Return of the Spider

Chapter 16

I tried to follow Maria’s suggestion about looking at my work from a different perspective, spending time with the cold hard facts, the proven clues, then trying to extrapolate possibilities from them.

We also searched for evidence from other sources, including the FBI. From my research days, I knew a special agent over there, Ellen Bovers, whom I had interviewed several times.

I called Ellen and asked if there was a security camera overlooking the intersection where the Chain Bridge met the Canal Road. She checked, said there were CCTV cameras on both ends of the bridge and indeed on all the other bridges connecting the District to Virginia and Maryland.

I gave her a six-hour time frame and asked if she could get me video footage from the Chain Bridge camera on the Washington side. Bovers told me she’d try.

Despite that effort and others, it wasn’t until six days after Conrad Talbot’s body was found that we started to break through. That morning, Abby Howard’s doctors gave me and Sampson the okay to ask her a few questions.

Her mother, Lisa, and her father, U.S. Marine colonel and judge advocate general Marc Howard, met us in the visitors’ area at the hospital. They had told Abby about Conrad’s death the day before, and it had not gone well.

“We should have waited,” Colonel Howard said, sighing. “That’s on me. But I didn’t want her to find out from anyone but us, you know?”

“I can appreciate that,” I said.

“Either of you detectives have kids?”

“I do,” I said. “A toddler and another one on the way. I promise we will be extra-sensitive with your daughter.”

We found Abby on her side, her back to the door, monitors beeping, her head wrapped up like a swami’s.

“Abby?” I said when I reached the foot of her bed.

“Go ’way,” she said, her voice slightly slurred due to the painkillers.

“Abby, I’m with the police. Detective Alex Cross. I’m here with Detective John Sampson. We’re trying to find whoever shot you and Conrad.”

She shrugged. “Done, no matter who did it.”

Sampson said, “You loved Conrad.”

Abby nodded, then began weeping.

I waited until her crying eased before I said, “Abby, we were the ones who found you.”

“Should have left me to die.”

I said, “In my view, you lived for a reason. I think you lived in part to help us find Conrad’s killer. You loved him — don’t you owe it to his memory to help us find out who killed him and why?”

She rolled over and glared at us. “If I could, I would. I have no idea who killed Conrad. I don’t know who would even think of it. Everyone loved Conrad. Even my dad!”

“I know they did, Abby,” Sampson said. “Conrad was one of a kind. But what we’re interested in today is what you remember from the night you were both shot.”

She shrugged, closed her eyes. “Bronco.”

“Conrad’s brother’s Bronco.”

“C loved that thing. Kept talking about it. All night.”

“And not paying attention to you?”

Abby opened her eyes, stared at me. “That’s right. How did you know that?”

“I get people,” I said. “He kept talking about the Bronco?”

“Until we, like, parked by that canal and... I don’t know.”

“Close your eyes again, Abby. Try to see yourself in the Bronco with Conrad.”

She shut her eyes, lay still for several moments, then got tense.

I’d anticipated that. “We are not here to judge you, Abby. We do not care what you and Conrad were doing. We just want to know if you saw or heard anything by the canal.”

Eyes still closed, she said, “All I can see is Conrad.”

Before I could respond, she said, “Wait. There’s a... like... a shadow.”

“Where are you seeing the shadow?”

“Out of the corner of my left eye, like, to the side.”

“In your peripheral vision?”

She nodded slightly.

“The shadow’s at the back of the SUV?” I asked.

“No, like, back left along the—”

She breathed in sharply, her face gripped by terror. “He was there,” she whispered. “I saw him there. Right by Conrad’s window.”

I glanced at Sampson. He drew circles in the air: Keep her talking. “What else, Abby?”

“I’m not believing he’s there. And then he takes another step and he’s got some kind of hood or mask on, and his arm is coming up. He has a pistol. I can see it in the moonlight. I want to scream. I open my mouth to scream and then, like... nothing.” Abby opened her eyes. “I still feel like that. Nothing. No reason to go on.”

“That’s understandable, Abby,” I said. “But you believe that Conrad loved you, correct?”

“I know Conrad loved me.”

“Good. Good. For today and tomorrow and for the next week or so, I want you to get through your day by remembering Conrad and letting his love for you fill you up. I want you to use his love to give you the strength to start getting better. Just for the next week. Okay?”

She gazed at me, tears seeping from her eyes, and nodded.

“We’ll see you soon, Abby,” I said, and we left. We thanked her parents and told them she’d been a big help.

In the elevator, Sampson said, “Where’d you get all that stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“Telling her to rely on Conrad’s love — that stuff. That from psychology school?”

I thought about it. “Not really. It just felt like the right thing to say at the time.”

I looked over and found my oldest friend studying me. “What?”

He laughed. “I’ve known you since we were nine, Alex Cross, and you’re still showing me sides of you I’ve never seen.”

“It’s called evolution, man.”

“I’ve heard of that concept,” he said as the elevator door opened. “Guess I’m one of the less evolved.”

“And judging from your tone, being one of the less evolved makes you happy.”

Sampson thought about that, then grinned. “Yeah, I guess it does. All warm and happy.”

Chapter 17

Before we left the hospital, we learned that Carl Dennis, the injured Senate aide, had been transferred to a rehab facility in Bowie, Maryland.

The less-evolved detective had a dentist appointment, so he dropped me off at Metro PD headquarters shortly after noon. Before I could get to my desk, Chief Pittman leaned out of his office and motioned me in.

“Tell me something I don’t know about Conrad Talbot,” he said once I was there.

“Abby Howard got a glimpse of the killer before he fired the gun.”

“Okay, okay, that’s a step,” Pittman said, thinking. “She remember enough to work with a sketch artist?”

“Maybe if you give her a few days. She said it was pretty dark and he was wearing a hood of some kind, but she saw the pistol in the moonlight.”

“A few days,” the chief said, staring off into space.

“Or send one now and send another in a week,” I said.

Pittman snapped his fingers. “Good thinking. She still in the hospital?”

“Yes. For two more days at least.”

“I’ll make it happen, then. Keep me posted on all new developments.”

“Absolutely,” I said, and left his office.

I went to my desk and found a small pile of faxes, almost all of them the results of various tests in the Conrad Talbot case. On top, the most recent, was an extensive report of the crime scene.

I looked at the photographs of the scene from multiple angles but spent more time studying a diagram that included the line of indistinct footprints between the cutoff road and the Bronco. There was an asterisk by the footprints. I looked down at the comments and saw: Prints show wool fabric, possibly indicating a covering pulled over assailant’s footwear to avoid leaving identifiable tread marks.

I closed my eyes for a second, trying to imagine the killer pulling woolen coverings over his shoes and a hood over his head, then sneaking out of the woods, seeing the Bronco, and creeping forward.

When I opened my eyes again, I looked at the roughly northeast angle the footprints took toward the Bronco. Why that angle? Why not come from directly behind and then slide up the side for the shot?

I went back to the photographs and saw the reason plain as day.

“He was trying to stay in the side-view mirror’s blind spot,” I mumbled, feeling excited.

I put my forehead in my hands and looked down as if I were studying the crime scene map, but then I shut my eyes. Remembering that Abby said she’d seen the shadow along the left side of the car, I imagined the killer as if I were looking at him from above, watched him angling, cutting in for the close-range shot.

Something about his position at the shot bothered me, but I didn’t know what.

I decided to try to see the map from the killer’s point of view. He was stalking, moving quietly, very precise, very sure of his steps. He stepped by the back left window and then forward to the driver’s window. He raised the gun and pointed it at the window and the back of Conrad’s head.

Abby sees him at this point. She wants to scream but can’t.

Does he see her move?

No, he’s intent on his target.

