot. A split second before the gun went off, however, the girl moved her head.

The shot was much louder than he’d expected. Soneji looked at the spiderwebbed window and felt an overwhelming urge to flee the scene. So he did.

He took off, running back toward the spur road and into the darkened woods. He tripped and almost fell, stuck the pistol back in his pocket, and got out the penlight.

He sprinted to the back of the van, meaning to return the pistol, the balaclava, and the socks to the duffel bag, reached for the door handle, and froze.

Someone had scrawled with a finger across the two dirty back doors Bike trail, asshole. Reporting you to police.

For two or three beats, Soneji stood there, his mind unable to process the ramifications of the message. Then his survival instinct, honed over years of abuse as a child, kicked in.

He looked at the ground and saw the bike’s thin track. The bicyclist must have come from the south, seen the van, stopped to write the note, then looped right and continued north.

Soneji jumped into the van, started it, and rammed it into reverse. He spun the van around, then smashed it into drive. He figured he’d been gone no more than fifteen minutes. The bicyclist had a head start, but how much of a head start? If he’d seen the van right away, he could be across the lock and up on the parkway by now. But if the bicyclist had spotted the van a few minutes later, he might still be on the towpath. And he might have heard the gunshot.

Soneji turned on the fog lights and sped up.

For almost a minute, he felt nothing but anxiety and uncertainty. Then, four hundred yards short of the bridge off the island, he saw a bicycle taillight about a hundred yards away, blinking red, and the bright reflectors of a safety vest.

He floored the gas pedal. When he was fifty yards away and closing, the bicyclist turned, revealing a headlamp and the concerned face of a bearded man.

When Soneji was twenty-five yards from him, the man tried to pull over to his left to let Soneji pass. He was facing away from the van and had not come to a full stop when the van’s left front bumper plowed into him, launching both rider and bike off the path and into the darkness of the woods.

Chapter 5

Sampson and I were assigned to the Tony Miller murder case, but we were pretty far down in the hierarchy at Metro, so the day after Tony’s funeral, we also took a six a.m. call from Dispatch.

An angler had found two bodies in an old Ford Bronco out on Bear Island, within District lines, which made the killings Metro’s responsibility. It was misty and foggy when we got to lock five. A National Park Service vehicle was blocking the way across, its lights flashing.

A Bethesda Police cruiser was parked beside it, its lights flashing as well. A police officer was turning away angry bikers who were trying to get on the towpath heading to Georgetown.

Ranger Carrie Mulberry saw us, came over, and said, “We’ve closed off the island, and I’ve got rangers blocking access at the north and south ends. All went in by bike.”

“You been to the vehicle yourself?” Sampson asked.

Mulberry made a sour face and said in a soft voice, “After hearing what Mr. Quirk saw, we decided to hang back and not mess up any evidence for you. He says there are large vehicle tracks all over the towpath leading to the scene.”

“Mr. Quirk is the fisherman who found the bodies?”

“Dudley Quirk the Fourth,” Gene Lamont, the Bethesda officer, said to us after turning away another bicyclist. “One of those.”

“One of those?” I asked.

“One of those people who’s gotta tell you they’re the Fourth. Lack of naming imagination in the family if you ask me.”

“No one did,” Sampson said shortly. We looked over at the fisherman, who was sitting on a rock wall.

“He doesn’t hear that well,” Mulberry warned us before turning to stop a pack of four bicyclists.

We walked up to Quirk, showed him our badges.

Quirk nodded. “I don’t usually bring my hearing aids when I’m going to fish. I dropped one in the drink last year and they’re awful expensive,” he explained, then launched into his story. “I come here on my bike in the dark a couple mornings a week, and I ride over to the other side of the island, close to where you can see the falls upstream, and I fish as the sun rises.

“I got there and saw the Bronco sitting there, and I got angry because you’re not supposed to be in here with a rig, you know? I walked up and saw the bullet hole through the side window. And then the boy lying on top of the girl. I turned around and rode back here just as the ranger was pulling into the parking lot. End of story.”

“Thank you,” I said, exaggerating my lip movements to be clear.

He shrugged. “A prime fishing dawn ruined. But it could have been worse. I could have been in the car with them.”

Quirk told us he’d seen two sets of big tire tracks traveling the towpath south to the cutoff toward the west branch of the Potomac, then only the Bronco’s tracks heading down the cutoff and another vehicle’s coming back the other way.

“You an expert on tire tracks?” Sampson asked.

“Hard not to see them,” Quirk said.

We left him, went back to Ranger Mulberry. “Can you drive us to within a hundred yards of that cutoff?” I asked.

“We’ll be driving over their tracks,” she said.

“They’ll be the same tracks down there,” Sampson said. “We’ll have forensics take samples over there.”

“Your jurisdiction, your call,” the ranger said.

We crossed the lock and the bridge and headed south on the towpath. Quirk had been right — it was hard to miss the tire tracks in most places.

A few hundred yards south of the bridge, I noticed something on the towpath and said, “Stop.”

The ranger stopped. Sampson and I got out and saw shards of clear and red plastic on the path. John said, “Looks like pieces of a headlight and blinker.”

