Return of the Spider

Chapter 51

Early in the evening on Monday, three days before he was to start his new job at Washington Day School, Gary Soneji could not take it anymore. The hunger, the desperate need, had been building in him ever since his big fight with Missy.

The two of them had argued bitterly all weekend over everything from the wedding to finances to Roni’s day care.

Part of him wanted to just divorce Missy — or kill her — but another part of him acknowledged that his marriage to Missy gave him valuable cover, cover he was sure he would need in the future. But another fight like that and who knew what he might do to her.

Leaving home that morning, he’d decided to give in to the hunger. He was now two hours south of Washington, DC, waiting to sate his appetite. He wore the workman’s coverall and sat in the battered white panel van, a black balaclava rolled up on his forehead. He’d parked the van in a dirt lot across the street from a strip club called Tillie’s, a low, gray cinder-block affair with a garish neon sign on a lonely route just north of Richmond near the town of Short Pump.

Two summers ago, when he was working to drum up new heating-oil business in the region, Soneji had often visited Tillie’s. He’d been obsessed with a dancer there named Bunny Maddox. Lean physique, large breasts, and wild mane of auburn hair.

He’d not only thought about taking Bunny to the Pine Barrens; he’d planned it all out, knew just how he’d grab her. Now he was going to put his plan into action.

Soneji sat there in the van, hoping that Bunny still worked the early shift. She tried to clock out by eight thirty so she could be home for her kid.

The boy had to be — what, five? Six? Not that he really cared. He remembered Bunny telling him that half the time, her kid lived down in Florida with her mom and older sister.

“I get anxious,” Bunny had told him, running scarlet fingernails down his cheek the last time he’d paid her to dance for him. “Which makes me want to get high or drink or both. Which gets me in trouble. Makes me a shitty mom sometimes.”

Soneji wondered if that was still true as he watched a dancer leave through the employee door at ten past eight. Then five more women from the day shift came out and drove away. He didn’t want to go inside the strip club and risk showing up on a security camera.

At eight fifteen, Bunny was still a no-show. Eight twenty, same thing.

At eight twenty-eight, he was thinking that it might be time to head north. He’d actually started the van when Bunny Maddox came out the door and stumbled slightly as she crossed the lot.

“Still has problems,” Soneji said, smiling. He felt a little breathless as he watched Bunny climb into a Ford Galaxie that had seen far better days.

Soneji waited until she’d pulled out of the parking lot and swung onto the county road heading toward Richmond. His heart beat faster. He put the van in gear and drove after her at a distance, telling himself to breathe deeply and slowly against the anticipation swelling in him.

There was no room for any sloppiness.

As Soneji had seen her do repeatedly during his scouting trips in years past, Bunny drove from the club to the closest Virginia state liquor store, where he knew she’d buy her usual pint (or quart) of vodka. Anticipating that she’d continue her typical pattern, Soneji drove ahead to her next stop, a Winn-Dixie about a mile away.

He parked the van and waited patiently with a panoramic view of the rest of the lot. Bunny’s Galaxie came rumbling in ten minutes later. After parking, the dancer ducked down where she could not be seen, probably so she could take a swig off her newest bottle.

The second he saw Bunny leave her car and wobble her way to the grocery store entrance, Soneji felt a sense of overwhelming confidence. If he stuck to his plan, took every precaution, and avoided sloppiness, Bunny Maddox was his.

Chapter 52

While Bunny was in the Winn-Dixie, Soneji drove west on Route 6 toward Maidens, Virginia. He took the Crozier exit and drove into a checkerboard of farmland and small wooded lots.

He liked rural areas. There weren’t a lot of people around, and residences were scattered and often isolated, making situations far easier to control here than they were in urban environments.

Bunny lived with her brother and a male cousin and, at times, their girlfriends. The presence of so many people would ordinarily have all but eliminated the dancer as a target in Soneji’s mind, and it certainly would have if she’d lived in a city. But Bunny’s house was well off a county road and largely blocked from sight by a kudzu infestation that crawled up the trunks of the pine and oak trees and hung down from their limbs like so much green drapery.

He saw the mailbox and slowed. Rain began to sprinkle as he lowered his window and peered down the drive into the kudzu and pines. He saw rusted gate posts set to either side about thirty yards in from the road.

Everything was as he remembered it.

Soneji drove over a rise in the road, pulled the van onto the shoulder where Bunny wouldn’t see it, and turned off his headlights. Then he tugged down the black balaclava, put on a headlamp and a second layer of latex gloves, and stepped out of the van. He shut the door softly and turned on the red bulb on his headlamp.

As he trotted back down the road, he peered south for headlights approaching but saw none before reaching the drive. He walked fast up the shallow grassy ditch and tiptoed across the gravel to the open gate.

Soneji swung the gate shut and wrapped the chain around the post just a few moments before he heard the growl of Bunny’s car coming. The rain was falling harder. He ignored the drops in his eyes, walked fifteen feet toward the road, pressed himself back into the kudzu, and turned off his headlamp.

The Galaxie came closer. Soneji retrieved the Bulldog pistol from his right pocket. He tugged a ragged two-inch strip of flannel fabric out of his left pocket and pushed it into the vegetation behind him.

Headlights slashed the county road, then flooded the drive as Bunny pulled in. Her tires crunched across the gravel and the car slammed to a halt a few feet from the closed gate. She threw the car in park and heaved open her door, which squealed on its hinges.

“Assholes,” Bunny slurred. She slammed her door shut and started forward. “Close the gate? Calvin, what the—”

She had no chance to finish the expletive because she had stepped in front of Soneji, so close he merely had to raise his free left hand to clamp it across her mouth. He jammed the muzzle of the Bulldog against the side of her head.

“Scream and you die, Bunny,” he said, seeing her eyes, wide and terrified. “You’re not going to scream, are you? You want a chance at a long life, don’t you? Another chance to see that son of yours?”

The dancer was trembling, but she nodded.

“Good,” Soneji said. “Now, back up with me.”

He stepped from the kudzu. He guided her backward several steps and told her to open the Galaxie’s door. When she did, he saw groceries in the back and a quart of vodka on the passenger seat beside her purse.

“Lean in,” he said. “Turn off the headlights. Turn off the engine. Leave the keys, your purse, and your groceries. Take the bottle if it’ll help.”

The dancer hesitated when he lowered the gloved hand from her mouth. He pressed the pistol muzzle harder against her temple and she did as he’d asked. The driveway went dark and quiet save for the rain and the ticking of the Galaxie’s engine.

He turned on the red light of his headlamp as she straightened up, gripping the liquor bottle, and turned to face him.

Bunny was crying. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

“I’m going to tell you everything, Bunny,” he said. “Just come along quietly and I promise you’ll hear all about it, and you’ll be seeing your son before you know it.”

Chapter 53

At nine thirty on Monday evening in late October, a bank of chill, dank fog rolled in off the Chesapeake Bay. It swept, curled, and misted slowly through the oaks and pines overlooking the west side of the razor wire and chain-link fence that surrounded the construction equipment, the supplies, and the big steel-sided warehouse out of which Patrice Prince supposedly ran his import/export business.

We thought we’d come prepared, wearing winter clothes over our body armor and carrying wool blankets, radios, a thermos of hot coffee, binoculars, and a Tupperware with sandwiches. I had all the warm stuff on, but the fog wormed its way through the clothes, making me shiver as I adjusted an earphone and mic connected to my radio.

Two police-issue combat shotguns rested against a nearby tree. We were perched in cover on the bluff above the fence and inner compound.

Sampson checked his watch, murmured into his mic, “Any second now they’re going to start knocking on doors and bringing in the first Haitian gangbangers.”

“You’d think there’d be a delayed effect,” I said. “We probably won’t see any kind of real reaction for a few hours, maybe not till close to midnight.”

He nodded. “If Prince knows he’s under assault, he’ll come here.”

“Or, if he’s here already, he’ll leave,” I said. I had my binoculars up and was looking over the fence. “We’ve got two more sets of guards coming from the north side of the complex with a pair of Malinois attack dogs.”

“I see ’em, going by the backhoe and the bulldozers,” Sampson said, peering through his own binoculars. “That complicates things.”

“Only if we need to go in there,” I said.

“Well, I’m hoping that’s the eventual plan, search warrant or no search warrant, so we better figure out the canine situation.”

For the next forty-five minutes, we stood and stamped our feet in the fog and the cold, shivering in the shadows and trying to monitor the radio chatter as Metro detectives moved in to take various members of LMC 51 into custody. Kurtz and Diehl evidently rapped on Valentine Rodolpho’s front door but got no answer, and his row house was dark. They remained in position, watching his place.

The coffee shop Rodolpho liked and the crab-boil shack in Chesapeake Beach his cousin loved had long since closed for the day. Teams had left those locations with plans to return in the morning.

The other officers assigned to find the members of LMC 51 were also coming up short. It was as if the gang had disappeared from all their usual haunts.

I said, “Wish the hell we knew where Prince lives full-time.”

“You think Donovan might have found out?”

“If she found out in the wrong way, it could explain her disappearance.”