I froze him there in my mind, a split second away from pulling the trigger. This time, I tried to spin my perspective around, to see the killer as Abby had seen him — she’d been uncertain she’d seen anything at first, distracted by Conrad’s attention, and then she became sure enough to try to scream when he appeared right outside the window and raised the gun in the moonlight.

Once more, I froze the shooter in dark silhouette, facing Abby, a moment before he shot. For some reason, this triggered an image in my mind: a police sketch artist’s drawing of a man positioned just like Conrad’s killer.

I opened my eyes, frowning, trying but failing to place the image. I set that aside and continued to plow through the reports, starting with the toxicology results. They revealed that Conrad had been drinking the night he died, although his blood alcohol level was fairly low.

I decided it didn’t really matter and reached the bottom of the stack, a ballistics report on the two large bullet fragments taken out of the ceiling of the Bronco, just above the window frame on the passenger side, behind Abby.

The fragments were identified as pieces of a 246-grain .44-caliber boattail bullet, lead core with a copper jacket.

A 246-grain boattail bullet?

Wouldn’t that be heavy enough to take down a charging bear?

If it was a .44 Magnum, yes. But it couldn’t have been a Magnum; if it were, the bullet pieces would have hit Abby more directly and with more force, killing her.

No, the gun that killed the lacrosse star was a straight .44-caliber pistol.

For some reason, the unusual caliber of the pistol struck me as a throwback. An older gun, certainly. We had reference books on firearms in the office. I went to one and searched through it for .44-caliber pistols.

It took a while, but I found several, including one called the Bulldog, produced by Charter Arms. That triggered a memory from my early doctoral research: a microfiche image of the front page of the New York Daily News in early June 1977.

The headline:

Sampson came back into the office. “I hate the dentist.”

“Everyone does,” I said, getting up.

“Yeah, but I have to go back to get a root canal.”

“Let’s go talk to Pittman. I think I got something.”

Detectives Diehl and Kurtz were at their desks working on reports. As I passed them, I said, “I found something on the Talbot case. You’re going to want to hear this.”

Both senior detectives got up and followed us into the chief’s office.

I knocked on the doorjamb. Pittman looked up, saw the four of us.

“Can it wait? I’m supposed to brief the media. Unless it’s something new about Talbot’s murder?”

“As a matter of fact, it is,” I said. “But I don’t think you want to go telling the press about this just yet, Chief.”

Chief Pittman looked at me suspiciously. “Why don’t you spit out what you’ve got and let me decide what I tell the press.”

“I can show you all the similarities, the parallels, even the forty-four-caliber pistol,” I said.

“Cross,” Pittman said, drumming his fingers on his desk. “Forget the details. Give me the headline for now. I have places to be.”

“The shooter, Chief. He thinks he’s the Son of Sam.”

Chapter 18

Chief Pittman looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Senior detectives Kurtz and Diehl did as well. Even Sampson was giving me a high eyebrow.

“The Son of Sam?” Pittman said. “You mean David Berkowitz? I’m pretty sure he’s still in Attica.”

“He’s at Sullivan Correctional, actually,” I said. “And I didn’t say our killer was the Son of Sam. I said he thinks he’s the Son of Sam.”

“Gimme a break, Cross,” Diehl said.

“Okay, maybe he doesn’t think he’s Berkowitz full-time, but he is undoubtedly following the MO of the killer who terrorized New York in 1977.”

“Challenge,” Detective Kurtz said. “I have close friends who worked that case. I know a lot about it, and this does not look like Berkowitz. His first victims were not a male and a female, they were two women in a car talking.”

“One killed,” I said. “One wounded. The survivor was able to describe her assailant, just like Abby did for us.”

Pittman shook his head. “That’s not enough to say he’s a copycat Berkowitz.”

“There’s more,” I said. “The gun used to kill Conrad Talbot was a straight forty-four, probably a Charter Arms Bulldog, and the bullet was definitely the same kind that Berkowitz used, a two-hundred-and-forty-six-grain boattail.”

“Probably a Charter Arms Bulldog?” Kurtz said.

“Forensics says there was gunpowder residue on the window consistent with someone shooting a relatively inaccurate short-barreled forty-four, such as a Charter Arms Bulldog, which is what Berkowitz used.”

Diehl said, “I’m still not buying it. Next you’ll be telling us there were satanic symbols found around the car.”

“I’m sure Detective Kurtz can tell you that Berkowitz was messing with the police with those symbols,” I said. “And what he said about hearing the Labrador retriever Sam commanding his son to kill and all the satanic stuff? Not true — he didn’t hear anything. He made it up.”

Kurtz nodded. “I’ll give you that, Cross. What else you got?”

“The angle of approach. Like Berkowitz, this guy planned his approach to take advantage of the blind spot in the car’s side-view mirror.”

Pittman said, “Conrad’s killer did that?”

I nodded. “Check the diagram of his footprints.”

“Who told you Berkowitz moved so he’d be in the mirror’s blind spot?” Kurtz said.

“Berkowitz,” I said.

Sampson said, “Alex interviewed him for his PhD dissertation.”

Kurtz said, “Yeah? Is it true he got religion in the stir?”

“That’s what he claims.”

The chief said, “You’ve got to give me more than that, Cross.”

“One more thing,” I said. “The Forty-Four-Caliber Killer targeted victims in lovers’ lanes. Exactly what that pullout on the Potomac could be considered.”

Pittman sat there a few moments chewing on the evidence to support my theory, but even I could see the flaws. There were a lot of probablys in my argument.

“Still thin, Cross,” the chief said at last. “And I don’t want to set the public off by saying we’re investigating a Berkowitz wannabe in the killing of Conrad Talbot without concrete proof.”

“I don’t think we should tell the public anything at this point,” I said. “We keep it in the backs of our minds. If I’m right, there’ll be more evidence surfacing. If I’m not, nothing else will come up and I’m just an overeager rookie.”

“Smells like that flip side,” Diehl said, and she left.

Kurtz looked at me, said, “Dr. Cross,” with an ironic emphasis on the Dr., and followed Diehl out.

Sampson and I started to leave too.

“Cross,” Chief Pittman said. “Stay, please.”

When Sampson was gone and the door was shut, the chief said, “I took a huge risk, bringing you in the way I did, Cross.”

“Yes, sir, I know that, and I deeply appreciate it.”

“I felt, and feel, that this department — every big-city police department, for that matter — should have someone with your background. Someone who knows how criminals think.”

“I agree.”

“Then why is the first thing you bring me a theory with rickety support about a copycat of a guy who’s been incarcerated for over a decade? If this gets out, it’s going to spread like wildfire in the department, and there’s already enough bad will toward you among the rank and file. You don’t want to throw gas on the fire.”

I blinked several times. “I didn’t know anyone had bad will toward me.”

“It’s because you didn’t come up through the ranks, and they resent that, evidently.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I promise you it won’t happen again. Next time I come to you with a theory, it will be bombproof.”

“See that it is, Detective Cross,” Pittman said. “Dismissed.”

Chapter 19

I returned to my desk in the squad room. Detectives Corina Diehl and Edgar Kurtz glanced at me as I passed them, then went back to their work. Sampson, who sat across from me, noticed I looked shaken.

“It’s past five o’clock,” John said. “Want a beer?”

“More like need a beer,” I said. I picked up my bag and coat and followed him to the elevators, which were crowded. We didn’t have another chance to talk alone until we were outside, trying to hail a cab.

“What was that all about with the chief?” Sampson asked.

“He sounded like he had a bad case of buyer’s remorse, and I felt like I’d been called into the principal’s office,” I said quietly. “Did you know there’s resentment against me among the rank-and-file officers?”

He nodded. “Because you leapfrogged into the elite unit.”