Almost as soon as he said that, we heard “Ahh” coming from the woods to our right. We went toward the sound and saw a man lying by a tree stump, a good thirty feet from the path. He was on his side, facing us, entangled in a bicycle frame that was bent like a V.

“Call an ambulance!” I shouted to the ranger and followed Sampson into the woods. The closer we got, the more blood we saw on the biker’s bearded face and the more unnatural the angles of his legs and arms looked.

“Sir, can you hear us?”

“Ahh,” he wheezed. “Hepp.”

“Help’s coming,” I said.

“Who hit you?” Sampson said.

He wheezed again. His jaw looked swollen.

“Sir?”

But he’d closed his eyes. Mulberry ran up. “Ambulance is ten minutes out. Jesus, what happened to him?”

I said, “Wild guess, I bet he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got hit by whoever was fleeing.”

John said, “We have to treat this part of the path as its own crime scene.”

“Agreed,” I said. “I think we should call for a backup team to treat this as an attempted murder, and we’ll go to the primary scene on foot.”

“You go on ahead,” the ranger said. “I’ll stay with the vic.”

Sampson said, “Once the EMTs get here and stabilize him, go through his pack there, see if he’s got identification.”

The bicyclist wheezed again. Mulberry went to him, said, “Just hang on a little bit longer and we’ll get you to a hospital.”

We left the two of them and walked in the weeds next to the towpath all the way to the cutoff. As Quirk had said, there was a single set of tracks there heading to the west fork.

It was nearly eight a.m. when we reached the opening above the river and saw the Bronco. Sampson walked toward the SUV, looking for footprints in the soil.

He stopped, squatted, and said, “These are something, but I can’t see a tread, and there’re little strands of fabric in the prints.”

“He’s wearing wool socks,” I said.

“So he can come in silent and not leave an identifiable trace,” John said. “This is premeditation.”

Sampson set his police radio on the roof, and we put on gloves and opened the Bronco’s front doors. The victims were both Caucasian, topless, and in their teens.

The male victim had been shot through the back of the head at close range. The round had blown a ragged exit hole in his forehead and hit the female victim.

There was so much blood and brain matter on her face, it was hard to tell exactly where she’d been hit — until she groaned and rolled her head to one side, revealing a large scalp wound.

“She’s alive!” I shouted.

John grabbed his radio off the roof of the Bronco. “Dispatch, this is Sampson at the one-four-zero on Bear Island. We need a medevac helicopter here right now!”

Chapter 6

Twenty minutes later, we watched the helicopter lift off the island carrying a gravely injured but very much alive seventeen-year-old Abigail Howard to the trauma team at George Washington University Hospital.

But there was no such miracle for Conrad Talbot, also seventeen. We knew who they were because we’d found his school ID in his wallet and hers in a small bookbag.

The District’s medical examiner was working on the scene, and as we waited for his report, a familiar figure emerged from the woods.

“Here we go,” Sampson sighed as the chief of detectives approached us.

George Pittman walked over while unwrapping a stick of gum. “I’m trying to quit smoking, so this is all I get.”

“Better than smoking,” I said.

Chief Pittman grunted noncommittally and chewed the gum for a moment.

“One dead, one alive?” he asked.

“Correct,” I said.

“Who are they?”

“Students at the Charles School in Alexandria,” I said.

“Private school. They come from cash, then, right?”

I squinted. “I suppose you can assume that. Why?”

“Because this is going to get a lot of media attention, that’s why,” the chief said, and chewed a few more times. Sampson and I filled him in on what we’d learned so far. I was surprised when Pittman recognized one of the kids’ names.

“The dead one, Talbot. I saw a story about him in the Post last spring. Captain of the lacrosse team. Good-looking too. And it turns out that guy on the bike is some Senate aide. We are going to need more manpower here.”

I thought about Tony Miller’s funeral the day before. Where was Pittman then? But this was only my second homicide case. I wasn’t going to turn down help.

The chief went on. “So, gentlemen, I’m bringing in Diehl and Kurtz to take the lead on this.”

Sampson grimaced. “Chief, we can—”

“No, Detective,” Pittman said flatly. “I can’t have two junior members of my team running an investigation like this. I’m sorry. The two of you will work with Diehl and Kurtz, and hopefully you’ll both learn something.”

I could tell John wanted to counter that with something snarky, but he held his tongue. Well, almost.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Do you want us to notify the families? Or should we leave it to the dynamic duo?”

The chief stopped chewing, and his eyes narrowed. “You and Cross can do it. After that, report to Diehl and Kurtz and me in my office downtown, bring us up to speed. We’ll figure out what’s next.”

“Right away, Chief,” Sampson said.

Our boss studied him a moment, searching for evidence of sarcasm. After a beat, he glanced at me and said, “I’ll wait here for Diehl and Kurtz.”

We nodded and walked away. When we were back in the trees and out of earshot, Sampson said, “You know what that was really about, right?”

“He doesn’t want two Black junior detectives being the faces of an investigation into the murder of a rich white kid and the attempted murder of the kid’s girlfriend and a Senate aide.”