“It could,” he said, “but I—”

We both heard vehicles approaching and tires crunching on the driveway into the warehouse. A few moments later, two black Chevy Suburbans rolled up to the gate, which the armed guards opened.

As they drove in and parked near the second loading dock, John double-clicked the radio, said, “Chief Pittman, this is John Sampson. We’ve got action here in Davidsonville. Two vehicles. One of them could be the Suburban used in the drive-by.”

Pittman came back immediately: “You’ve got that confirmed, Sampson? Can you see your bullet holes?”

“Negative. Too far and there’s fog, but stand by. Doors are opening and—”

“I’ve got Rodolpho coming out of the first Suburban,” I said. “Three guys with him, all armed, heading toward the first loading dock door.”

“And here’s Prince from the back of the second Suburban,” Sampson said. “Three other armed men with him are going to the rear of the vehicle.”

One of the gunmen opened the back door and pulled out Officer Donovan. She was blindfolded and gagged with her wrists tied behind her.

“We’ve got Donovan,” both of us said at the same time.

“That’s confirmed?” Pittman demanded.

Sampson said, “Yes. They’re taking her inside in restraints, blindfolded, and gagged.”

“Hold your position,” Pittman came back. “I’m notifying the Maryland state police and everyone else with jurisdiction out there. Repeat: Unless you believe Donovan’s life is being threatened, hold your position until we’ve got the kind of team we need to contain and breach the place safely.”

“ETA on that, Chief?”

“Two hours, maybe?”

“And if they try to leave with her in the meantime, sir?” I asked.

“Then you stop them, Detective Cross.”

“Roger that,” I said. “We’re standing by.”

“Don’t send sirens or flashing lights,” Sampson said.

“Roger that,” Pittman said.

Two minutes later, we heard a diesel engine rumbling and then gravel crunching. An eighteen-wheeler emerged from the fog and the trees and pulled up to the gate.

The guards seemed to recognize the driver and opened the gates. The rig rolled forward and hard to the right of the two Suburbans and backed up to the third loading dock. The overhead door rose, revealing four more armed men in the bay.

“Looks like something important is getting delivered,” Sampson said.

“Yeah,” I said. “This is starting to get—”

Out in the fog near the far northwest corner of the fence, an explosive device detonated in a dull flash and blast that, even at a distance, boxed our ears and pulsed through our chests.

Chapter 54

We’d no sooner recovered from the shock of the blast than the wind shifted, intensified, and cleared away ribbons of fog. We saw many of Prince’s men racing through the construction equipment and piles of supplies toward the site of the explosion.

Sampson triggered his mic. “Chief, we just had a bomb go off at Davidsonville.”

“What? Repeat!”

Before John could, the wind blew another clear lane through the fog, revealing a heavily armed force of at least eight attackers in black hoods entering through a hole in the fence in the northwest corner of the complex. They spread out behind a bulldozer and a dump truck and began firing at the LMC 51 gunmen, who released their dogs.

Pittman yelled, “Sampson, Cross, repeat!”

Over the flash and rattling of the small-arms fire and the pinging of bullets ricocheting, I triggered my mic, said, “Davidsonville site is under attack by armed men. Firefight in progress. Donovan is inside. Send reinforcements! Now!”

“Jesus Christ. Roger that!”

I put up my binoculars and got glimpses of the combat through the ribbons of fog, seeing the dogs race toward the attackers as if I were watching through a lazy strobe. Three of the hooded men went to their knees, held up canisters, and waited until the Malinois were all but on them and sprayed the dogs with some kind of high-strength pepper spray.

The dogs fell down, screeching, whining, coughing, and pawing at their muzzles, and the emboldened attackers moved past the machines and piles of supplies in coordinated fashion, covering each other, firing when they could. One gunman went down, and another was hit hard; LMC 51 reinforcements began pouring out of the open loading docks.

Carrying automatic weapons, Valentine Rodolpho and Patrice Prince appeared at the first dock’s door, the one closest to the Suburbans.

“They’re gonna try to make a run for it,” Sampson said. He spun around and grabbed one of our shotguns.

“What are we doing?” I said as I grabbed the other shotgun.

“You heard the chief. If they try to get out before the cavalry gets here, we’re supposed to stop them.”

“He said if Donovan was threatened.”

“She and everyone in there is under attack!”

He took off before I could reply. I followed, running along the spine of the high ground that paralleled the fence, heading toward the gate.

Inside the fence, gunfire was near constant, a full-on war in a porous fog.

Prince’s men were fighting ferociously and seemed to outnumber the gunmen of the attacking force. Even the gang leader and his limping cousin were forced to move away from the SUVs. They disappeared into the fog and joined the fray.

We reached the gate, now unguarded. Sampson was right, I decided. We needed to get to Donovan before the fight got to her.

Just as Sampson reached through the gap to raise the bar holding the gate shut, six more hooded attackers jumped out of the back of the eighteen-wheeler that had arrived before the explosion.

“It’s a Trojan Horse!” I yelled and pulled Sampson down. They opened fire as a group, sweeping their guns left to right, catching Prince, Rodolpho, and the rest of the attacking gunmen in a crossfire somewhere in the fog.

Chapter 55

The six new attackers split up and sprinted past us into the swirling mist and the roaring gunfight.

Sampson jumped up when the second wave of attackers were out of sight, threw up the gate bar, and said, “Let’s get Donovan out of there.”

He pushed open the gates, crouched down, and sprinted toward the second of the two loading docks, and I was right behind him. Bullets cracked through the air, slapped the pavement, and pinged off the Suburbans, forcing us to take cover behind them even as their windows shattered and safety glass rained down on us.

There was a lull in the shooting but not in the shouting. I heard French, Spanish, and English. John and I eased ourselves up, looked through the blown-out windows of the nearby Suburban, and saw Prince darting up the stairs to the first of the three loading docks, Rodolpho covering him from the open dock door. He shot two hooded attackers, who spun and fell.

I had the gang leader’s cousin square in my sights, but at seventy yards away, he was too far for me to hit with the shotgun or my pistol. Prince and his cousin disappeared into the warehouse.

The fog swirled. The gunfire to our north started once more, fiercer than ever.

“Let’s go in at another angle,” Sampson said. “Third bay. Wait. I’ll cover you.”

He hunched over and ran away from the vehicle and the gunfight and toward the rear of the semi. I took one more look in the direction of the gun battle.

Through the fog, I spotted a hooded attacker in full body armor clubbing the skull of one of Prince’s men with the butt of his weapon. When the man went down, he sprinted toward the open second loading dock.

Sampson whistled.

I ran to him, keeping low.

We climbed into the building, the gunfire outside now echoing behind us. In the far distance, the first sirens wailed.

Dodging pallets of concrete mix stacked on both sides of the inner dock, we went to a set of double doors and looked through a porthole window into a large, high-ceilinged space filled with towering steel shelves, some heavily loaded, some empty.

“We’ve got company in here,” I whispered. “Hooded dude went in the first dock chasing Prince and Rodolpho.”

“I think the cousins are going for Donovan,” Sampson said.

A figure sprinted toward us from the stacks. We both stepped back and to either side of the double doors.

When the man, one of Prince’s armed guards, barged through, he found the muzzles of two shotguns pressed to the back of his head.

“Police,” Sampson said. “Drop the gun.”

He dropped his weapon.

“Where’s the woman?” I said. “The one they just brought in here.”

He said nothing.

“Tell us,” Sampson said. “She’s a cop. If he kills her, you’ll go down for it too.”

The man answered in a thick Haitian accent, his voice shaking. “Other side of the warehouse. Prince’s office.”

“Who’s attacking?”

“No idea. Prince, he got many enemies.”

Sampson spun his shotgun and clipped the guy right behind the ear with the side of the stock, knocking him out cold. He dropped in his tracks.

“No time for niceties,” he said to me. He kicked open the double doors and entered the warehouse.

Chapter 56

I’d known John Sampson since elementary school. I’d met him shortly after I moved to Washington, DC, to live with my grandmother.

As we grew older, I’d seen him handle himself remarkably well in a couple of fights. And I was well aware of his training with the U.S. Army and of the years he spent on patrol with Metro before becoming a detective.

But I had never seen the man who blew through those doors, intent on rescuing Officer Nancy Donovan. Low, aware, with his attention sweeping three hundred degrees left and right, he raced forward into the relative protection of the stacks. I was right behind him.

Sampson slowed to a stop, held up his hand, and listened. We could still hear shooting outside, but it was distant and sporadic.

Then, far ahead of us and to our left, toward the northeast corner of the building, we heard muffled, frantic voices. Sampson nodded to me, gestured in that direction, then turned into a stalker.

He moved quickly through the stacks, staying right in our aisle, and slowed again when we could see the far wall. Then he stopped and listened once more.

We could hear male voices arguing in Haitian Creole. They were closer and almost directly ahead of us now.

Sampson slipped off his shoes. I did the same, and we crept in the direction of the voices, shotguns shouldered, ready.

When we were some fifty yards away, we heard the argument growing more intense. There were at least three male voices. And then we heard Nancy Donovan.