“I get it,” I said. “But Pittman and Chief Williams approached me. I didn’t ask for this position. It was offered.”

John shrugged. “That distinction might be lost on some of the guys. But so what? And everyone gets carried away when they come up with a theory like that.”

“You think I got carried away?”

“Maybe a little. I wouldn’t have said anything to anyone until I had it nailed.”

“Anyone except me.”

“I’ll tell you when you don’t have it nailed, and I expect the same of you.”

I sighed. “Guess I do need some checks and balances.”

“We all do, brother. There’s no going it alone in modern policing. The cowboy, lone-wolf, Dirty Harry detective is in the past. We’re part of a system now.”

I nodded. “Learning.”

“Every day,” he said. “Are we ever going to find a cab?”

“Seems like a message,” I said. “Think I’ll skip the beer, take the Metro, and go home.”

“Don’t take that trip to the principal’s office too hard.”

“I’ll try not to.”

But try as I might, I was still chewing on Chief Pittman’s comments long after I’d gotten home and while I was cooking dinner: baked salmon, green beans, and egg noodles with garlic and oil, which pushed the boundaries of my culinary expertise. Maria got home from work after picking Damon up from day care.

He fast-waddled to me, and I scooped him up in my arms.

“I missed you, Daddy,” Damon whispered into my neck.

“I missed you too, little buddy,” I said, kissing the top of his head, my eyes misting. Maria took off her coat, somehow looking as fresh as she had when she’d left for work that morning.

Maria and I kissed hello, then we both kissed Damon on opposite cheeks at the same time, which got him laughing.

I asked Maria about her day. “Not bad,” she said. “Baby was kicking a lot. I took care of some follow-up calls I’d been putting off. Thanks for cooking.”

“Pretty straightforward meal.”

“I still appreciate it,” she said. “Come talk to me while I change.”

I shifted Damon to my other arm, checked the timers, saw I still had twenty minutes before dinner was done, and carried him with me down the hall.

Maria was in our closet, putting on sweatpants.

“What’s up with you?” she asked. “Lot of weight on those shoulders.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yeah. I saw the hound-dog look on your face before Damon toddled over.”

“I got a private spanking from Chief Pittman because I came up with a theory I was excited about, called the entire team into his office to tell them about it, and then realized how many holes there were in my argument.”

“Daddy spanked?” Damon said, lifting his head off my shoulder.

“Sort of,” I said.

Maria said, “Pittman will get over it. Enthusiasm never hurts.”

“In the future, I think I’ll be more, I don’t know, disciplined about who I tell things to.”

“You can be enthusiastic and disciplined. That’s not hard.”

As we went back out to the kitchen, I told Maria about the resentment toward me among many of the junior officers.

“I can see that,” she said.

“I can too. Doesn’t make it easier to deal with people watching you and wanting you to fail.”

“Well, you won’t fail.”

“You have more belief in me than I do.”

“Of course I do. I’m your wife. That’s what I’m here for. You’re the same way about me. Damon? Do you want some noodles?”

“Yes, please, Mommy,” he said as I lowered him into his high chair. He threw both hands up and crowed, “Noodles!”

Any kind of pasta was his favorite food, and when he cheered, I realized just how right my life was.

Chapter 20

Newark, Delaware

In a carrel deep in the stacks on the second floor of the University of Delaware library, Gary Soneji was engrossed in Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques by Vernon J. Geberth.

He’d read the book during his undergraduate years but had returned to study so-called equivocal-death investigations, specifically ones where detectives believed they were dealing with staged murder scenes. He wanted to know what they took into consideration beyond fetishistic posing. He wanted to know what would make them suspect that the victim had been killed elsewhere and then moved.

He found what he was looking for. One tip-off was the location of internal blood pooling in the body being contradictory to a corpse’s position at discovery. Another was fibers on the body suggesting that the victim had been wrapped in a rug or a blanket. A third was an injury on the body at odds with the manner of death.

Too many things could go wrong if you moved them, Soneji decided. You didn’t leave them to be found. You didn’t move them anywhere but to their graves. This is pleasure. But it must be done so the pleasure can last longer.

He shut the book on homicide investigations and turned his attention to an FBI manual he’d found in the stacks that focused on kidnapping investigations and included a detailed narrative about the Lindbergh-baby kidnapping case, which he read with great interest.

He’d grown up in Princeton, near where the crime had occurred, so he’d always been fascinated with that case. The idea of kidnapping — and killing — a celebrity’s child held a particular thrill for him.

Death was intensely interesting to him, and it gave him immense pleasure to see people die at his hands. He felt a fierce adrenaline rush, an exhilarating explosion of power.

Murder was fun, Soneji allowed. And strangely fulfilling. Like a glimpse into the unknown, he thought, and felt a chill go through him.

Yet there was something about an abduction that moved Soneji equally if not more. As he devoured information on the Lindbergh case, his mind flashed back to scenes from his first take.

Joyce Adams. Very pretty. Very arrogant.

That had changed quickly, hadn’t it? She’d been begging for mercy by the end.

Joyce had left the Princeton University campus to go to a local county park for an early-morning run in the woods, a fairly routine habit for the freshman co-ed. She had never emerged from those trees.

Dressed in camouflage, Soneji had ambushed her, knocked her out with injectable animal tranquilizer he’d stolen from a vet hospital he volunteered at, and bundled her into his old VW van. He’d taken her to a small house in the Pine Barrens that he’d inherited from an uncle on his mother’s side. It had a basement that suited his secret purposes perfectly, allowing him to toy and play with Joyce for several days before ending her life.

At the memory, Soneji felt warm and fuzzy inside. But also hungry for more, wanting that buzzing sense of power that had surged through him while holding Joyce against her will. He wanted it again and he wanted it soon.

The more efficient side of him, however — the side that thrived on the order and rigor of math and computer science — kept him in check. Soneji had promised himself he would finish what he’d set out to do: to study all the masters, teach himself every possible way a crime could go wrong, then resolve all the issues before he acted.

But he had to admit he’d already made two mistakes. He hadn’t stayed to put a second shot in Abby, and she’d lived, and he hadn’t finished off the guy on the bike, though he was evidently critically injured. On a positive note, Soneji had been reading the newspaper stories about the shooting closely and had seen no mention of a white van.

Soneji told himself he was okay. Abby and the bicyclist were alive, but he was okay. This was no time to quit. He would just have to do better next time.

He closed the FBI manual on kidnap investigations and realized that it had been more than a week since he’d taken the shot at Conrad Talbot — almost ten days, actually. It was time to practice becoming David Berkowitz once again.

Chapter 21

Soneji checked his watch. Three thirty p.m. He’d gotten to the library around eleven a.m.

He did some calculations in his head and decided to visit his secret little cabin in the Pine Barrens, making some important client visits on the way. He could check the place, take a few shots with the Bulldog, and be hunting for targets by sundown.

He picked up his briefcase, left the library, and headed to the parking lot and his black Saab. As he got in, his big Motorola car phone started ringing. Marty Kasajian, his boss and brother-in-law, had bought the insanely expensive device for him.

Soneji answered, figuring it was Marty, but instead he heard Meredith Kasajian Murphy’s voice say coldly, “Hello, Gary. It’s your wife.”

“Missy?” he said, frowning. “You know this phone is only for work and emergencies.”

“You didn’t call last night, Gary,” Missy said.

“I’m sorry. I was beat after a long day making cold calls and just crashed when I hit the motel. I know I should have called, but the pay phone there was out.”

“You could have used the car phone.”

“And have Marty explode about the charges? Do you know how much this thing costs a minute?”

Missy said, “Marty can afford it for my peace of mind.”

“I hope you’ll be the one telling him that.”

There was a silence, then his wife said, “I’ll do that. When are you coming home? Roni and I want to know.”