“Nah,” John said. “More like he doesn’t want two Black junior detectives getting the credit if they solve the murder of a rich white kid and the attempted murder of his girlfriend and a Senate aide.”

Chapter 7

Before we drove over to Alexandria, Virginia, to meet with Conrad Talbot’s family, I got Abby Howard’s number from Dispatch and called her house. I spoke to her mother, Lisa Howard, and informed her that her daughter had been injured and was en route to GWU Hospital. I said we’d meet her at the hospital later this morning.

When Sampson and I got back in the car, he said, “FYI, you should have asked the mother not to call Conrad’s parents.”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t think of that. Does it matter? Why do you think she would?”

“Well, I’m assuming Abby’s mother knew her daughter was out with Conrad last night, and she must have called his family when her daughter didn’t come home, so maybe she’ll call them now to give them an update. But I’d rather inform the family in person. Especially in cases like this, when it’s the death of a kid with his whole life ahead of him. I see it as part of the job. Our responsibility.”

“I didn’t tell her Conrad was dead.”

“I know,” he said. “But you get the point.”

“Learning.”

“Every day.”

The Talbot family lived in a sprawling red-brick Colonial on a shaded cul-de-sac in Alexandria about two miles from the Charles School. It was ten minutes to nine when we knocked on the front door with our badges out.

We could hear raised voices inside.

A teenage girl came and looked out the side window. She was dressed all in black, from her Doc Martens to her cardigan, and wore dark eye makeup and a couple of nose rings.

I waved my badge and smiled. She rolled her eyes and opened the front door.

A man yelled, “How the hell should I know where he’d go all night in Geoff’s Bronco, Sue Ann? Am I supposed to be psychic?”

“Will, stop being dramatic! I’m on hold with the Fairfax sheriff and—”

Conrad’s mother appeared in the front hallway in a robe, her hair up in curlers, a cordless phone pressed to her ear. She took one look at us and scurried away.

The girl snorted.

“Will!” we heard the mother call. “There are two big Black men at the front door.”

“They’re the police, Mom!” the teen yelled. “They’ve got badges and everything!”

There was a brief silence, then the loud beep of the phone being clicked off. Will Talbot, a lanky blond man in his forties, came to the door. He wore tennis shorts, a Harvard Business School sweatshirt, and flip-flops. He squinted at us as we held up our badges and identified ourselves.

“Dad, I let them in,” the teenage girl said.

“And I’m glad you did,” her father said, attempting to smile at us. “What’s this all about, Officers?”

“Mr. Talbot, is there somewhere we can talk privately with you and your wife?” I asked.

The phone rang in the hallway. We heard Sue Ann Talbot answer it.

Will Talbot’s expression turned from defensive to uncertain. He looked at his daughter. “Stella, why don’t you go finish breakfast and ask Mom to come to my office for a second.” He turned to us and gestured to a room on his right. “We can talk in here.”

Before we could go into the office, his wife reappeared, looking stricken. “That was Lisa Howard. Abby’s in critical condition at GWU Hospital.”

I wished to God right then I had told Abby’s mother not to call Conrad’s family, but I nodded. “Yes, she is, ma’am.”

The implications registered with both the parents and their daughter at the same time.

“Conrad?” Will Talbot said in a voice that still held hope.

But Sue Ann knew even before I said, “I’m sorry.” Conrad’s mother looked stunned. She staggered, crashed against the wall, and slid down it, moaning, “No. No. No. No.”

Equally stunned, her husband looked past us and whispered, “Little Condor?”

Stella lost her sullen expression and started to cry, and right in front of our eyes, an innocent family crumbled and collapsed.

Chapter 8

I shifted quickly into support mode. During my years at Johns Hopkins, I’d spent as much time working in a counseling clinic as I had researching criminal behavior, so I listened in respectful silence as the Talbots, now sitting in the father’s office, poured out their grief and bewilderment.

“Car crash?” Will Talbot said between clenched teeth. “That damned piece-of-crap Bronco?”

Sampson shook his head. “I’m sorry to say your son was murdered, Mr. Talbot. Shot at close range.”

That further crushed their souls.

“Why?” Sue Ann sobbed as she held tight to Stella, who’d curled up in her arms.

“We don’t know, ma’am,” I said. “We’re trying to figure that out.”

“Where did this happen?” the father asked, his breathing choppy.

Sampson and I sat down and told him what we knew.

“What was he doing out there?” Stella asked.

“We think he took Abby there to be romantic,” I said softly.

Conrad’s mother shook her head, weeping. “And — what? Someone just walked up to them, way out on that island, and shot them?”

“Yes, ma’am,” John said. “It appears that way. One shot. Abby was wounded and is in critical condition, but it appears your son was blocking her. He slowed the bullet down and redirected it, which probably saved her life.”

That set them off all over again.

We waited until they could answer questions and then asked the most pressing ones as quickly and sensitively as we could so we’d better understand their son.

Conrad was their middle child. He’d been smart, athletic, and likable from a very young age. Schoolwork came easily to him. So did lacrosse, his first love.

Abby had entered his life the year before.

“She played lacrosse too. They were good together,” Sue Ann said, nodding. “Perfect for each other.”

“If you like that perfect type,” Stella said.