“You do this, Patrice, and you are guaranteeing yourself a death sentence,” she said.

A slap. “Shut up, bitch,” Prince said. “We have other things to think about.”

We crossed another aisle in the stacks of shelves. They were no more than three aisles away now, to our two o’clock.

A young male voice said, “We need to leave, Patrice. Back door. Cops are coming.”

“Cops are here!” Sampson roared, stepping out to face Prince and the younger man, who were a good twenty yards away. They stood on either side of Officer Donovan, who was in a chair by a desk, still blindfolded, her wrists tied behind her. “Drop your weapons! Now!”

Both men were armed with pistols. Prince let his go. It clattered onto the floor.

When the second guy dropped his gun, John moved forward with me right behind him. “Step away from her and get down on your bellies,” he told them.

They complied. The sirens outside were close now and the shooting was dying down.

Sampson and I were almost to Donovan and the crisis was almost over when Rodolpho appeared from the shadows at our five o’clock with an automatic weapon aimed at our heads.

“Drop your guns!” he shouted. “Or Valentine kills you now!”

Chapter 57

Valentine Rodolpho had us.

We had no choice but to set the shotguns down on the concrete floor. He limped around in front of us, slowly waving the barrel of his weapon in our faces.

“We should kill them and go out the back door,” Rodolpho said to his cousin. “All three of them, Patrice.”

I spoke to Prince. “Kill three cops? I’m sorry, but any way you look at that, it is a bad, bad, bad idea.”

“Three cops gets you a one-way ticket to the gas chamber,” Sampson said.

“They’re right, Patrice!” Donovan said.

Outside, sirens were drowning out the sporadic shooting. The head of LMC 51 turned his head a split second before four quick, brilliant flashes and flat cracks came from somewhere deep in the stacks.

The first round hit Rodolpho, shattering his right wrist. He let go of his AR and spun around as it clattered to the floor, grabbing wildly at his wrist and screaming.

The second shot caught the Haitian gangbanger guarding Nancy Donovan between the eyes. He crumpled.

Prince almost got his own pistol up before the third round hit him in the front of his thigh. He howled and grabbed for his leg, then went down hard.

The fourth and last round hit Rodolpho in the buttocks and he fell over, screaming gibberish.

“What’s happening?” blindfolded Officer Donovan yelled as Sampson started to reach for his shotgun and Prince tried to raise his pistol.

The buff dude in the body armor and black hood stepped into the space, shouldering an automatic rifle.

“Toss the gun, Prince!” he shouted. “And don’t do it, Detective. I do not miss.”

Prince slid the gun away. Sampson straightened up, raised his arms.

Outside, the shooting had all but stopped, but the symphony of sirens and bullhorns was building.

“You’re surrounded,” I said to the hooded man.

“That’s fine,” he said, his attention sweeping from me to Valentine, who was panting and heaving with pain, and then to Prince, who had taken off his belt and was shaking as he tried to wrap it around his upper thigh.

“Stop,” the gunman said.

“I bleed. I feel it.”

“Why would I care?” the man said.

He pulled off his hood. The Haitian gang leader stared in surprise and then open hatred at Guillermo Costa, disgraced Marine, former leader of Los Lobos, ex-con who’d supposedly learned his lesson and gone straight.

Costa said, “Who did that to my nephew Shay Mansion? Who strung him up like that?”

Prince shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re—”

Costa shot. Donovan jerked in her chair. The round pinged off the concrete next to the Haitian, who looked terrified as he raised his hands.

“Next one takes off your cojones,” Costa said. “Who did that to Shay?”

Prince swallowed and gestured with his head toward his cousin. “Valentine. It was his idea. He saw it through.”

“Wait!” Rodolpho screamed and put up his hands when Costa stepped his way, aiming at point-blank range.

“You killed my nephew and destroyed my cousin,” Costa said. He shot Rodolpho dead and swung his attention and weapon back to Prince, who had gotten the belt around his upper thigh and was tightening it.

Costa nodded at us. “Tell them where the heroin is, Patrice. They’ll find it anyway.”

The Haitian frowned.

“Your cojones?”

Prince angrily gestured with his chin. “South side of the warehouse. The blue fifty-five-gallon drums marked ‘Dust-Control Liquids.’”

“And the other kid?” Sampson said. “Tony Miller?”

The Haitian looked puzzled.

I said, “The kid who was tipping off our narcotics division about the location of your street sellers.”

Sampson said, “The kid who was stabbed multiple times and tossed in the Potomac.”

Prince hesitated as if considering his options, then relaxed and pointed at his cousin’s corpse. “Valentine’s idea too.”

“I don’t believe you,” Costa growled. “And even if it was his idea, you damn sure brought in the heroin that killed Shay’s father, my cousin’s husband. In every way, the world will be a better place without you, Patrice.”

Prince had a moment of panic, a moment to shrink from his fate. Costa showed no mercy and shot him in the heart, then stood there, watching impassively, as the Haitian gang leader slumped and died, his eyes dulling.

It had all unfolded so fast, I did not realize how deep into fight-or-flight I was until Costa dropped the clip on his rifle, cleared the bullet in the chamber, and put everything down on the floor. He stepped over Rodolpho’s body and took a seat on a folding chair by Officer Donovan, who was bent over, weeping.

He looked at us. “Sorry about all this, Detectives. It had to happen. You just got in Costa’s way.”

Costa patted Donovan on the shoulder and said softly, “You’re going to be okay, lady, whoever you are. Let’s get you free.”

Chapter 58

By nine ten on Monday evening, Gary Soneji had Bunny Maddox in the van, liquored up, doped up, and bound with duct tape. He was driving northeast by nine fifteen.

On an ordinary day, the trip from Richmond to the Pine Barrens might have taken him five hours, tops. But shortly after he got back on I-95 north heading toward the nation’s capital, he heard on the radio that a massive three-way gunfight was going on between police and two warring gangs in Davidsonville, Maryland, and roadblocks were being set up there and on the Beltway to prevent participants from escaping.

To give the area a wide berth, Soneji drove for hours through thick fog, sticking to state highways and dark county roads. It was shortly before dawn when he finally reached his isolated cabin. He pulled the van forward to the mouth of an old logging road that wound toward the rear of his property and the boundary with the state forest.

When he got out, a cold wind gnawed at him. He went around the back and opened the van. Bunny Maddox lay on her side in the trash and the leaves, eyes closed, wrists, ankles, and mouth duct-taped.

He shook the bottom of one red Chuck Taylor sneaker.

Bunny’s eyelids fluttered. She groaned, tried to sit up, but couldn’t; she closed her eyes again, probably still high from the barbiturates and vodka he’d made her ingest before putting her in restraints.

“C’mon, Bunny,” he said. “Time to wake up, my friend.”

Bunny opened her eyes groggily and made confused whining noises when he pulled her toward him by the ankles. She shrank when he reached for the tape across her mouth.

“Do you want to be able to speak or not?” Soneji asked.

The stripper stared at him, still dazed, puzzled. Then she nodded, shivering.

Soneji slowly peeled the tape off her mouth.

“There now,” he said. “Let’s get you inside by a nice warm fire. Poor thing. Scooch forward a little more so I can undo your ankles.”

He knew what he was doing. He’d read about how captives’ minds could be turned, controlled even.

Bunny’s teeth were starting to chatter when she slid toward him through the leaves and trash. He tore the tape from her ankles and wrists and supported her by the elbow when she tried to stand up.

“Easy,” he said. “I think someone overserved you last night.”

Soneji led her toward the cabin. Bunny blinked slowly, as if trying to remember something. As they neared the porch, she slurred, “Where are we?”

“My cabin,” Soneji said. “I told you all about it, Bunny. You said you wanted to see it. Don’t you remember?”

She shook her head, yawning, but continued to shuffle along as he led her up to the porch. “Tired.”

“I’m sure you are,” he said, fishing in his pocket for the key. He slid it in the lock, opened the door, and brought her inside. “But then again, I told you about this place more than two years ago. It’s no wonder you forgot.”

She looked bewildered as he brought her to a couch. It was then he took note of the sleek ring she wore on her left fourth finger, two small rectangular diamonds flanking a larger emerald-cut diamond in an unusual setting.

“You engaged, Bunny?” he asked after she plopped down on the couch.

“Yeah. Billy’s at sea.”

“Nice ring.”

“Isn’t it something? Billy says it’s art deco style or something like that. Diamonds are real. Platinum is too. His grandmother got it made in the 1920s.”

“Real nice,” he said. “Billy a navy man, then?”

“No,” she said, still sounding dazed. “Merchant marine. I gotta pee.”

“Oh, of course,” he said. He led her through the kitchen and out the back door to the outhouse. “I’ll wait right here for you.”

After a moment, she opened the door to the outhouse and went in. Soneji kept it spotless. He knew she’d approve.

But when she came back out a few minutes later, she gazed at him with eyes that were less confused than they’d been before.

“Why am I here?”

“You wanted to see my place,” he said.

“No, you put a gun to my head in my driveway. You made me eat those pills and drink the rest of that bottle.”