Roni was their two-year-old daughter. Wanting to pound the heel of his hand against the side of his head, he replied, “As soon as I make monthly quota on new business, probably dinnertime on Friday.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I’m going to tell Marty I want you home Friday whether you make quota or not.”

“Good luck with that,” Soneji said and hung up, kind of wishing Missy and Marty were in front of him right now so he could slap his bitch wife silly and kick his dickhead brother-in-law in the nuts.

Marty Kasajian was the kind of guy who’d been born on third base and believed he’d hit a triple. He’d inherited his family’s booming heating oil and propane company but acted like he was the big entrepreneur who’d built the place. He’d given Soneji a job, not in computers, but as a traveling salesman, drumming up business along the middle Atlantic Seaboard.

As jobs went, it wasn’t bad. The pay was more than decent. And it allowed him chunks of time to play hooky and try out this private-school-teacher identity. He could spend his days around elite kids, studying them and fantasizing about kidnapping them.

But at the moment, he had more important things to think about. Like where to hunt his next victims.

Chapter 22

The morning after my ill-fated meeting with Pittman, Kurtz, and Diehl, John Sampson and I were called to a homicide in Fort Circle Park in Southeast Washington, DC.

A jogger had come upon a dead male on one of the park’s interior paths.

We found the body beside the path, arms circling the trunk of an oak tree, wrists tied together with wire that had cut deeply into the skin.

It had rained overnight. The skies were still threatening. We stood back while patrol officers erected canopies over the scene, then moved closer.

“No prints in the mud except the runner’s,” Sampson said.

“Rained hard last night,” I said, moving around the tree so I could see the victim more clearly.

The left side of his face showed him to be young, in his mid-teens, and of mixed race. Hispanic and Black would be my guess.

I kept moving and saw that the right side of his face, against the tree trunk, was battered and grossly swollen. A rag had been stuffed in his mouth.

I took a few more steps and saw that his back had been struck repeatedly with something long and narrow and with such force that his bloody T-shirt had ripped, showing livid welts and torn flesh beneath.

“Jesus,” I said, turning away, nauseated.

“Take a few breaths,” Sampson said. “I’ll check his pockets.”

I walked several yards away and leaned against a tree, swallowing at the aluminum taste building at the back of my throat.

“Nothing,” Sampson said a minute later. “Looks like he was cleaned out.”

Emily Chin, the chief medical examiner, showed up shortly after I’d gotten my gut under control enough to return to the scene.

“You’re taking field calls now, Doc?” Sampson said.

“Two deputies are on vacation, and we’re understaffed, so here I am,” Chin said.

I said, “Looks like the right side of his head was beaten against the tree after his back was slashed by something.”

Chin took multiple photographs of the scene before the criminology team showed up. Then she moved to examine the body, Dictaphone in hand. She spoke into the recorder loud enough for us to hear.

“Victim is male, mixed race, appears to be fifteen or sixteen, with facial skin split raggedly in several places, probably from being hit against the tree trunk,” Chin said. She got out a flashlight and bent over to look at his back. “Posterior torso has been lashed in multiple places.”

I waited until Chin had clicked off her recorder. “Can you tell what was used?” I asked.

“Not leather,” she said. “More like a long thin rod or a dowel of some kind.”

Sampson said, “Like something you’d use to cane someone?”

Chin pocketed the flashlight. “I’ll have to look at the tissue under a magnifying glass, but yes, it looks like a caning to me.”

“He die from the head trauma?” I asked.

“We’ll know more after the autopsy, but I’d say he was rendered unconscious from the head blows. When he collapsed, his weight caused the wires to slice into his wrists. Rain washed the blood down the trunk and into the leaves.”

From his body temperature, she determined he’d died about five hours before the jogger found him, so around one in the morning.

At this point, a very attractive young Black woman in jeans, hiking boots, and a black windbreaker came trotting down the path toward us.

Sampson said, “Stop right there, ma’am.”

She stopped, breathing hard, and held up a badge. “I’m Officer Nancy Donovan, Metro PD. I work gangs undercover, and when I heard there was a kid found in the park, I—” Donovan saw the body hanging off the tree trunk. “Can I take a look at him?”

I said, “He’s pretty beat up, but have at it.”

Donovan gave me a wan smile, walked past us in an arc around the crime scene, and stopped to gaze at the good side of the victim’s face. She shook her head.

“I know him,” she said. “Shay Mansion. Lives in Grant Park. Dropped out of Woodson last year after two trips to juvie. I’ve seen him multiple times in the past six months with members of Los Lobos Rojos — the Red Wolves. He was a recruit.”

Chapter 23

Sampson knew all about the Red Wolves, but I was not up to speed on the nuances of gang activity in the nation’s capital beyond what I’d learned in the case of Tony Miller, the boy who’d been found in the Potomac.

While John continued to take notes on the scene, Nancy Donovan, the undercover officer, and I went to a nearby coffee shop, where we took a back table and she gave me a primer on the situation.

“At the moment there are six or seven gangs in and around the edges of the District,” Donovan said. “But the ones that matter these days are Los Lobos Rojos, a Latin gang, and LMC Fifty-One, who are mostly Haitian refugees.”

“Rivals?”

“Bitter.”

“Are LMC members capable of this kind of murder?” I asked.

“They didn’t used to be, but lately their leader, Patrice Prince, has gotten bolder and more ruthless. Now I think he or his captains could do something this violent.”

Prince, she said, was the son and grandson of members of the notorious Tonton Macoute, the brutal death squad feared by generations of Haitians. He was orphaned at fourteen and had come to the United States as a refugee when he was sixteen.

He soon joined La Main Cachée — the Hidden Hand — an organized-crime group in Miami. He’d been investigated and jailed briefly twice, suspected of involvement in several killings during a gang war there, but he was never convicted.

“The heat got too much, so about six years ago Prince convinced his LMC brothers to let him come north and set up a second operation.”

“So the Fifty-One refers to the District of Columbia, the so-called fifty-first state.”

“And the surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia.” When Prince first came north, she said, he had used proxies instead of appearing as the front man in the emerging gang. He functioned behind the scenes, building a growing network of disgruntled youth, his organization’s hands reaching into narcotics, armed robbery, illegal gambling, and human trafficking.

“But about eighteen months ago,” Donovan said, “the Red Wolves started feeling like their turf was being stepped on, and it got ugly from there. Los Lobos killed the two proxy front men of LMC Fifty-One about nine months ago, and Prince had no choice but to step out. Yeah, I could see Prince ordering this to make a statement.”

“Any idea where we can find Mr. Prince?”

Donovan chewed at the inside of her lip before meeting my eyes. “Look, I know who you are, Detective Cross, and I have no grudge against you. I think they were right to bring someone like you onto major cases like this.”

I smiled. “Thank you, Officer Donovan. I appreciate that.”

“But at the same time, I’ve been undercover almost fourteen months. I do know where Prince is, but if I tell you, suspicion will fall on a specific circle of people as the leak.”

“Including you?”

She shrugged. “I’d be considered on the perimeter of it, but Prince is not stupid.”

“I understand your situation, but this is a homicide investigation.”

Donovan held up her hands. “I get it. Tell you what — Prince moves around a lot. The second I have a line on him out in a public place, which happens often enough, I’ll notify you.”

“What about Los Lobos?”

“I’ll give you everything I know,” she said.

Donovan told me that she believed the leader of the Red Wolves — behind the scenes, anyway — was Guillermo Costa, a forty-something ex-con who owned a body shop in Bowie, Maryland.

“Costa had trouble as a juvie, involvement in the precursor gang to Los Lobos, then he turned his life around for quite a while,” the undercover officer said. “Became a Marine. Made recon, then got court-martialed for stealing and selling weapons. Did four years in Leavenworth. Came out, joined Los Lobos, and got arrested for grand theft auto. Did another three years hard time but learned auto-body repair, a skill he used to start his business.