“No drugs?” Sampson asked.

The girl shook her head. “No way.”

Her father said, “They both wanted to play for Division One programs. They were focused. Conrad was so determined that he’d make it...” He choked up. “Just so unfair.”

“No enemies?” I asked.

His wife shook her head. “Conrad? He might have made a lot of people frustrated on the lacrosse field, but he didn’t have a negative bone in his body. Like Will said, people just liked our son.”

Even his sister agreed. “Conrad always just seemed to cartwheel through life. It was like nothing ever touched him.”

“He soared through it,” Will added. “That’s why I called him Condor. They’re the biggest birds on earth, built to soar.”

At that, the dead boy’s father broke down, and his wife and daughter went over to console him.

It felt like time to leave. After again expressing our condolences, we stood up.

Sue Ann said, “Can we call the rest of our family?”

Her husband said, “Conrad’s older brother, Geoff?”

“You can call anyone and everyone you want,” I said. “This is a time to be surrounded by the people who mean the most to you.”

Will Talbot asked, “When can we see him? Won’t someone have to identify him?”

“When the medical examiner’s work is complete,” Sampson said.

I said, “We’ll let you know as soon as that happens.”

“Detectives?” Stella said with misty red eyes. “Catch whoever did this.”

“Count on it,” Sampson said, and we left.

Chapter 9

“Count on it?” I asked Sampson when we were back in the car.

“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have said it that way.”

“We’re both learning.”

“Every day, brother,” Sampson said.

We talked on the drive to GWU Hospital, agreeing that unless we found a third party in a love triangle, we might be dealing with a random incident, some sort of thrill kill.

Lisa Howard and her father were in the waiting room outside the OR where surgeons were working on Abby. Abby’s father, a judge advocate general for the U.S. Marine Corps, was in the air, coming home from San Diego. We introduced ourselves and asked how they were holding up.

Lisa Howard wiped at tears. “We were doing okay until I heard about Conrad.”

“An out-and-out tragedy,” her father said. “Who does something like this?”

“And how are we going to tell Abby?”

“Trust me,” I said, “you will know how when the time is right.”

That seemed to calm the wounded girl’s mom enough for her and her father to answer our questions. Their version of Abby was the same as the Talbots’ — she was filled with life and genuinely interested in both academics and athletics.

“When she met Conrad, it was like everything clicked. She’s the only girl in a family of boys, and her brothers are athletes, but not like Conrad. Her brothers are funny, but not like Conrad. Her dad is a guy’s guy, and Conrad had him charmed, I guess you’d call it, within minutes.”

Abby’s grandfather said, “That boy had it all, but he did not lord it over people, you know? No arrogance that I saw.”

“None,” Lisa said. “We were so impressed by that.” She paused, her lip quivering.

Sampson said, “Did any other boys show interest in Abby?”

“Interest? I’m sure they did, but honestly, she only had eyes for Conrad.”

“No exes? No stalkers? Nobody angry at her?”

To our surprise, Mrs. Howard started sobbing. “Other than me?”

“Ma’am?” I said.

Lisa’s father said, “She got angry at Abby yesterday over something.”

“Laundry!” the girl’s mother said. “I got angry and yelled at her over nothing, and it could have been the last thing I ever said to her.”

“But it won’t be,” her dad said, hugging her. “You heard the surgeon before he went in. She got lucky. She’s in for a tough road, but she got lucky.”

After asking them to keep us updated on Abby’s condition, we left. It turned out that Carl Dennis, the injured Senate aide, was also at GW and also in the OR; surgeons were stabilizing his femur, tibia, ulna, and humerus fractures. In addition to the broken bones, he had sustained a head injury despite the fact that he’d been wearing a helmet.

We spoke with his wife, Kathleen, who was in the waiting room. She said her husband often used the Route 50 bicycle path to commute from their Bethesda home to Capitol Hill.

“He loved it,” she said, sniffling. “The ride gave him space.”

“He rode at night?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “He had all the gear to make you safe, and he was on a designated bike path. You don’t expect to get run over there.”

We gave her our cards and told her we’d talk to her husband when he was up to it.

Back in our squad car, I said, “Downtown? Talk to the chief and the dynamic duo?”

“We can brief them at the end of the day,” Sampson said. “Or at least after we cover all our bases. Let’s talk to Conrad’s teachers and coaches at the Charles School.”

“Abby’s too,” I said. “Maybe a teacher saw something the parents didn’t.”

“Or one of their friends or teammates did,” Sampson said.

“Seems like the best way forward.”

“We’re in the rainforest phase of the investigation. Sometimes you just got to grab a machete, pick a direction, and start chopping a path.”

“Based on clues.”

“Based on evidence. Based on the verifiable facts at hand. Those’re your best guides.”

Chapter 10

At the beginning of the noon break at the Charles School, nine members of the teaching staff filed into a conference room, several vocally irritated at having their lunches interrupted.

Jenny Wolcott, the headmistress, stood near me and Sampson, looking slightly stunned. She waited until the last teacher — a tall, balding, somewhat disheveled man with an untrimmed mustache and round glasses — had closed the door behind him.

Then she smiled grimly.