“A gun?” he said and managed a chuckle. “Me? Not a chance. And I made you? No, you gulped that down all on your own. But you must be hungry, Bunny. Thirsty.”

He could tell she did not want to admit it, but she bobbed her head.

“Then let’s go inside and cook you up some eggs and bacon and toast. Maybe a cup of coffee with a little hair of the dog in it?”

“God, yes,” Bunny said and she let him lead her back inside. He sat her down in front of a Formica table in one of the two ladder-back chairs that still had intact wicker seats.

“Do I need to retape your ankles?” Soneji asked. “I mean, you’re not going to try to run, are you?”

“With my knees?” Bunny said and snorted. “After ten years of field hockey and nine dancing on platforms? You don’t have a cigarette by any chance, do you?”

“Your favorite kind, as a matter of fact,” Soneji said.

He retrieved a fresh pack of Winston menthols from his jacket and a lighter from a drawer by the sink. He opened the pack and slid a cigarette and an ashtray to her across the table, past an antique snow globe. He came around and lit the cigarette, which she held with trembling fingers.

Bunny took a drag, then exhaled, and seemed to swoon a bit. She gestured at the metal and glass snow globe with her cigarette. “That for me too?”

Soneji smiled as he went to the refrigerator. “I remember you collected them.”

He brought out bacon, eggs, and a package of ground coffee. “I’ll get the coffee going first. You look like you could use some.”

Bunny cocked her head, her eyes glassy but focused. “I remember you now.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. You’re that brainiac guy who used to come to the club and have me dance. Gary, right?”

“I’m flattered you remembered,” Soneji said, knowing that this changed things; sped up timelines, certainly. But he tried not to alter his tone of concern as he said, “How do you like your eggs?”

“Scrambled, like my brain,” she said, and laughed. “You said something about hair of the dog?”

Soneji smiled. “Let me get a pot brewing and I’ll show you what I’ve got on hand.”

Bunny took another deep drag off the cigarette. “That what this is all about? You want me to dance for you in private, Gary?”

“Maybe a little later,” he said, winking as he took the coffeepot off the stove and turned toward the sink to fill it.

Soneji heard her chair squeak and the hush of fabric rustling just before something heavy and hard smashed into the back of his head.

He lurched and heard glass shattering before his left cheek struck the counter edge. He landed on his back, his awareness swirling toward black.

Chapter 59

As Gary Soneji came around, he heard the rear screen door slam shut.

He forced himself over onto his hands and knees, cutting his palms on the shattered glass of the snow globe. More blood dripped from a gash on his left cheek.

His head was pounding, a sound like waves crashing.

“Help!” he heard Bunny scream outside. “Help me!”

The inner voice that had always guided Soneji returned with a vengeance. He’d been sloppy. He’d been an idiot to think he could control her with words alone.

And now all his plans and dreams were threatened.

Rage tried to seize him. But he’d already made too many mistakes to go off half-cocked. Not now. Not when his freedom and his future were at stake.

Soneji lurched to his feet, felt like he was going to vomit, but swallowed against it and went to the broom closet in the corner. He pulled out his uncle’s old loaded .308, ran the bolt action on the rifle, and went outside onto the porch.

It was hunting season. No one would question hearing a shot or two this deep into the Pine Barrens.

“Please!” he heard Bunny shriek from the woods beyond the van. “Help me!”

Realizing she’d mistaken the old logging two-track for the drive out to the county road, Soneji went cold. He’d planned to play with Bunny for several days at least before things came to a head.

But he had no choice now. Feeling clearer, as he hurried past the van he reached up and felt the tender raised bruise where the glass globe had hit him.

“Help!” Bunny yelled, sounding farther away.

Soneji broke into a jog. He wasn’t worried about her screams. She would have to go more than two miles before she’d cross another road, and it was another half mile beyond that to the nearest cabins, summer places on a small lake that were most likely closed up for winter.

It occurred to him that he could cut her off if he was willing to gamble. The two-track trail she was on headed northeast through the state forest for a mile then jogged back to the northwest another solid mile before meeting a gravel road.

He left the trail and bushwhacked through the woods straight north.

It began to drizzle as he dodged trees, jumped over logs, and forced his way through thorns and bracken. Every fifty yards he paused to listen, hearing Bunny off to his right, three, maybe four hundred yards out, still calling.

It made her easy to track and goaded him into an all-out sprint through stands of beech and scrub pine.

The drizzle became a steady rain, which deadened sound, including Bunny’s calls for aid. Soneji was soaked when he finally reached the base of the forested ridge he’d been navigating toward. He didn’t care. He’d rest and dry off later.

He charged up the back of the ridge, ignoring the cuts on his hands, grabbing saplings and brush to keep from falling into the slick dead leaves. None of it mattered.

He at last reached the rim of a forested bowl on the back of the ridge and looked down through the trees to where the two-track crossed a flat about one hundred and fifty yards below.

Soneji went over to a tree stump about three feet tall, lay the .308 across the top, hunched down, and practiced aiming through the gun’s ancient peep sight. He kept both eyes open as he did, catching movement to his right, close to where the two-track left a pine thicket.

He lifted his head, looked to where he thought he’d seen the movement, and caught a flicker of motion, then another. Two deer had broken from the pines and were stiff-legging across his line of sight.

Bunny had to be pushing them ahead of her. He adjusted his position and pointed the gun toward the two-track where it exited the pines.

“Help!” Soneji heard her calling faintly over the drumming of the rain. “Please!”

He pushed the rifle’s safety forward. He had no choice. He had to protect himself. Nothing else mattered.

And here was Bunny, running out from the pines, checking behind her a second, then forging on, looking anguished, wiping at the rain on her face.

There’s nothing wrong with her knees, Soneji thought as he swung the .308 along with her stride. Cheek tight to the stock, head down, both eyes open, he kept pace with her, seeing the peep and the front bead in his right eye track across the back of her jean jacket, her left shoulder, the front of...

He squeezed the trigger.

The rifle barked. Bunny hunched and fell to her hands and knees.

Soneji sprinted down the hill through the trees to the two-track. Bunny was moaning, trying to crawl down the trail, still calling for help.

She glanced over her shoulder when she heard him coming and was instantly terrified. Seeing how close he was, she stopped crawling and began sobbing.

“Please, Gary! I never did anything to you! I’m engaged! I’m gonna be married. And I have a son! You remember, I have a little boy!”

“Face it, Bunny, you were never much of a mom,” he said. “And you’re not exactly marriage material. Plus you lied to me. You said you wouldn’t run. Too bad. We could have had fun, you and me.”

Before she could reply, he threw the .308 to his shoulder and shot her dead.

Chapter 60

Standing inside the door of our house around ten on Tuesday morning, Maria held Damon in her arms and peered up into my eyes. “After what you went through last night, Alex, why are you going in to work at all?”

I shrugged wearily, feeling a little daunted by the prospect myself.

“John and I are on temporary leave because we were in a gunfight and people died. We have to make statements, write reports, and explain what happened from our perspective before some other narrative can take over.”

Maria didn’t like it, but she nodded. “You’ll be talking to someone? A counselor?”

“Only way I can go back on duty,” I said. I kissed her forehead and then Damon’s. He was sucking his thumb, a habit he’d gone back to after the terror of the shooting outside the church.

Maria hugged me tight. “When you’re done making statements, will you please come get me at work? I’ve got enough overtime I can leave when I want.”

“I promise,” I said and kissed her again before leaving.

It was drizzling and I didn’t feel like driving or taking the Metro, so I hailed a taxi on Independence Avenue. At headquarters, a phalanx of satellite trucks and reporters was already gathered in response to the gunfight in Davidsonville. I’d known it was going to be a zoo, so I’d told the driver to take me to the garage entrance.

I was under orders not to talk, and I understood why.

The story had made all the network morning shows and dominated the local papers and news programs, though they had few angles other than what chief of detectives George Pittman had fed them at an impromptu midnight press conference near the entrance to Patrice Prince’s property. I had to admit that Pittman was a master of communication — he dispensed only the information he wanted them to have and locked down the rest.

As of now, all the media knew was that a gun battle had taken place between LMC 51 and Los Lobos Rojos and gone on to involve an interdepartmental law enforcement detail assigned to round up members of the Haitian gang for interrogation.

The media had also been informed that twenty-one men had died, eleven had been wounded, and seven others were in custody.

They did not know, however, that there had been an undercover officer trying to infiltrate the Haitian gang or that she had been taken hostage. And they had zero inkling of Guillermo Costa’s vengeful motivation for the attack or of his role in Officer Nancy Donovan’s rescue — and mine and Sampson’s, for that matter.

But that would change. These things would come out in court.

I knocked on Pittman’s doorjamb, and he told me to come in. “Costa and the others arrested at the scene will be arraigned later this morning after their transfer to federal court,” Chief Pittman said, tossing a pen on his desk in frustration.

“Why federal?”

“Because kidnapping Donovan and bringing her across state and District lines immediately makes it FBI,” Pittman grumbled. “The nature and number of weapons involved brings in the ATF. And the gangs attract Immigration like flies. The feds have got their claws in this now. We’re there to assist and nothing more. It’s been taken out of our hands, even though we were the ones who decided to lean on LMC in the first place.”