“Speaking of, it’s unclear where the money came from to buy the place,” she went on. “I’ll give you the address.”

I handed her my notepad. “How does it work? He comes into the city to run the gang?”

The officer shook her head as she wrote. “Costa never leaves Bowie, from what I understand. The Red Wolves go to him. They talk in secret and leave.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Prince studies him, has him watched. Word gets around.”

“In French?”

“Haitian Creole. My grandmother was from Haiti. She raised me bilingual.”

“You’re one surprise after another.”

She grinned and handed me back my notebook. “Thank you. Any help you need, you can page me at the number I wrote under Costa’s address. I’ll try to get back to you within the hour.”

Donovan got up and turned to leave. I called after her, “Officer?”

“Detective?” she said, looking back.

“Be careful out there.”

“I always watch my six.”

Chapter 24

Three hours later, after wrapping up the crime scene, Sampson and I decided to pay Guillermo Costa a visit at his auto-body shop in Bowie, Maryland, about nine miles from where Shay Mansion had been found.

Our thinking was we’d start with Costa and see if he could tell us anything about Mansion, Los Lobos Rojos, LMC 51, or Patrice Prince before we did the heavy deed of informing yet another parent that their son had died. First, however, Sampson found a pay phone and called the Woodson High office, trying to track down Shay Mansion’s parents.

I parked but kept the car running, waiting for him. I had WTOP, all-news AM radio, playing softly in the background, an old habit.

“Yes, I know Shay is no longer a student,” John said, then listened. “Expelled, right. But a last address for him would be very helpful.”

He looked at me in despair and then brightened. “Great. Okay.”

Sampson scribbled something, nodded. “You’ve been a great help.”

He hung up and slid into the car, and we headed out. “Rosalina Mansion. Shay’s mom. We’ve got an address and a home number, but the Woodson secretary says the mom’s a nurse’s aide. Husband died a few years back. She works crazy hours, two jobs, never home. Probably part of the reason the kid got involved with Lobos Rojos.”

On the radio, I heard: “Prince George’s County Sheriff’s investigators are said to be converging on a homicide scene in Beltsville this morning. WTOP’s Bill Johnson is there. Bill, what can you tell us?”

Before the reporter could reply, Dispatch called on our police radio, so I turned the broadcast off.

“Roger, Dispatch, this is Sampson.”

“Call Chief Pittman.”

“Roger that.” Sampson sighed, shrugged, and we found another pay phone and pulled over again. This time we both got out of the car and huddled over the pay phone’s receiver so we could talk to him together. Pittman answered on the second ring.

“I heard it’s damn gruesome, this kid in the park,” the chief said.

“It’s not pretty, sir,” said Sampson.

I said, “Downright brutal if you ask me, Chief.”

“Motive?”

Sampson said, “We’re thinking it might be gang-related. According to intel, Mansion was a recruit to Los Lobos Rojos, so this could be a statement killing by rival gang LMC Fifty-One and its leader, Patrice Prince.”

“I saw a report on Prince. Any link to the other kid, the one in the Potomac?”

“Tony Miller,” I said. “Possibly, but I haven’t looked into it yet.”

Sampson said, “Sorry, sir, but we haven’t had much time to devote to the Miller case because of our focus on—”

“Conrad Talbot,” Pittman said. “And that’s right where I wanted your attention and still do. That kid’s death is priority one. It takes precedence. Even over this case.”

“Because Talbot’s white, sir?” I couldn’t help asking.

“No, and don’t play the damn race card with me, Cross. Talbot gets attention because he was a first-team, all-state, Division One — bound athlete who was also smart enough to get into several Ivy League schools.”

“Exactly my—”

“Cross,” Pittman said, cutting me off, “you’re not letting me speak. I want to be clear, okay?”

Sampson slapped me on the upper arm.

“Okay, Chief.”

“Black, Latino, Asian, white, whatever — a kid with those credentials who was killed like that? I’m sorry, but we are giving his murder investigation priority over gangbanger kids who got caught up in a turf war. If that sticks in your craw, swallow hard, because my stand on that is not changing. Clear?”

“Clear, Chief,” Sampson said.

I said, “But also, one last thing, Chief — I don’t know much about Shay Mansion at this point, but I know Tony Miller was a hell of a student. My grandmother knew him and thought he was brilliant, capable of getting into a great school.”

There was a pause, after which Pittman said in a calmer tone, “I’m not telling you to ignore Miller’s death, Cross. Or this kid’s. I expect you to work them too. But you’ve got to learn that as a big-city homicide detective, you’ve got six to eight burners on your stove, and some cases are front burner and others are back burner.”

He hung up.

I said, “I hate when he does that.”

“I do too, especially after he’s said something that makes total sense.”

I frowned, and we got back in the car again. “About prioritizing the Talbot case?”

“About there being a lot of cases you’ve got to keep track of all at once. It takes time to learn how to do that and not lose momentum on any of them.”

“I can see that,” I said. “Still learning.”

“Always,” Sampson said.

Chapter 25

Costa’s bona fide auto-body and Engine Repair took up several lots and was spotlessly maintained, in contrast to a lot of similar places I’d been. No oil stains. No auto parts scattered about. The place was well cared for.

Indeed, when we pulled up, a ripped, heavily tatted, shaved-head dude in ironed black jeans, a black T-shirt, and polished black tactical boots was spraying down the sidewalk and pavement out front with a pressure hose. I recognized Costa from his booking photo. He turned off the spigot when we climbed out.

Sampson said, “Guillermo Costa?”

Costa took one look at us, smiled sourly, shook his head, and said in a thick accent, “I don’t know what you’re doing here, man, but Costa is clean. Costa’s whole life has been clean since he did his time.”

“Nice clean place,” I said agreeably, holding out my badge and ID. John did the same.

Costa was in his early forties and built like a welterweight. When he dropped the hose and came toward us, his movements were fluid and balanced, like a cat’s.

Sampson and I each had several inches and thirty pounds on him, but Costa was jacked, and his file said he had Special Forces training. Both of us were on high alert as he came closer. He stopped to peer at our credentials from three feet away.

“Metro Homicide,” he said, taking a step back, palms up. “Detectives Cross and Sampson. What’s this about?”

Sampson said, “The body of a sixteen-year-old male was found in a park not far from here. He’d been tied to a tree with wire and lashed. We have it on good authority that the kid was connected to Los Lobos Rojos.”

Costa went unreadable, shook his head, and took another step back. “Man, Costa told you, he is clean. Long time clean.” He waved his hand at the auto shop. “Do you think Costa would take any chance of losing this? After working so hard to build his business and get his life back? No, man, Guillermo the Marine and Guillermo the gangbanger, he left both behind the day he started his last stretch. When he got out, he was Costa, and the Red Wolves knew this new person wasn’t ever coming back to the street. Costa was a different person. He has no beef with them, and they have no beef with Costa.”

I said, “Quit talking about yourself in the third person. It’s really annoying.”

Costa looked like he wanted to deck me. “I am clean. We are talking three different people is all.”

Sampson said, “Right, and yet high-ranking members of the gang are known to frequent your business.”

“As customers, sure. We fix cars here. We are good at it. Some of those people know me from the old days, but we do not see each other as close friends anymore. They have to pay me for what I am skilled at. End of story.”

I said, “So you’ve never heard of Shay Mansion?”

Ripped welterweight or not, changed man or not, Costa looked like he’d gotten a solid punch to the solar plexus. His stony expression cracked, and he gazed at us in bewilderment.

“Shay?” he said softly.

Sampson said, “You knew him, Mr. Costa?”