“I’m afraid I have some tough news to share. These men are homicide detectives with Metro PD,” she said, indicating me and John. “Conrad Talbot was murdered last night.”

The gasps and groans were deep and real.

“No!” a man in his thirties said. He looked like he’d been kneed in the groin and began to cry. “Jesus, this is awful.”

“Abby Howard was also gravely injured, and is currently in the ICU,” Wolcott continued.

“That poor girl,” said an older woman. “Those two were joined at the hip.”

I said, “Abby was hit by the same bullet that killed Conrad, but surgeons are telling her family that she will recover.”

Sampson held up his hands. “I know you all had Conrad and Abby in your classes. We need to know if there was any friction between them and their classmates. Or their teammates.”

“No one on the lacrosse team,” said the sobbing man.

The other teachers all shook their heads. The guy with the round glasses shrugged.

“Sir?” I said. “Was there something you noticed?”

“Not at all,” he said, avoiding my gaze. “I’m just a short-term substitute. I barely know who Abby and Conrad are, so I can’t comment on their social situations.”

“Gary’s been here for only a few days,” the headmistress explained. “Lucy Porter, the regular instructor, has been out with a nasty flu, but I’ll call her and see if she saw anything before her illness.”

Sampson said, “That would help.”

“On another note,” I said, “you might want to call in grief counselors for the student body. When do you want to share the news?”

Wolcott thought, looked at her watch, then said, “The sooner the better, I think. I don’t want rumors of this to trickle out. Schoolwide assembly in the gymnasium at one p.m., followed by early dismissal. After-school meetings and athletic practices are canceled. The entire staff is expected to be here, and I will call in counselors as soon as I can.”

I had to hand it to the headmistress — she was an organizational dynamo. Within minutes she had the entire event arranged. At a quarter to one, she made an announcement about the assembly over the PA system.

Teachers stood outside classroom buildings and directed students returning from lunch to the gymnasium. Sampson and I went in and stayed off to the side as the students funneled in and took seats on the risers.

A kid wearing a Charles School lacrosse hoodie gestured at the man who’d cried in the meeting and asked, “What’s with Coach Eric?”

“What do you mean?” asked the kid in line behind him.

“Looks like he lost his best friend. Eyes are all puffy and red, man.”

“Who the hell knows, turd-head? Keep moving.”

Sampson and I shared a glance, then turned our attention to the headmistress. She picked up a microphone, marched out to the middle of the gym, and, in a soft voice, told the six hundred students gathered there about Conrad Talbot’s death and Abby Howard’s injuries.

There were shouts of disbelief, shocked faces, students and faculty crying; the entire school banded together in collective mourning. Eventually someone shouted, “How did it happen?”

Wolcott nodded to us. We came out onto the hardwood floor, and John took the microphone. “I’m Detective Sampson. This is Detective Cross. We’re sad to tell you that Conrad and Abby were both shot.”

That news set off another eruption of disbelief and shock.

“We need your help,” Sampson said after the reaction had died down, although several girls were still crying. “We’re establishing an anonymous tip line, a phone number that will be given to you all by tomorrow morning. If you think of anything you believe we should know, do not hesitate to call and leave us a message. Please. Any one of you might have the information we need to find Conrad’s killer.”

Chapter 11

At half past one we left the school and started driving to Metro PD’s downtown Washington, DC, headquarters.

“How do we set up a tip line?” I asked.

Sampson shrugged. “They’ll handle that in the office. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope for an answer coming from the school. My gut says this was random.”

“Or there’s a psycho involved who’s running under the radar.”

“You’re Mr. Happy these days.”

“Just giving you the spectrum of possibilities.”

“Based on your PhD research, Dr. Cross?”

“That’s correct. And you probably shouldn’t refer to me as Dr. Cross.”

“Why not?” John said, taking the ramp for the Fourteenth Street Bridge. “You have a doctorate. And it adds a little mystery that might unsettle someone we’re talking to.”

“What, you think it’ll make people think I can read their minds?”

“That would help,” he said and chuckled. “Can you imagine?”

“Walking around with even more voices in my head? Pass.”

The radio squawked. It was Chief Pittman’s assistant, ordering us to meet the chief at the ME’s office. The ME had put a rush on Conrad Talbot’s autopsy.

“Meaning Chief Pittman pressured the ME to put a rush on it,” Sampson commented after I hung up.

“Could be.”

We entered the offices of the medical examiner twenty minutes later. Chief Pittman was already there waiting, along with Detectives Corina Straub Diehl and Edgar Kurtz.

“You were supposed to come to my office right after you notified the families,” Pittman growled. “The three of us were waiting.”

Sampson got that look in his eye that I knew meant he might be about to say the wrong thing, so I jumped in first. “Apologies, Chief. After we spoke to the families, we went to the Charles School so we could talk to students and staff before the media got hold of the story.”

The chief of detectives said, “The media has gotten hold of the story. They’re already teasing it for the evening news.”

Kurtz, a tree stump of a man with a shiny bald head, squinted and asked, “What did you learn about Talbot from his family and friends?”