I could see it was gnawing at Pittman that he’d lost control of the investigation and the story of the battle. An event of this magnitude should have had him in front of the cameras for the next three news cycles at least.

He sighed. “At least Donovan’s okay. They’ve got her at GW running tests, but other than the trauma of being held hostage, it seems like she’s going to be okay. And you and Sampson are good. So, you know what? I’m good.”

I realized that I’d been a bit cynical in my thinking about Pittman. The chief clearly liked the attention, but I could tell that he actually cared about us. I saw it in the way his eyes glazed with emotion as he swiveled to get a folder from the credenza behind him.

“There are a few things that are not entirely out of our hands, Chief,” I said.

Pittman turned back. “Like what?”

“Even though it all came out under extreme duress, we now know that it was Patrice Prince and Valentine Rodolpho who killed Tony Miller and Shay Mansion, and we know why. The FBI can’t and won’t stop you from announcing that.”

He brightened. “That’s a very good idea.”

I smiled. “I do have good ideas now and then.”

Pittman studied me. “I was your biggest supporter and yet I still managed to underestimate you, Dr. Cross. And Detective Sampson.”

It was the first time he’d called me Dr. Cross without a hint of sarcasm, and I nodded. “We aim to please, Chief.”

“Go make your statements to the FBI and I’ll let you know when we’re going to talk to the mothers of Shay Mansion and Tony Miller. I want you and John there. You’ve both got three weeks paid leave coming your way until Internal Affairs and the department shrink say you’re good to go, so enjoy yourself. You earned it.”

Chapter 61

On Thursday morning, when Gary Soneji left the Dupont Circle Metro station and headed to Georgetown and his first day at Washington Day School, he still felt like he’d been beaten to a pulp.

He was relatively athletic, but he’d never had to drag a dead body through the woods for almost two miles. Soneji had dug graves in the past, of course, but it was tough digging in the sand and shale soil he’d encountered trying to bury Bunny Maddox near Joyce Adams’s final resting place. The rain had made it worse, and so did his cut hands. It took him hours with a pick and shovel.

When the chore was finally done and he’d covered Bunny’s grave with forest duff, he returned to the cabin, took a long, hot shower, dressed his wounds, and went to sleep. He’d woken up nearly fourteen hours later.

All day Wednesday, Soneji had been focused on where else he might have been sloppy, his inner voice goading him about everything he had to do to be clean and confident.

He returned to the ridge where he’d first shot at Bunny and retrieved his shell casing. He went back to Bunny’s grave and threw more forest debris on it. He cleaned up the shards of the snow globe. He used bleach to wipe dried blood off the rifle stock and the shovel and the pick handles. He burned the clothes he’d been wearing.

Soneji had finally left the cabin late Wednesday afternoon in the white van. He looped to the interstate, dropped south, and, under cover of darkness, returned the van to the shed on Diggs’s grandmother’s farm and retrieved his black Saab.

Then, after driving to a motel in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he often stayed when he was in the DC area, he’d broken his rule about mixing drugs and alcohol. He drank seven shots of bourbon, took two Vicodin, and passed out cold.

But not before he’d set the alarm. When it whooped at him at five that morning, Soneji roused himself enough to stand under a cold shower until he could almost believe he was sober, then put on his frumpy teacher disguise.

Now, sipping black coffee and getting closer to Washington Day with every step, he felt almost normal enough to play the affable, nerdy Gary Soneji, math and computer science teacher.

Half a block shy of the school, he saw a pay phone and looked at his watch. He still had twenty minutes. He decided he’d better check in with Missy.

Soneji called collect. Missy answered on the fourth ring.

“Hey, Missy,” Soneji said after she’d accepted the charges. “I know I’ve been a shit lately. But I just called to say I love you. And I love Roni.”

There was a long silence on the other end. “Don’t you think it’s time you showed us, and the world, exactly how much you love us?”

He knew what she was referring to — the wedding — but he said, “Tell you what, I’ll be home for dinner tomorrow. I’d like to give you something very special.”

“Okay?”

“Missy,” he said. “I guarantee it’s going to make you happy.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am,” he said. “Kiss Roni for me. I’ve got an early appointment. Love you.”

After another pause, Missy said, “I love you too, Gary.”

He hung up and hurried to the Washington Day campus, showed his ID to the security guard, and went to Bright Hall, where the computer lab occupied a large room on the third floor.

Heading up the stairs, Soneji felt blessed to be there. The school was wall to wall with scions of wealth, of power, of fame. From here, he could—

“Mr. Soneji?”

He pivoted to find the Washington Day headmaster, Charles Pendleton Little, coming up behind him, grinning. “Big day,” the headmaster said, sticking out his hand.

Soneji’s own hands were bandaged, but he took Little’s hand and shook it loosely.

“What happened to you?” Little asked.

Soneji tried to act sheepish. “I went over the front of my mountain bike and cartwheeled a few times down a steep trail the day before yesterday.”

Little’s eyebrows went up. “Ouch.”

“Tell me about it.” He sighed. “Could’ve been worse. I was lucky.”

“Yes, you were,” Little said. “By the way, I wanted to let you know we have a new student joining our seventh-grade class today. Cheryl Lynn Wise. She’s the daughter of the president’s new chief of staff.”

Soneji flashed on the Lindbergh kidnapping. The daughter of the White House chief of staff. Well, that would certainly do it, wouldn’t it? All the fame you could ever want for snatching someone like that, and she’ll be right there in my class.

“I very much look forward to welcoming Cheryl Lynn to Washington Day.”

“Cheryl Lynn will be accompanied initially by our in-house U.S. Secret Service agent. Her name is Jezzie Flanagan.”

Soneji had to force his enthusiasm this time. “Wonderful. I can’t wait to meet Agent Flanagan as well.”

Chapter 62

Gary Soneji had spent the day getting to know his students at Washington Day, including dear Cheryl Lynn Wise, a little string bean of a girl, and Special Agent Jezzie Flanagan, a stunning blonde who was built like a swimmer and seemed to know everything about him already — everything he’d submitted to Headmaster Little, anyway.

He’d also gotten up to speed on Sandy Ravisky’s lesson plans for the various grades that came to the computer lab. All in all, Soneji thought his first day had gone smashingly well, and he returned to the motel in Takoma Park with a bag of Chinese takeout feeling like a barracuda that’s discovered a bay filled with yummy fish.

He spent Friday out of disguise, tending to his list of heating-oil clients and landing two new companies that wanted Atlantic Heating as their bulk fuel supplier. That made his brother-in-law Marty very happy. He’d called him with the contract particulars before he drove home.

Soneji reached the Colonial gingerbread house just as it was getting dark. He went inside carrying his suitcase and a stuffed bunny for Roni.

I can play Fun Daddy, he thought as he scooped his daughter up and gave her the toy along with a dozen loud cheek kisses that made Roni laugh with delight. Missy watched from the kitchen, her arms folded, her expression fixed.

“I have to give Mommy something too,” he told Roni loudly. He kissed her again, returned to the Saab, and retrieved a bouquet of roses, a bottle of champagne, and a box of Missy’s favorite dark chocolates.

“What’s going on here?” his wife said suspiciously when Soneji came through the door with the presents. “It’s not Valentine’s Day.”

“Every day’s Valentine’s Day when you’re in love with a beautiful woman,” Soneji said. He kissed Missy and gave her the flowers.

She took them but still regarded him warily. “What’s come over you, Gary Murphy?”

He shrugged and set the chocolates and the champagne on the counter. “I’ve had time to think about things the past couple of days on the road. I guess it finally dawned on me just how good I have it. With my job. With Roni. And, mostly, with you. I’m sorry if I haven’t been too pleasant to be around while I’ve been figuring all this out.”

Missy squinted. “Yeah, it hasn’t been pleasant, Gary.”

“I know,” he said, holding his still-bandaged palms out toward her. “And I promise I’ll make it up to you. Later, after Roni’s gone to bed. In the meantime, I’m going to play with my daughter and read her a story or two before dinner.”

His wife finally softened a little. “That would be nice. She’d like that.”

“And if the weather holds, maybe tomorrow we can all go for a hike in that park you’re always trying to get me to go to. Maybe catch the last of the fall foliage.”

“That would be nice too,” she said, softening a little more. “I’ll finish dinner.”

For the first time in a long while, Soneji was as good as his word. He got down on his hands and knees and played with Roni while telling her the story of the Magic Kingdom of Miss Bunny Maddox, a fantastical tale of a rabbit and a unicorn. It mesmerized his daughter even more than the two Dr. Seuss books he read to her before they were both called to the table.

Missy had made a nice meal of salmon, little red potatoes, and Caesar salad. It really was great, and he made sure to say so multiple times. Soneji insisted on doing the dishes, giving Roni her bath, and reading one more book to her after she was tucked in her little bed.

“Good night, Daddy,” Roni said. “I love you.”

Her eyes were glistening. To his surprise, it touched him a little. “I love you too, little girl.” He kissed her on the cheek, got up, and turned to find Missy standing in the doorway, tears welling in her eyes as well.