“You’re sure it’s Shay Mansion?”

I said, “We have a preliminary ID. We’re leaving here to contact his mother.”

“Rosalina,” he said, and all his defensive bluster seeped away. “My cousin. Oh, Jesus. She don’t know?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Jesus,” he said, wiping away tears with his forearm. “It’s gonna...”

“What?” Sampson said.

“Rip her up. She lost her husband back five years ago. Shay’s her only kid.”

“You two close?”

He shrugged. “Growing up, we were. Our mothers were sisters, and Rosalina and I are almost the same age. We still talk now and then. I help her when I can.”

I said, “She say anything about Shay joining Los Lobos?”

He tightened ever so slightly. “Nah, nah, that I would remember. But you know what? If he was Los Lobos, you don’t want to be talking to me or Rosalina. You want to be talking to that son of a bitch Patrice Prince.”

“From LMC Fifty-One.”

“Damn straight LMC Fifty-One. Bloodthirsty Haitian. Don’t give a damn about life.”

Sampson said, “Wait a second. I thought you said Costa’s not a part of a gang anymore.”

Costa looked like he wanted to punch John now, which would not be a good idea. Built like a brick wall, my friend and partner was six nine, weighed about two fifty, and was capable of sudden and devastating violence when required.

“I am not a part of gang life, but I have ears,” Costa replied evenly.

I said, “What have you heard?”

“You’ll let me go with you to tell my cousin her son is dead?”

I glanced at Sampson, who said, “It’s not a bad idea.”

“Okay,” I said. “What do you know about Patrice Prince?”

“A lot,” he said. “Come in my office and I’ll tell you.”

Chapter 26

I trudged home that evening, feeling emotionally drained but happy that we’d made such strong progress in the fourteen hours since we’d caught the Shay Mansion homicide investigation.

Sampson and I were not entirely sure that Guillermo Costa was walking the straight and narrow. Still, I thought, the guy sure knows a lot about—

All thoughts of the ex-con, the murdered boy, and his shattered mother fled as I reached the front door and smelled a familiar aroma. Before going in, I closed my eyes to savor the glorious scents pouring out. As I opened the door, the river of smells became a wave and then a flood that carried me straight into the kitchen, where Maria was stirring a pot on the stove.

“Daddy!” Damon called from his high chair. His face held evidence of every item he’d eaten, from applesauce to ground meat to squash.

“Damon!” I cried. I managed to kiss him without getting the remnants of his meal on my chin and went over to Maria. I looked into the simmering pot, put my hand over my heart, and moaned. “Your mother’s secret spaghetti sauce. Welcome back, old friend. Welcome back.”

“Hey, what about me?” Maria said, feigning hurt.

“I am always about you.”

“Is that right?” She set down her spoon and embraced me, her belly bumping mine.

“Always,” I said. “I am here to protect my queen and give her what she needs.”

Maria squeezed me. “And I’m here for you in every way I can think of, Alex.”

“Mommy?” Damon said.

“Hold on, kiddo,” she said, peering up at me. “Long day for you?”

“Tough day,” I said.

“Tell me what you can while we eat.”

“Mommy? I finish!”

“Okay, baby. Peaches now,” she told Damon, breaking our embrace. In short order, Maria had diced peaches in Damon’s bowl, and our pasta was steaming on plates on the table. My boy loved peaches and wolfed them down, ignoring us.

I took a bite of the spaghetti with Maria’s mom’s incredible secret sauce and groaned with pleasure. “What is it? What is it that makes it so good?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“I’m your husband. Your soulmate. You won’t share the secret with me?”

Maria set down her fork and gazed at me with a dead-serious expression. “If I gave you the recipe, you could leave me.”

“What? I would never leave you.”

“But if you knew the secrets of the sauce, you could.”

“Are you telling me you think that’s all that’s keeping us together?”

“Not even close. The sauce is just part of the...”

“What?”

I could tell she was trying not to laugh, but then she did and flashed her eyes in that way that always melted me. “The sauce is part of the spell I weave over you.”

“You are mesmerizing,” I said. “And you do weave a spell over me.”

“Good,” she said. “So forget about how the sauce is made and how the spell is cast and just enjoy.”

Chapter 27

I loved every bite of that spaghetti and took several trips back to the stove for extra spoonfuls of the sauce while describing my day. I left out the goriest details of the Mansion crime scene but explained that we’d gotten deep insight into a Haitian gang from a guy who was rumored to be the leader of an opposing gang, although he claimed he wasn’t.

“LMC Fifty-One and Los Lobos Rojos?” Maria said. She lifted Damon out of his high chair and cleaned his face with a washcloth.

“You know them?”

“They get shot and stabbed a lot. End up in the ER and then the operating room. It’s my job to find them aftercare if they’re not heading to jail.”

“What do you know about Guillermo Costa?”

She shrugged and put down Damon; he giggled and ran over to his toys in the living room. “Honestly, I never heard of him. Why?”

“Long story,” I said. “What about Patrice Prince?”

Despite her small stature, my wife was rarely intimidated by anyone. I’d seen her walk up to dangerous men who outweighed her by a hundred pounds and quickly put them under her spell. But when I mentioned Prince’s name, Maria lost color and sat down in her chair. “That is one scary person, Alex.”

“You know him?”

A sour expression crossed her face. “I met Prince once. Last year.”

Maria said one of Prince’s young cousins was beaten and left for dead in an alley in Southeast. The gang leader had come to the hospital.

“He was very polished,” she said. “Nicely dressed. Expensive clothes, but not flashy. His English was very good. He was polite and soft-spoken, but...”

“What?”

She looked at me, the memory of a repellent experience etched on her face. “Alex, you know I’ve encountered more than my fair share of bad people at work.”

I nodded.

“Prince?” she continued with the barest of shivers. “He had the deadest eyes I have ever seen. No empathy. No compassion. No recognition. No soul. I mean, I felt like I was a few feet away from someone who wasn’t entirely human. He seemed reptilian to me, and I doubt he saw me as an equal.”

“He probably didn’t. Sounds like antisocial personality disorder.”

“I could see that,” Maria said, glancing over at Damon, who was playing with his blocks. “And now I don’t want to talk about that guy anymore other than to say I hope you find him doing something bad enough that you can put him in a cage for a long time.”

I got up to clear the plates. “If he’s behind the murder, that’s my plan.”

“Be very, very careful around him, Alex,” she said. “I’m telling you, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who radiated such a sense of threat.”

“I hear you loud and clear,” I said, and went to the sink with the plates.

On an impulse born of old habit, I reached over and turned on the little portable radio we had on the counter. WTOP all-news radio came on. The announcer finished the local forecast and began a recap of the day’s events.

“The Prince George’s County Sheriff investigators are still gathering evidence in the Beltsville double homicide of two young medical technicians. Twenty-three-year-old Selena DeMille and twenty-two-year-old Alice Ways were found this morning in Ms. DeMille’s vehicle.

“Sources say that the two women appeared to have been approached while they were parked on a secluded stretch of road and were shot multiple times at close range. Investigators concede they have very few leads and are asking the public to come forward with any information regarding the—”

Maria turned the radio off and fixed me with her irresistible smile. “Less attention on crime, more attention on the spell caster and our boy.”

But I couldn’t concentrate after hearing that another pair of victims had been shot while sitting in a parked car. It had to be related to the Talbot case. I felt pulled in multiple directions, but I quickly decided on the right one.

I put my hands on my wife’s shoulders. “Maria, I love you. I adore you and Damon. But you’ll have to hold that thought. I promise all attention will be on the spell caster and our boy tomorrow night.”

I kissed her and walked to the front door.

“Where are you going?” she asked in frustration.

“Beltsville,” I said, and left.