I said, “Conrad was the all-around good guy, seemed to cartwheel and soar through life. No public beefs. Started dating Abby Howard about a year ago. It will all be in our reports by the end of the day.”

Sampson said, “One thing. Although I believe this shooting is most likely a random event, we told the student body there would be an anonymous tip line established for information about Conrad and Abby.”

Pittman’s eyebrows rose. “A tip line specifically for the school?”

We nodded.

Detective Corina Diehl said, “It’s not a bad idea. Kids might open up to us.”

Pittman’s nostrils flared as he studied us both. “Do it. Contact tech as soon as this autopsy’s done.”

At that moment, Emily Chin, the chief medical examiner, came through the autopsy suite’s double doors and said, “Okay, we’re ready for you, Chief.”

The chief of detectives looked over at me. “You’ve seen a few of these, Cross?”

“Only one so far,” I said.

“Rookie,” Kurtz said. “Just don’t leave your lunch near me.”

“Promise,” I said, and I followed Sampson and Dr. Chin through the double doors and into a hallway that reeked of antiseptic.

She took us through the first door on the left into an autopsy room. The corpse lay beneath a green cloth on a stainless-steel table.

“His clothes are there,” Chin said, gesturing to evidence bags on a counter.

“You stripped him already?” Diehl said. “We usually like to be there for that.”

“My bad,” Chin said. “Everything’s been bagged, logged, and witnessed for evidence under my signature. Clothes, wallet, two condoms — that was it.”

“Anything else we should know?” Detective Kurtz asked.

“I can only tell you what the body tells me,” the medical examiner said. She drew back the green cloth, revealing Conrad Talbot’s body. His young face looked serene from the eyebrows down, now that the gore had been cleaned away.

At the center of his forehead, an ugly exit wound gaped.

Chapter 12

The autopsy unfolded quickly, with most of the attention paid to the path the bullet had taken after it struck Conrad’s occipital protuberance, low and square at the back of his skull.

Dr. Chin noted that the bullet must have been slowed by the window it was shot through and the thick bone of Conrad’s skull. It had entered at a slightly upward angle.

Dr. Chin cut a cap of bone off the victim’s skull. Studying the brain, she said, “The bullet was fragmented, and although it slowed down considerably, it continued its forward progress. There’s a lot of trauma and blood here, but I’d say the remaining energy from the bullet fragments liquefied and cut channels through the brain at a rising angle. I’m eyeballing it at thirty degrees upward tilt. But we’ll check.”

I steeled my stomach as she removed the brain in its entirety, set it aside for further dissection, reoriented the light over the open skull, and peered inside. “Make that thirty-two degrees rise.”

I said, “Can you translate that for a new guy, Dr. Chin?”

The medical examiner said, “I believe it means your shooter was crouched and aiming slightly upward into the cab of the Bronco.”

Sampson said, “Or maybe the shooter is unfamiliar with the gun and yanks on the trigger, causing the gun barrel to rise at the shot.”

The medical examiner nodded. “That would do it as well.”

“Which means what?” Chief Pittman said impatiently.

Detective Kurtz said, “We have either a short assailant who knows how to use a gun or a taller one with limited firearms experience.”

“Doesn’t exactly limit the fish in the fish pond, does it?” Diehl said.

“Not yet.”

Chief Pittman looked frustrated when we left the autopsy suite forty minutes later. “I was hoping for more.”

“More, sir?” Detective Kurtz said.

“More to say to the media. More to tell the public so they’ll know that the Metro PD is out front on this case and making damn sure the person who took this kid’s life will be brought to justice!”

I was surprised at how worked up Pittman was. It showed me that, whatever his motives, the chief of detectives actually cared about his job and truly didn’t know what to say to the media and the public.

Sampson picked up on that too and said, “The story you should be telling, Chief, is that at the moment, given the evidence we have, we believe this to be a random act of violence.”

Detective Diehl said, “And that in any case, the Metro PD is committed to solving this crime.”

Kurtz added, “Which is why the four of us are going to go back to the crime scene and canvass the neighborhood personally. Maybe someone in one of those apartments across the parkway heard something. A gunshot that made them look out the window.”

Chief Pittman chewed on that for several moments, then nodded. “That story works. Thank you, Detectives. Good hunting.”

“You too, sir,” Diehl said and watched him until he’d left the building.

Kurtz nodded at Sampson. “That was impressive, the way you handled Pittman.”

Sampson said, “I didn’t realize I’d handled him.”

“You gotta handle all the big swinging clowns,” Diehl said. “Otherwise you’ll never get what you need when you need it to close a case.”

“Which is what we’re all about, understand?” Kurtz said. “Together, Diehl and I have forty years on the street. Neither of us give a damn about moving up, becoming more of a suit than we already are. We like being detectives — being out, asking questions. It’s what we’re good at. It’s all we want to be.”

“Same here,” Sampson said.

“I’m not happy behind a desk,” I said.

“Good,” Diehl said. “Then keep us informed, let us take the lead when it needs to be taken, and trust our decisions when we make them.”

Kurtz said, “Other than that, have at it. Run down every lead you want. You won’t be stepping on anyone’s toes as long as you tell us where you’re focusing.”