“Good night, Mommy,” Roni said.

His wife went to their daughter and kissed her good night. When they were out in the hallway with the door shut, Missy said in a voice hoarse with emotion, “Thank you for that.”

“What?”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. “All of it. Everything she’s been missing.”

“And you’ve been missing,” Soneji said, wiping a tear off her cheek. “Now, come along, Miss Missy. I’ve got champagne and one more special present that I think is going to be an answer to all your prayers.”

Soneji had Missy sit in her favorite chair in the family room while he popped the champagne and poured them each a glass. He brought the flutes out and handed one to her. “A toast,” he said, raising his glass.

“What are we toasting?” Missy asked.

“A new beginning,” he said. “A restart.”

Then he put his glass on the table beside her, fished in his pocket, and pulled out a ring box. He went down on one knee and opened the box to reveal a beautiful, sleek, art deco — style ring with two small rectangular diamonds flanking a larger emerald-cut diamond. Missy gasped.

“You always said you wanted a real engagement ring,” Soneji said. “So when I saw this unusual ring at a shop down in Virginia, I thought, Now, this is a ring gorgeous enough for my bride to wear as long as we both shall live.”

“Oh, Gary,” Missy said, tearing up again.

“Wait, I’m not done yet,” he said, grinning at her. “I’ve been practicing. Missy Kasajian Murphy, will you do me the honor of marrying me again and having a real proper wedding and reception this time?”

“Oh my God, yes,” she cried. She broke down sobbing when he slipped the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly.

Later, after they’d finished the champagne and made love with more passion than they had in years, Missy admired her ring. “Wherever did you find this?” she asked.

“A guy who deals in fine estate jewelry down in Roanoke, Virginia,” Soneji said. “That’s art deco style from the 1920s and evidently someone’s grandmother had it commissioned.”

Chapter 63

Three weeks passed quickly, and we were in mid-November.

After I’d made my statements about the firefight at Prince’s warehouse, John Sampson, Chief Pittman, and I visited Rosalina Mansion and then Maxine Miller to announce that we’d solved the murders of their sons. Both moms thanked us, though they admitted that the knowledge was bittersweet. Knowing what happened helped, but it didn’t undo the pain or bring their children back.

In the spirit of realizing that life was short, I convinced Maria to take a few days off for a mini-vacation before we got too close to our second child’s due date. She, Damon, and I headed south in the old Mercedes diesel I’d bought before graduate school. It had almost a hundred thousand miles on it, but I figured I could get at least a hundred thousand more from it.

We made it to Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, before we stopped at a Motel Six. The next day we drove all the way to Savannah before we called it quits for the day.

Damon was fussy after spending so many hours in the car, and Maria was complaining as well. I wondered whether this had been a good idea.

“We wanted some warm weather,” I reminded Maria. “And your doc said you can’t fly.”

“I know,” she said, holding her back. “I guess I didn’t think it through. And the way the baby’s kicking, we’ve got an athlete or something. Mark my words.”

“We can head back if it’s too much.”

“That’s worse than going forward. We can’t be far from real heat.”

We weren’t. Temperatures were in the eighties in Jacksonville. We rented a room at a motel near the beach and spent a couple of days staring at the ocean and playing with Damon.

He and I built sandcastles and played in the little waves, which he loved. Maria spent hours floating on her back in the water because she said it was the only time she got any relief. Floating made her feel weightless. Even the baby seemed to love it. Maria said the incessant kicking had stopped.

When mom and toddler napped in the shade of an umbrella, I stared at the ocean, still conflicted over Guillermo Costa.

I knew he was a killer. I’d watched him kill two men in cold blood. However, neither Sampson nor Donovan nor I would be alive now if Costa had not intervened, extracted confessions from the guilty, and exacted his revenge. And Prince’s heroin trade would probably still be flourishing.

I’d made several statements to that effect to FBI special agent Mark Lane, the man who was overseeing the investigation into the gun battle. So had Sampson. Evidently, so had Officer Donovan, though we had not seen her since that bloody night. Still, we had no idea if a judge and jury would find enough mitigating factors in Costa’s rescue of Donovan and mercy toward us to prevent him from going to jail for the rest of his life.

During the day, I paid little attention to my memories of that night. But twice I had crazed dreams reliving Costa’s execution of Rodolpho and Prince and woke up sweating hard and shaking from the experience.

I knew — and the department psychologist I saw after we’d returned home confirmed — that nightmares were common after someone endured such a traumatic event. Other than the dreams, I told the psychologist, I felt at peace with what had happened, and after my twenty-one days of forced leave were over, she approved my return to duty.

I admitted to no one except Maria and Sampson that I didn’t really know how I would handle a situation like that again.

“I understand,” Sampson said as we headed back to work after three weeks. “I do. But that’s where training comes in, Alex. The department has advanced courses where you’re exposed to all kinds of scenarios with a weapon in your hand. It’s amazing how quickly you get better at assessing situations and responding correctly.”

“You mean not shooting innocent civilians,” I said.

“Among other things.”

“Would you have shot Costa if you’d had a chance? To save Rodolpho or Prince, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Sampson said. “They meant to kill us, Alex. And Donovan.”

“I know. I really do. I guess I’m just confused as to how to think about Costa.”

Sampson shrugged. “I think of him as a guy who made some bad choices in his past but tried to live the right way. And who was willing to sacrifice his own freedom to avenge his nephew’s murder and end the Haitian heroin trade.”

“But—”

“Think about it, Alex,” Sampson said. “Costa could easily have decided to kill us too, so there would be no witnesses. Instead, he surrendered. His job was done. I’ll never say this in court, but I admire the guy in a Dirty Harry kind of way.”

“Maybe,” I said as we arrived at headquarters. I didn’t know exactly how to feel about it. We knew who’d killed the two boys, and we knew why. But the killers had received vigilante justice, and I remained conflicted about that.

To our surprise, when we entered the squad room, Detectives Diehl and Kurtz rose and began clapping. Chief Pittman came in and joined them. Soon the entire room of detectives was clapping.

For the first time, I felt fully accepted as a member of that elite investigative team, and I was deeply humbled.

Chapter 64

“Welcome back,” Chief Pittman said when the applause died down. He shook our hands and gestured to the stacks of reports that had accumulated in our absence. “Pick up your open cases for now. Miller and Mansion are officially closed.”

I sat down at my desk and considered the pile of documents. I began to sort through the reports and quickly found forensics results from both of the Bulldog murder scenes and a copy of an extensive Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office report on the Brenda Miles crime scene, all of which had come in over the past few days. I set these aside for deeper study and forged on, looking over various leads and tips.

Several pertained to the now-closed Miller and Mansion cases. I scanned them but saw nothing to change my understanding of those murders. Halfway through the stack, I found a note from eight days ago asking me to call Kelsey Girard, a detective with the sheriff’s office in Goochland County, Virginia.

Subject: POSSIBLE KIDNAPPING/OLDER WHITE VAN.

I quickly picked up the phone and punched in the number.

A pleasant Southern voice answered on the fourth ring. “This is Detective Girard.”

I identified myself and apologized for not calling her back sooner. Girard said, “I’ve been reading all about you, Detective, and I know why you haven’t returned my call.”

“Just got back today,” I confirmed. “So, you had an older white van involved in a suspected kidnapping?”

“Correct,” she said. “A white van was seen in the vicinity of what we are investigating as a possible kidnapping down here. When I did some research, I came across notices of a similar white van suspected of belonging to your Berkowitz copycat, so I called you.”

I started taking notes fast as Girard laid out the story of her case. Within five minutes, I’d heard enough to want to know more.

“Can my partner and I drive down and visit the scene?” I asked. “Talk to the witness about what he saw?”

“I guess that would be okay,” the detective said after a moment. “When would you like to come?”

“We can be there in two and a half hours, tops.”

“That works,” she said. “I’ll give you the address and meet you there.”

Chapter 65

Detective Kelsey Girard of the Goochland County Sheriff’s Office was sitting on the hood of an unmarked squad car looking at the contents of a manila file when John Sampson and I pulled up on the gravel road off State Route 634.

Even in mid-November the vegetation on both sides of the road was so dense, we didn’t see the driveway snaking off until we were almost blocking its entrance.

“You might want to back your vehicle up twenty or thirty yards so I can better explain what all was found and not found,” said Girard, a lanky Black woman in her early forties.

Sampson backed up our car, and we got out and walked over to her. “Where was the van seen?” Sampson asked.

“All in due time,” she said.

“What about the witness?”

“In due time for him too,” she said, closing the file, hopping off the hood, and reaching out to shake our hands.

The sheriff’s detective opened her file to show us photos taken from different angles and at different times of day, all featuring an older model Ford Galaxie in front of a farm gate. She said the vehicle belonged to thirty-three-year-old Elizabeth “Bunny” Maddox, a stripper with a minor rap sheet and a long history of alcohol and drug abuse.