Chapter 28

At ten o’clock the following morning, I was under fire from multiple sides.

Maria had given me the cold shoulder at breakfast and left early to take Damon to day care. When I arrived at the office, Sampson was out getting his root canal, and I had a note on my desk from Chief Pittman ordering me to go see him as soon as I got in.

I knocked on the chief’s doorjamb a few moments later. Pittman looked up from some paperwork, his face expressionless.

“Come in, Cross,” he said. “Shut the door behind you.”

I did, getting the distinct feeling I was headed to the principal’s office again.

“I’m thinking I made a mistake in hiring you, bringing you on this way,” Pittman said.

“Chief?” I said, feeling a surge of fear that he was about to fire me.

Face flushed, the chief of detectives said, “You do understand the concept of jurisdiction, don’t you? Or don’t they teach that at the police academy or in psychology PhD programs?”

“I understand the concept, sir.”

He glared, then slammed his hand on the documents on his desk, sending several flying. “Then why in God’s name did you try to take over someone else’s crime scene last night?”

“I–I didn’t try to take it over,” I said, stammering. “I was just—”

“You were just telling detectives in another jurisdiction what to do and how they should do it! I got a goddamned call about you at six thirty this morning from the Prince George’s County sheriff himself! He’s seriously pissed, and I don’t blame him.”

I did not know what to say. I figured Chief Pittman didn’t really want to hear my explanation, and anything I said to defend myself would likely make him even angrier.

I puffed out my cheeks, blew the air out, and said, “I understand your concern, Chief. I just get carried away trying to make things happen in cases I care about deeply. Like the Talbot case.”

When Pittman spoke again, his voice was several decibels lower. “The Talbot case is only your second case, Cross. You’ve been on the team less than a month. And now it’s not just the younger officers in the department who are upset with you. I’ve got senior detectives and top brass wondering whether I hired a loose cannon.”

“You didn’t. I promise you, Chief. I... I was just thinking that—”

“I don’t care what you were thinking, Cross. You’re still on probation. One more stunt like last night and you’re out. Got that? Dismissed.”

I went back to my desk feeling like I’d blown everything I’d ever dreamed of, sensing that all eyes in the squad room were on me, and wishing I’d never gone out the door last night, that I’d stayed home under the spell of Maria and Damon.

When I sat down, I found an envelope from Ellen Bovers at the FBI containing a videocassette with the footage I’d requested from the Chain Bridge camera on the DC side of Canal Street. I could have gone into the conference room and watched it on the video player there, but instead, I stewed, unable to stop thinking about my talk with Chief Pittman. It made me ill.

From the time I decided to get serious about academics in high school, I had prided myself on excellence in the classroom, in the clinic, and in my research. I had made a habit of not only succeeding in those worlds but flourishing in them.

I am not flourishing either here or at home these days, I thought. I am flailing.

Rather than giving in to a growing sense of confusion, doubt, and fear that I was not enough, that I was not a detective who understood the criminal mind better than most, I called an all-stop to the rush of my thoughts.

Martha Warner, my adviser and clinical professor at Johns Hopkins, once told me that when confused, fearful, or upset, one should stop and recognize that the emotional crosscurrents are often created by not facing up to one’s own role in whatever the crisis at hand is.

Reflect on yourself, not others, Martha always said. See clearly what error you might have made, what hurt you might have caused, and take responsibility for it. Your confusion and fear will fade away.

So I did that for quite a while. I saw how I’d left Maria when she needed me, left Damon when he needed me. I went to the police lines at the Beltsville shooting and asked the detectives who’d been there all day to let me in to look, and when they refused, I told them about the Talbot shooting and how I thought there might be a David Berkowitz copycat on the loose.

Matthew Brady, the lead detective on the case, looked at me like I had two heads and ordered me to leave the area.

“Fine,” I’d said. “Don’t believe me, Detective. But please call me when your ballistics report comes in.”

Sitting there in the conference room, I remembered Brady, a lumbering guy in his fifties with a cynical, seen-it-all attitude, walking away from me with the middle finger of his right hand held high.

Chapter 29

When John Sampson returned to the office with a thick tongue and a slightly swollen left jaw, I was in the conference room watching grainy video footage of the intersection of the Chain Bridge and Canal Street taken on the night of Talbot’s murder.

I was trying not think about my — to put it frankly — arrogance of the night before. I was going back to basics and humbly doing the raw legwork. I felt that was my best chance to break the Talbot case and get back in Pittman’s good graces.

“Hey, shunshine, why the long face?” John slurred as he came into the conference room. “I’m the one with a mouthful of Novocain.”

“I’m not going there right now.” I waved off his comment. “My friend at the FBI came through with CCTV footage of the bridge intersection and Canal where it meets the Clara Barton on the night Talbot was killed.”

“Anything?”

“The camera must be mounted over the top of the traffic light facing the bridge because the Bronco passes under it, gunning through a yellow light, at ten twelve in the evening,” I said, playing the sequence.

We watched as a Ford Explorer and a Volkswagen Scirocco took a left onto the bridge when the light on Canal changed. The third vehicle in line, a dingy white Ford Econoline van with tinted windows, continued on in the northbound lane, followed shortly after by a Dodge pickup and a Toyota Corolla. Then three cars came across the bridge from Virginia. Two went north into Maryland; one headed south toward Georgetown.

I stopped the tape and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“Commonalities,” Sampson said. “The ME is putting time of death around ten thirty p.m. Let it play for a while.”

I sat back and watched the intersection footage for almost twenty minutes before spotting a dingy white van with its high beams on heading south toward Canal Street.

I gave a little whoop, stopped the player, rewound the tape several seconds, and froze it on the image of the van just as it entered the intersection. “Looks like the same van to me.”

“It does to me too,” Sampson said, moving closer to the screen. “Tinted side windows. No passenger. Driver’s got the visor down, blocking his face. And the bulbs over the license plates are out. But could be old Pennsylvania plates, the blue on yellow ones with the keystone in the middle?”

I moved closer too. “I think so. And look at the front left headlight. Is the cover busted?”

“Something’s off about it,” he agreed. “We’ll get someone to really blow up the image.”

“If this is the van that hit Carl Dennis, we’ve placed him within—”

My pager went off. A Maryland number.

“Rewind and check if the van’s headlights were intact on its first trip through the intersection while I make this call,” I said. I went back to my desk, picked up my phone, and dialed the number from the pager.

“Brady, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office,” said the same detective who’d given me the finger the night before.

When Sampson came out of the conference room a few minutes later, he saw the difference in my posture and attitude.

“Headlight’s intact going north,” Sampson informed me. “Who paged you?”

“I’ll tell you in two seconds, John,” I said. “Someone else needs to know first.”

I went straight to Chief Pittman’s office and knocked on his closed door. He barked something, so I opened it.

He took one look at me, rolled his eyes, and grumbled, “What now?”

“We may have identified the vehicle that hit the Senate aide, and it might belong to Talbot’s killer.”

“What do you mean, ‘may have’?”

I held up my hands. “More important, I just got off the phone with Matthew Brady, the detective in charge of yesterday’s Beltsville shootings. Preliminary ballistics say the two women were shot at short range by a forty-four-caliber snub-nosed pistol shooting two-hundred-and-forty-six-grain boattail bullets. Just like the one that hit Conrad Talbot.”

Chapter 30

Gary Soneji fought the urge to exit Interstate 495, cruise into Beltsville, and roll past the scene to see what the cops were doing.

That would be a rookie move, he decided, shaking his head as he passed the exit. He’d been near perfect the other night and wanted to be as meticulous in every aspect of his follow-through.

With that motivation taking firm hold, Soneji got onto I-95 heading north toward Baltimore and Wilmington, Delaware. He set the cruise control in the Saab to sixty-seven, just two miles above the speed limit. He had no desire to attract the attention of a state trooper, especially with the items he had stowed in the trunk.