“And above all, stay on target,” Diehl said. “We are not here to chase glory. We represent the dead, and we work on their behalf.”

“Clear?” Kurtz said.

“Clear,” Sampson said.

“Loud and clear,” I said.

“We’ll see you back at the crime scene, then,” Diehl said, and they left.

When we got in our squad car, Sampson said, “Diehl and Kurtz. Who knew?”

“Learning.”

“Every day, brother.”

Chapter 13

Seven hours later, with little to show for our investigations into the Talbot murder, I pressed the buzzer to the bottom-floor flat in a small two-story house on Fourth Street.

A woman’s voice whispered, “Who’s there?”

“Tony,” I said.

“Mmm,” she said, and then, putting on a Hispanic accent, “If it’s Tony, he’s gotta sing.”

I looked around, saw no one, and sang the line from West Side Story: “‘Maria, I just met a girl named Maria.’”

She laughed. “Not bad. But you started in the middle of the song.”

“Best part.”

“Sing the next verse, and Maria will know you’re her Tony.”

“But no dancing.”

“Promise.”

So I sang, “‘I just kissed a girl named Maria!’”

The door buzzed open. I went inside and found my wife, Maria, waiting at the door, barefoot but still in her work clothes, all five foot two inches of her; she shot me the most beautiful smile. Her hands rested on her belly — she was six months pregnant with our second child.

“Babysitter just left, and Damon’s conked out,” she whispered. I bent my six-foot-two frame over and kissed her hello, then followed her inside.

I whispered, “You know, if you get shorter when we get older, I’m going to throw out my back every time we kiss.”

“One of the hurdles you have to face if you want to keep this goddess happy,” Maria said with a wink. She gestured down at her belly and laughed again.

“Bring on the bad back, baby doll. Can I look in on Damon?”

“Give it a little bit,” she said. “He woke up a while ago and just went back down again. I’m reheating dinner.”

“Your mom’s sauce?”

“Not tonight.”

I sighed. “Still cracks me up that your mother has a secret spaghetti sauce.”

Maria stirred a pot on the stove with a wooden spoon. “How many times have I told you my mother’s godmother was Sicilian?”

“I know, I know. She helped raise your mother, taught her to cook.”

“And me,” Maria said. She turned and smiled, and I fell in love all over again.

It had been like that since the beginning. Maria was a social worker at St. Anthony’s Hospital in DC, and the first time I saw her, I knew that, despite her small stature, she had one of the biggest spirits I’d ever encountered.

I’d been talking with a couple of cops in the ER at St. Anthony’s when Maria Simpson came in with Hector Munoz, a nineteen-year-old gangbanger who’d been shot in a drive-by.

Munoz had a through-and-through bullet wound to his abdomen, but he basically refused to talk to anyone. After the docs gave him morphine for the pain, he relaxed quite a bit but maintained his silence with the Metro patrol officers who were trying to interview him.

Things changed when a young woman walked over to the cops who were talking to Hector. She was wearing high heels and a snug navy-blue dress that flattered her compact gymnast’s build. Her features were elegant, as if a higher power had decided to emphasize her large almond eyes and high cheekbones.

As soon as I saw this angel, I wanted to know everything about her. I took a step toward her and saw the name on the badge she wore on a lanyard around her neck: MARIA SIMPSON.

She glanced at me shyly, nodded, then turned to Hector and rattled off a series of questions. Munoz seemed as taken by Maria’s beauty as I was. He talked to her slowly and lazily, as if he were flirting with her. She took it in stride and joked and teased information out of him.

Munoz claimed not to know who shot him. He said he’d been out for a walk with some friends and a guy on a motorcycle drove by with a gunman riding on the back.

Maria told the cops, “He says to go back to his neighborhood. Maybe someone saw the shooter. Hector just got shot and went down.”

A nurse arrived. “There’s an OR opening up for Mr. Munoz in fifteen minutes. I have to take him for prep.”

Maria smiled at all of us. “Sorry I couldn’t have been more help.”

I was honestly so dazzled to have her looking at me that I couldn’t say a word.

“Well,” she said, “tell whoever is investigating this that if they have questions, I’m available in social services.”

She walked off, and I stared dumbly after her, then felt compelled to follow.

“Excuse me, Ms. Simpson?” I managed. “I have some questions.”

She turned and looked at me. I felt like melting when she asked, “Who are you?”

“Uh, I’m Alex Cross. I have a PhD in psychology from Johns Hopkins with a focus on violent criminality and its ripple effects.”

“Nice to meet you, Alex Cross, PhD,” she said, holding out her small, delicate hand. “And I know a thing or two about the ripple effects of violent crime.”

“I bet you do,” I said. “Could I buy you a cup of coffee? Pick your brain?”

“I’ll have to take a rain check on that, I’m afraid,” she said.

Chapter 14

In our apartment now, Maria pivoted from the stove holding a plate of baked chicken thighs, rice, and broccoli spears.

“What are you smiling at, Alex Cross?” she asked in that soft, teasing voice I loved. “You’re that hungry?”

“Just remembering how you blew me off the first time I asked you out.”