“Bunny, I have been told, has always been something of a wounded soul who cannot cope with life,” Girard said. “She had her kid taken away from her a few times because of it. He’s currently living down in Florida with her mom. Bunny lives up the drive there with her brother Calvin and a cousin of theirs named William Mars. Maddox and Mars are both carpenters. Clean sheets. No history with the police. And they both say that Bunny has been mostly clean since getting together with a merchant mariner named Billy Gallivan.”

Sampson said, “I sense a twist coming.”

She tensed a little. “Yeah, so, anyway, Calvin calls the sheriff’s office and says he’s not sure if his sister Bunny ‘has been kidnapped or just gone off the wagon with another guy who had cocaine.’ That’s a direct quote.”

“So?” I said.

“So we did not pay it much attention for about three days because Calvin was high and shitfaced at the time and admitted on the first call that prior to her engagement, Bunny had been known to occasionally disappear on benders with guys she’d just met,” Girard said. “But then Calvin calls back three days later, stone sober, and says Bunny has now missed two ship-to-shore calls from Billy and another with the social services worker monitoring her custody case. He said his sister lived for Billy’s calls and that, drunk or high, she would never miss a call that involved her son, and now she had missed both.”

Girard said she’d finally driven out to meet Calvin. By that time he’d moved the Galaxie because he and his cousin needed to use the drive.

But Bunny’s brother had thought ahead enough to take photographs on the night of his sister’s disappearance and again the following morning.

“What about the van?” Sampson asked as an older maroon Dodge pickup in need of a muffler job came around the corner from the south.

“I’ll let Calvin tell you himself.”

The truck rolled to a stop and the engine was mercifully silenced. Calvin Maddox, a lean, rawboned man in his thirties, climbed out. He had sawdust on his Carhartt pants and denim shirt, and his hands were calloused and strong when he shook ours.

“Wish you all had come out when I said to in the first place,” Maddox said, taking a step to one side and spitting out the chew he had in his cheek.

“We went over this, Mr. Maddox,” Detective Girard warned.

“Yeah, yeah, I know it didn’t seem high priority or nothing. Bunny’s only a stripper, an unfit mother, and an addict. No priority there. No humans involved.”

The detective said, “We’re here, Calvin. I’ve been here ever since Bunny missed her custody call.”

“Yeah, but not for three days,” he said, staring at the ground. “Anyway, what do you all want to know now?”

I said, “You saw the van?”

Calvin nodded, gestured north toward a rise in the gravel road. “Over the knob there, just as it was pulling out.”

“Start at the beginning,” Detective Girard said softly.

Maddox still wouldn’t look at her, but he told us how his sister had pretty much quit cocaine after her last rehab. She usually left her shift at the strip club, headed for a liquor store, bought food for dinner, and came home. The night of her disappearance, she’d called him right before leaving work to ask if he wanted her to pick up ham or chicken for dinner.

“She usually comes straight on in from there,” Maddox said. “She was still drinking, but trying to keep it under control, and she didn’t want to be driving, you know?”

We shrugged.

Bunny’s brother went on. “Anyway, I was watching the Monday night football game with our cousin and noticed Bunny wasn’t back yet. I went out on the porch and saw there were headlights shining up the drive and then there weren’t.”

He had grabbed a beer and walked down the drive in the rain. He saw Bunny’s car in front of the gate. But the gate was closed, which was strange, because he knew he had left it open ninety minutes earlier when he’d returned from work.

He’d walked over and looked in through the Galaxie’s window and seen Bunny’s purse and groceries, and the keys were in the ignition.

“That’s when I heard an engine idling over the knob there,” Maddox said, walking in that direction. We followed him until he stopped at the crest of the rise.

He pointed sixty yards downhill to the lowest spot before the next rise. “Old, banged-up white van was down there, parked just off the road on the shoulder. I don’t know if the driver saw me or what, but when I started to jog down the hill, the van pulled out and drove off fast, spitting gravel.”

Sampson said, “You see the license plate?”

“Nope. But my old game-trap camera up the road did.”

“Game-trap camera?” Detective Girard said angrily. “You didn’t tell me that, Calvin.”

“Honestly, I didn’t think to look till just last night ’cause I thought the batteries in it were dead. I went to put new ones in last evening and there was a full roll of used film. But because the batteries were low, the camera triggered on a delay and caught only the back end of the van at a weird angle. Pennsylvania plate, beginning TN.”

Chapter 66

Calvin Maddox went to his truck and retrieved a print of the image his game camera had taken. It was slightly blurry due to the weak batteries and the speed of the van and showed only the left rear quarter of the vehicle, including part of a Pennsylvania plate with the letters TN.

But we also had decent images of two large scrapes on the left rear quarter panel and a serious dent on the back bumper, enough that we felt sure we’d be able to identify the van if we came upon it, even if there was no damage to the front left headlight. Bunny’s brother had to return to his job but said he was working only a couple of miles away if we needed him.

We planned to request a search of Pennsylvania DMV records for an older white Ford Econoline panel van with a license plate that began with TN as soon as we returned to our offices. But first, Sampson, Detective Girard, and I looked at the printed photographs Maddox had taken shortly after his sister disappeared. The photographs were glary and showed raindrops beaded on Bunny’s Galaxie and clinging to the grass and the walls of kudzu growing on either side of the drive.

In the daylight shots, the rain had dried, but we could see where some of the grass and weeds in the little ditches along the drive were pressed down. I walked over and looked at the ditch, then held up one of the pictures taken at night.

“See how the grass is different here, darker?” I said. “I think someone walked up the ditch that night.”

“Why?” Sampson said.

“My guess? To shut the gate. To stop Bunny.”

Detective Girard said, “And get her out of the car.”

“So he could get her into his van” — Sampson continued the thought.

“Definitely,” I said. “Which means this was an ambush. Which means he hid somewhere, waiting for her.”

“Which means he knew her,” Girard said.

“Knew her habits, anyway,” I said.

Sampson gestured to trees across the road. “I’m betting he hid over there so he could come up behind her.”

“Check it out,” I said. I asked Girard for the night and day pictures Calvin had shot. She found them and laid them on the hood of her car. He’d stood a couple of feet away from the Galaxie with his lens aimed from the front right bumper diagonally across the vehicle to the left rear quarter panel. I didn’t know what I was looking for at first, but then Girard pointed at the night picture, beyond the brilliant reflection of the camera flash showing on the Galaxie’s windshield, to the wall of kudzu on the other side of the car. “What’s this shadow here?”

I squinted to better see what she was showing me. I could kind of make it out, but I could not see it at all in the daylight shot.

Girard returned to her car and came out with a large magnifying glass she said her partner gave to her when he retired.

“It comes in handier than you’d expect,” she said and began poring over the nighttime picture. “You can see part of Calvin’s reflection on the windshield along with the flash, and there’s that big shadow. You look.”

I took the magnifying glass from her and studied the area she was pointing to.

“Definitely looks darker, and there are no raindrops on a lot of the leaves and vines,” I said, shifting the magnifying glass to the same spot in the picture shot the morning after Bunny disappeared. “Okay, now. Look at that. Good call, Detective.”

Sampson walked over. “What call?”

I handed him the magnifying glass and pointed at the kudzu beyond the Galaxie in the daylight photograph. “There are snapped branches and vines and places where the vegetation has been pressed back.”

“If he hid there,” Girard said, “he would have been right on top of her when she got out of the car.”

“Or just in front of her,” Sampson said, nodding. “Either way, she gets out of the car, shuts the door, takes a few steps, and he’s right there.”

I took the daytime photograph and walked down the drive toward the open gate with Sampson and Girard following until I found the spot where Calvin Maddox had taken the photographs. We all agreed on the angle, then walked the fifteen feet or so to the thick wall of greenery there teeming with new growth even in mid-November.

The sheriff’s detective peered in. “Kudzu grows so fast, I don’t know if we’ll...” she began. “Wait, there’s one of those broken vines, right there. And here’s a couple more.”

“I see them,” Sampson said.

I said, “He could easily have been standing right there, hidden.”

“Depending on how he was dressed, she wouldn’t have been able to see him before he grabbed her,” Girard said. “Hold on, I’m going to photograph this.” She hurried back to her car.

Sampson pulled out a mini-flashlight and shone it into the foliage, low behind the broken branches and vines where we believed the kidnapper had stood.

The Goochland County detective came back carrying a Nikon camera with a big flash attachment and a tape measure. John was inspecting the vegetation at roughly waist height when he said, “I got something here. Reddish.”

Girard took out her own flashlight and trained it where Sampson had his focused. “Looks like fabric got caught up on the thorns there.” She methodically photographed the broken vines and crushed plants using the tape measure to give scale and perspective to the pictures. Each time she moved something, she took another photograph to ensure that the recovery would be well documented.

“Probably won’t be admissible because so much time has passed since Bunny disappeared, but it’s still good to try,” she said. “Wish I’d picked up on it sooner.”

About ten minutes later, Sampson and I held back the foliage as Girard reached in with a long pair of tweezers. She got hold of the fabric and gently pulled it from the thorns.

The detective held it up for us. “Looks like flannel. Old, faded flannel.”

Sampson said, “Like maybe his shirt got hung up in there on the thorns while he was hiding, waiting for Bunny, and it tore when he stepped out.”