As Soneji drove, he listened to a jazz station out of the University of Maryland. With Herbie Hancock providing background music, he relived last night, saw every moment of his flawless stalk, every step an exquisite eternity of anticipation.

He’d had the angle coming at the green Chevy Malibu, was positive he would not be noticed as he eased his latex-gloved hand into the pocket of his dark hoodie and slipped the Bulldog from a plastic bag.

The young women had been talking. He’d heard their murmurs and laughter.

He saw the silhouettes of their heads inclined toward each other as he moved into point-blank range. For an interesting moment as he raised the pistol, Soneji thought they might kiss.

If that was their intention, they never got there. He fired through the right rear window, hitting the driver high in the right cheek, just below her eye.

The passenger screamed in horror; her hands gripped her head as she twisted away from her dead friend, looking in terror for the shooter. She never got to see him.

Soneji stepped sideways and shot. The bullet went through her right hand and into her temple.

They were both clearly stone dead. But remembering his blunder with Abby, he put one more round into each woman. Then he leaned into the car and tore off a flap of scalp from the gaping wound on the side of the passenger’s head.

After that, he’d run back to the Saab and taken the same route he was driving now, north on I-95 past Baltimore and Aberdeen, heading toward the Delaware line. He reveled in his flawless execution until a sobering thought came to him.

He had mastered David Berkowitz. It was time to move on.

But he had things to take care of before he could decide whom to study next. A few tasks he’d left undone the night of the first shooting.

He’d been emotionally and physically exhausted then and had decided to take care of those jobs later. It didn’t matter. There’d been no real rush.

Soneji left the interstate just shy of the Delaware border and headed north on Maryland 272. He passed through Bay View and soon after crossed the Pennsylvania line. The state highway cut through a checkerboard of farms and small woodlots in full fall foliage, all of it so familiar to him.

He turned off south of Oxford, Pennsylvania, and wove his way on county roads toward the Chrome Barrens, a large nature preserve with forests and prairie-like grasslands that were managed as American Indians had managed them centuries ago — with fire.

Indeed, as Soneji got close to the Chrome Barrens, he could smell and see smoke. He crested a rise. There were fire trucks and police cars parked up on the road ahead, ready to act should the flames jump beyond their intended areas.

He debated leaving and returning another time but decided to push on. He took a left on a dirt road well short of the police and fire vehicles, headed north, then pulled over and parked.

Smoke wafted through the trees. Fingers of it crept out onto the farm fields across the road from the preserve.

Soneji had not planned for a controlled burn. Still, it might be a good thing. He was sure he could slide in and out unseen, but the smoke couldn’t hurt — it would give him one more layer of concealment.

He went to the Saab’s trunk, took out knee-high rubber boots and latex gloves, put them on, then pulled out a hiking pack and shouldered it. The pack was an easy load, and he set off into the woods, moving diagonal to the burns. On the far side of a knoll deep in the woods, he dropped into a natural ditch of sorts that ran east.

Glad that the gully concealed him almost to his shoulders and that the damp leaves deadened all sound beneath his feet, Soneji moved quickly to the edge of a clearing. Much of the opening was knotted with thorny brambles, but weeks before, he had used garden shears to trim a path into the yard of a ramshackle uninhabited farmhouse. Beyond the house was a long, low shed, one side open to a rutted driveway leading toward thick pines.

As Soneji crept along the cleared path, he paused often to listen but heard only the chattering of squirrels and crows cawing off in the pines somewhere. Soon he was there at the edge of the yard again.

He crouched and studied the area, trying to see if something was different from his last visit, something that would tell him he was being watched.

Chapter 31

Weeds for grass. several crooked apple trees in desperate need of pruning. The farmhouse stood to the right of the trees, its once white walls now begrimed with time, paint peeling off the clapboard siding.

The windows appeared intact, but the roof sagged and shingles were missing. A gutter dangled, creaking in the breeze.

A local farmer leased and tilled the fields beyond the pines, but no one had lived in the house since elderly LeeAnne Lawton had died there five years back. Eamon Diggs, her grandson, inherited the land but had shown no interest in selling it, living there, or renting it.

Soneji knew all that for certain. A few years back, he’d read an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Diggs, who’d been released from prison after doing ten years for the rape and attempted rape of several young women. The story had noted Diggs’s inheritance and current employment in a granite quarry along with several other ex-cons. Soneji had been intrigued by the serial rapist and was drawn to find the farm.

On that first trip, he’d discovered little to explain Diggs’s hatred of women, but he did find things that intrigued him even more, things that set his imagination free with possibility, things that caused him to return to the abandoned farm with increasing frequency.

Finally satisfied that he was alone and that nothing had changed since his last visit, Soneji moved quickly, staying in the weeds, not wanting to be anywhere near mud as he traversed the yard heading for the long, low, three-sided shed connected to an old workshop with cinder-block walls. He ignored the workshop and halted where the weeds gave way to the shed’s dirt floor.

The shed was divided into six bays. Four were filled with rusting farm equipment. One was largely empty. A filthy beat-up white panel van was backed into the nearest bay, an old tarp over the front end. Soneji studied the dirt around it, saw no prints in the lightly raked soil.

Emboldened, he put on latex gloves and pulled back the tarp, revealing the broken headlight and turn signal. Soneji put down his pack and took out a new headlight, a new bulb for the turn signal, and new covers for both.

He put on reading glasses to make sure he was seeing everything clearly and in the minutest detail. Kneeling, he studied the bumper and saw a little blood spattered there; a ragged strip of stretchy black fabric was stuck in the cavity of the broken headlight.

Soneji removed the fabric, set it aside, and installed the new bulbs. Before he put the replacement covers on, he worked the fabric into a gap in the upper right corner of the grille.

Satisfied, he went to the rear of the van and looked at the smears in the dirt where the bicyclist’s message had been written across the double doors. Then he reached up to a shelf behind the vehicle, moved a coffee can filled with wood screws, and found the key.

The rear of the van’s interior was a mess, just as he’d found it the first time, strewn with empty beer cans, old nudie magazines, newspapers, trash, papers, leaves, and everything else that belonged in a dump.

From his pack, Soneji fished out a baggie holding the piece of hair and scalp he’d torn off the dead woman after the second shooting. Another baggie held the Bulldog pistol. A third held the latex gloves he’d worn last night, fingertips covered in dried blood.

He opened the driver’s-side door, got out the pistol, set it aside, and turned the plastic bag upside down. He shook it out over the console between the two bucket seats and on the dash.

Then he opened the cylinder and extracted two of the four spent rounds. Soneji crouched down and carefully pushed the bullet casings into a frayed and separated seam in what was left of the van’s floor fabric.

Soneji closed the driver’s door and locked it, then returned to the rear of the van and opened the baggie containing the latex gloves. He’d worn two layers of gloves on his gun hand that night, and now he carefully separated the inner glove from the one with gunshot residue and blood from the dead passenger. He lobbed the contaminated glove into the mess, then opened the baggie with the bloody hair, scalp, and flesh in it. He flicked the treasure into the trash heap in the van’s rear, closed the van’s door, and locked it.

He returned the key to the shelf and set the coffee can on top of the key, put the pieces of the headlight and turn signal into his pack, then shut the door. He picked up the rake and gently stirred the dirt behind him as he backed out.

He threw the tarp over the front end and raked everywhere he’d been on the shed floor. When his boots reached weeds, where he would no longer leave tracks, he leaned over and placed the rake against the wall.

The air still stank of woodsmoke. It made Soneji’s eyes sting as he set off on the path through the bramble, toward the Saab and a dreaded, dutiful long weekend with Missy and Roni.