“Asked me out? Blew you off?” she said in mild protest. “You asked if I wanted to grab coffee so you could pick my brain, and I said I’d take a rain check on the coffee.”

“But you didn’t say no to a glass of wine.”

“No, sir,” Maria said, sitting down as I began to eat. “I was going against my mom’s voice in my head saying, ‘You don’t know him at all.’ But I did say yes to wine.”

“Happy you did,” I said, raising my beer.

My wife clinked her glass of water against my bottle, beaming back at me.

“Did you know right away?” I knew the answer but still enjoyed hearing her reply.

“I knew that night. I’ve told you that.”

“What was it?”

“It wasn’t one thing. More like a bunch of things at once. I guess first was how you really listened to me, how intent you were about wanting to know what I thought.”

“You were an expert on some topics in psychology.”

“It was more than that, I think,” she said.

“I was shocked by your beauty.”

“Aww,” she said and smiled. “Tell me more.”

“Hector Munoz was too. He was hitting on you, and you used it against him.”

“Of course I did. The power of the feminine has always been my secret weapon.”

“Thank God,” I said and laughed. “We did talk for hours that night.”

“They kicked us out of the bar.”

“I asked you if anyone had ever told you that you were the most charming, intelligent, and beautiful woman they’d ever met.”

“Don’t forget ‘inside and out,’” she said. “That’s what you said. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re the most charming, intelligent, and beautiful woman, inside and out, that they’d ever met?’”

I acted crestfallen. “And you said, ‘Yes. A couple of times, actually.’”

She raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t being arrogant. Just truthful. And I didn’t leave you hanging there, did I?”

“No. You said, ‘But I have never been told that I was charming, intelligent, and beautiful by someone as tall, well-spoken, and handsome as you.’”

Maria laughed and ran her hands over her belly. “Good line off-the-cuff, huh?”

“Provoked the beginning of my bad back when I bent over to kiss you. That’s when I knew for certain.”

“Because your back went out, you knew you loved me?”

“No. It was when we kissed that first time. I just knew. There was before that kiss and afterward, and I had not a second of doubt about who you were.”

“Me too,” she said and blew me a kiss across the table. “To change subjects, you haven’t told me about your day.”

My smile faded. “I caught another murder case today. Kid from the Charles School in Alexandria.”

“I saw that on the news,” she said. “They think it’s a random thing?”

“Sampson and the chief are leaning that way.”

“You’re not?”

I shrugged. “I’ve just got this odd feeling that it was more than random.”

“You think the shooter knew the victim?”

“Either that or the shooter knew it was a place where young couples go.”

“And what? Took advantage of the time and place to kill a teenager in cold blood?”

“Bad either way. But I don’t know which one is right.”

“You sound frustrated.”

“I am,” I said. “I feel like I haven’t had enough police training.”

Chapter 15

Maria frowned, set down her glass. “You went through the academy, Alex. You rode patrol.”

“For two months before I was moved to major cases. There’s a lot that I don’t know about investigations, and there are times, a lot of times, where I feel like I’m playing catchup.”

“You are playing catchup,” Maria said. “But that’s to be expected. They did not hire you for your years on the street. They hired you because you have unique insight into how bad guys think, a mindset taught to you by bad guys.”

“True.”

“Give them insight, then. Do that tomorrow and the day after that.”

I laughed and saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.”

“At ease, or whatever,” she said. “And one more thing to think about.”

I held up my palms. “Swing away.”

“Use your imagination, but make sure it’s imagination rooted in experience and reality. My mother taught me that was what being creative was — learning a skill well enough that you can use your imagination to improve it.”

“Like she did with her pottery.”

“Like she did with her pottery.”

“Message heard. I will take the facts as I find them, then use my imagination to explore reasons to explain them.”

She threw her arms wide and cackled. “And the student becomes the master!”

I couldn’t help myself. I got up, went over, and kissed her.

“I want more of those,” Maria said.

“Me too. I’m going to take up yoga for my back.”

“I want to be there for that first class.”

“I thought you’d be more supportive.”

“I support anything that promotes more kissing.”

I remembered something my grandmother said after she’d met Maria and repeated it — with an addition of my own. “You really are an old soul... in a wondrous body.”

“Don’t start any of that now,” Maria said, wagging her finger as she got up from the table and cleared my plate. “Or you won’t be able to get up and chase bad guys in the morning.”

I made a mournful face, then said, “Can I at least look in on Damon?”

She looked up at the clock and nodded. “I’ll do the dishes.”

“No, you will not,” I said. “I’ll take a quick peek and be right back.”

Maria smiled. “Then I’m going to put my feet up and watch TV. Volume on low.”

I’d squirted the hinges of the door of my little boy’s room with WD-40, so it opened without a sound. A slat of weak light cut the gloom inside, revealing Damon in his crib along the far wall, his blankets kicked off, as usual.

He lay on his back, right leg over his left, left hand on his forehead, left elbow held high to form a triangle. How in God’s name Damon found the position comfortable, I didn’t know, but it was one of his favorite positions to “conk out in,” as Maria put it. I quietly crossed the room, looked down at my son, and, as I’d done every day since the miracle of his birth, gave thanks for the second-greatest gift I’d been given in this life.