I grinned as Girard slipped the fabric into a plastic sleeve.

John said, “You’re suddenly the happy guy, Alex.”

“I am the happy guy,” I said. “I think our perp has made a real mistake for the first time since we started chasing him.”

Chapter 67

Detective Kelsey Girard had to leave for a court appearance in Richmond that afternoon, but she left us with a promise to keep in close touch, and we all shared the certainty that the kidnapper had screwed up.

Before returning to DC, Sampson and I decided to track Bunny Maddox’s known whereabouts backward from the time her brother saw her car lights.

At the Winn-Dixie, where she’d bought fried chicken and potato salad for dinner, we were able to review security footage from the night of her disappearance. We picked the stripper up on both interior and parking-lot security cams.

We also spotted a white van enter the far end of the supermarket lot and park in the shadows several minutes before Bunny’s arrival and leave eight minutes before she did. We couldn’t know if this was the same white van, but it seemed likely.

“More than enough time for him to set up his ambush,” Sampson said, “if he knew where Bunny was going. And he sure does seem to anticipate her routine.”

“But still no good look at the driver or the license plate,” I said.

“Yeah, but we can have stills from this blown up. The more we can say about the exterior of that van, the more likely we are to match it.”

“True that,” I said, and thanked the guard who’d given us access to the footage.

We were also able to review the feeds from the security cameras outside the Virginia state liquor store and Tillie’s, the bar where Bunny danced.

An exterior liquor-store camera facing the parking lot and the highway picked up a white van passing slowly as the stripper exited her vehicle and then rolling out of frame without giving a clear view of the driver or the plates.

At the strip club, a camera facing diagonally across the parking lot to the road picked up Bunny Maddox leaving work the day of her disappearance and heading north toward the liquor store roughly two miles away; a white van pulled out of an overflow lot across the street and followed her.

We got lucky. The camera caught the van just as the headlights of a pickup truck coming from the south lit it up from behind for several seconds.

“Definitely Pennsylvania plates,” Sampson said. “And that third letter is a Z or an S.”

I nodded, feeling like we were breaking through. “Definitely TNZ or TNS. And then maybe a three or an eight after it?”

“We’re going to get this guy now,” John said, grinning as we left the club with the security footage.

“I feel like it’s only a matter of time.”

“So do I. But let’s try to speed things up.”

Before we drove back to DC, Sampson called Tommy French, an old army buddy of his who was now an investigator for the Pennsylvania police.

“Can you have someone run a Pennsylvania license plate search for us?” Sampson asked after greeting his friend.

“Sure, what do you got, John?” French said.

“Pennsylvania TNZ or TNS and either a three or an eight after it. That’s all we can see.”

“Vehicle make and color?”

“White Ford Econoline van. Older. Rough shape.”

“And urgency?”

“We think the driver may have killed four people, attempted to murder another two, and potentially kidnapped or killed a seventh.”

“I’ll see what our records team can find and get back to you,” French said, and hung up.

Chapter 68

Gary Soneji smiled and nodded to many of the students in his seventh- and eighth-grade computer science class as they filed into his room for the last course of the day. But he intentionally avoided eye contact with young Cheryl Lynn Wise when she entered and walked to her seat.

Not that Cheryl Lynn paid much attention to Soneji anyway, and that’s how he liked it. Especially when Secret Service agent Jezzie Flanagan was around, as she was that day.

Tall, fit, late twenties, attractive but with an imposing presence, Agent Flanagan had paid more attention to Soneji than he wanted. But at least she had stopped sitting in the back of his classroom whenever Cheryl Lynn was there, scrutinizing his every move.

Flanagan actually stopped in the hall outside his doorway that afternoon, let Cheryl Lynn enter, and then motioned to him. Soneji strolled over without hesitation and greeted her politely.

“Agent Flanagan,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

“You as well, Mr. Soneji,” Flanagan said quietly. “What’s the initial report on Cheryl? Her dad asked.”

“Academically? Cheryl Lynn is very bright and seems to fully grasp the binary system underlying computer coding.”

“Starting to fit in?”

“She strikes me as a little shy, but yes.”

“She’ll come out of her shell eventually. It will help that a friend of hers is transferring here next week.”

“I heard that,” Soneji said. “You’ll be overseeing her security as well?”

“Her grandma’s a sitting cabinet member,” Flanagan said.

“That will do it.”

At first, he had not understood exactly why a Secret Service agent was in the school. But Flanagan had explained that so many children of politicians attended Washington Day, an interdepartmental decision had been made several years before to put the Secret Service in charge of overall security. Flanagan and two other agents rotated in and out of the school on a monthly basis.

“I’ll let you know how she’s doing every week?” Soneji asked.

“I think her dad would like that. See you at the end of the day.”

He forced a smile. “Enjoy your coffee, Agent Flanagan.”

“Believe me, I will,” Flanagan said, and strode away.

Soneji walked back into his class. An inner voice told him that he was flirting with disaster, being this close to a Secret Service agent. So far, though, Flanagan seemed unaware of his dark side.

Then again, he had done everything he could think of to keep the lives of Gary Soneji and Gary Murphy separate. He flashed on an image of Missy admiring Bunny Maddox’s engagement ring and felt perverse pleasure. The memory of Bunny bound and drugged in the back of the van made him yearn to do it again.

He allowed himself a glance at Cheryl Lynn, who was chatting with a girl across the aisle. She was right there. And she was famous. Her father was, anyway.

Before the fantasy of taking the daughter of the White House chief of staff to the Pine Barrens could completely seize his attention, the interior warning voice told Soneji to slow down, that his cover needed to be deeper and broader before he took that kind of risk.

For a second, Soneji was confused as to how to deepen and strengthen his cover. And then he wasn’t. He just needed time and patience and a—

“Mr. Soneji?” one of his students called. “Are you okay?”

Soneji realized many of his students were watching him.

“Just thinking about a dear friend of mine,” he said, and laughed as he picked up a stick of chalk and turned to the blackboard. “Let’s continue with another look at how an operating system works.”

Chapter 69

Ten days later, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Sampson and I finally got a return call from Pennsylvania police detective Tommy French.

We were at our desks, and John put the call on speaker. “Anything good, Tommy?”

“I asked folks in the DMV in every county in the commonwealth to look in their files for Pennsylvania plates beginning with TNZ or TNS,” French said. “Right now we’ve got forty-two with the Z and one hundred and seventeen with the S. We have nine that have a three behind both variations and sixty plates that have an eight. Not one of them is registered to an older white Ford Econoline van.”

“So it sounds like the plates were stolen,” I said, feeling one of our leads dying.

“I thought of that,” French said. “And I had them all cross-reference plates reported as stolen with my list. Struck out again.”

Sampson said, “Is it possible that the plates aren’t stolen? That maybe he’s taking them off one vehicle and putting them on the van when he’s using it?”

“Very possible,” French said.

We thanked the detective and went in to update Chief Pittman about our trip south last week and the video clips of the white van present at the sites of multiple crimes in the DC and Richmond area. We also told him about the issue with the plates.

The chief thought about that for several moments before saying, “Call French back. Ask him if it’s possible to search expired plates with those letters against old registrations.”

“See if a white van pops up,” I said. “Can’t hurt.”

Sampson nodded. “I suppose if we’re theorizing that he’d be willing to steal plates and drive around, why wouldn’t he also be willing to use expired plates?”

Pittman said, “No one would even know as long as he slapped on an up-to-date expiration sticker.”

It was nearly six in the evening, but Sampson tried French again and got him just before he was about to leave.

When we told him Chief Pittman’s idea, the detective balked. “I’ll ask, but I wouldn’t count on this happening quickly.”

I said, “We’ve got a lot of bodies down here, Tommy.”

“As long as it happens eventually, we’re good,” Sampson said.

He sighed. “Where should I begin?”

“Start ten years ago and work your way back.”

French wasn’t exactly thrilled, but he agreed to make the request in the morning.

When I reached home, I found Maria and Damon on the couch watching TV. My son had his head on his mom’s lap but shot upright when he saw me.

“The baby kicks, Daddy!” Damon said. “The baby kicks!”

Maria started laughing. “That’s all this baby does these days.”

“Like you said, maybe it’s a sign we’re gonna have a little athlete. A soccer star or maybe a runner,” I said, going to embrace them both.

“A marathoner, at this rate.” My wife kissed me and then groaned and rubbed at her side. “My lower ribs are all sore.”

Damon frowned. “Mommy hurt boo-boo?”

She smiled at him. “Mommy a little hurt boo-boo, D-man.”

He put his hand on her belly and leaned in close, still frowning, very serious. “Stop that, baby. No kicks. No hurt Mommy little boo-boo.”

For some reason, Maria and I both found that hilarious, and we laughed until we had tears coming down our faces.

“I love being that little boy’s mom,” she said later after Damon had gone down for the night and we’d laughed again about him lecturing his little sibling in utero.

“I love being his dad,” I said. “And your husband.”

“Aww,” Maria said, and kissed me. The baby kicked again.

“Wow, even I felt that,” I said.

“Baby wants out,” Maria said. “I predict this little one will be coming any day.”