by Ben Miller
Flummoxed, Jack didn’t reply. Something about McElhenney’s deep voice made this sound unexpectedly accusatory. Before Jack could answer, or ask any questions of his own, McElhenney laughed and explained. “I just drove past. I’m in the parking lot. Be there in a minute.”
Jack felt relieved, though he wasn’t sure why he had briefly felt so anxious. He hung up his phone and put it away. Seconds later Bennett McElhenney entered his sightline, walking across the beautiful green grass of the station’s lawn.
“Come on back to my office.” McElhenney didn’t stop moving; he just merely slowed down a little to exchange greetings. Jack followed him into the building, past Officer Denardo, who nodded knowingly, and into McElhenney’s small office. McElhenney flashed an arm toward a chair inside the door as he walked around the metal desk and plopped down in his own chair. “What’s up?” He jiggled the mouse on his desktop computer to awaken it from its overnight slumber.
Jack sat down and examined the office. The sheer number of personal items surprised him. He had been in a myriad detectives’ offices over the years, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen so much shit from someone’s private life: at least two dozen photographs, all containing an image of McElhenney, often by himself; trophies on the bookshelf, most of which had either a basketball or an athletic-looking statuette holding a basketball on top; novelty coffee mugs with various expressions or worldwide locations printed on them. In the span of several seconds, Jack’s impression of McElhenney swiftly changed; he now found him quite conceited. Jack doubted his own ability to work closely with someone so full of himself.
As he had no choice—at least not at this juncture—he decided to press on. He stopped scrutinizing the room and focused on McElhenney’s eyes, which were looking at the computer screen in front of him. “The gum.”
His attention successfully grabbed, McElhenney turned in his chair to face Jack. “Sorry? The gum?”
Jack nodded intently. “The gum found in Lamaya Hollows’ stomach at autopsy. If she were sodomized, as the coroner’s report suggests, and she still had that gum in her mouth at the time…”
“Sperm,” McElhenney concluded. “DNA. Something.”
“Yep,” Jack concurred. “We need to get your path lab to cut into that gum ASAP, or, preferably—with your permission— get it down to one of my lab guys so they can run it. I think we could probably get results faster.”
“No doubt,” McElhenney agreed as he swiveled in his chair to pick up his phone. He looked at the clock on the edge of his desk. “It’s after 8. Someone should be down there.” He dialed the number from memory. He politely and cordially asked the assistant who answered the phone to go into the log and find the location of the stomach contents. After he hung up, preceded by a sincere “thanks so much for all your help,” he swiveled again to face Jack fully. “Brilliant, man. This is brilliant.”
Jack wondered if he had judged McElhenney too harshly earlier. He found himself beginning to like this guy a lot.
Within minutes, after Jack and McElhenney had a chance to rehash the known facts of the case to that point, the phone rang. McElhenney picked up the receiver and had a short conversation. Though McElhenney’s portion of the conversation contained nothing more than three “yeses” and a “thank you,” Jack concluded, mostly from McElhenney’s bright-eyed smirk, that he spoke to the lab tech on the other end.
McElhenney led Jack past the elevator to a rubber-coated steel staircase at the end of the hallway, where they descended two stories to the medical examiner’s office in the basement of the building. The lab tech already had the specimens packed up. Behind the counter sat a hand-held blue cooler—the type used by normal people to keep their six-pack chilled—which the clerk opened to show a smaller, white Styrofoam box with a sticker on top. The clerk used a small infrared gun to scan the barcode on the sticker; Jack could see the text below the barcode contained a series of digits, followed by “stomach contents,” followed by the date of the autopsy. The clerk asked Jack to see his ID, which he slid through the side of the computer monitor like a credit card. He returned Jack’s ID, then asked him to sign on a computer pad on the counter. Jack couldn’t help getting the impression that he had just purchased a piece of jewelry at Macy’s.
Jack picked up the pseudo-pen, but before signing, he asked the clerk, “What’s your return policy?”
The clerk looked at him dryly. “It better come back in the same fuckin’ condition that it left in. That’s our return policy. Sir.”
“OK,” Jack said as he turned his attention to scrawling his name on the pad. “Not a new joke.”
“Nope,” affirmed the clerk.
“Lighten up, Paul, OK?” McElhenney pleaded.
Paul the Clerk reached down to rotate the top back onto the cooler. He grabbed it by the handle and put it on top of the counter for Jack to take. “C’mon,” he replied to McElhenney, as if Jack had it coming. McElhenney shot him a glance, one a teacher might share with the student acting up in the front row while the principal visited the class. Paul rolled his eyes as he stepped away from the counter to continue cataloguing evidence entries.
Out in the parking lot, McElhenney apologized to Jack for Paul’s behavior. “No worries, Mac,” Jack assured. “Now I know why you’re so nice to him on the phone.”
“He can be a real pain in the ass if you get on his bad side.”
“That sweetheart? Nah!” The two smiled as they shook hands. “I’ll let you know as soon as I do,” Jack said as he got into the driver’s seat.
He took the small cooler containing its Styrofoam treasure straight to the FBI Forensics Complex in Quantico, a state-of-the-art facility housing numerous divisions that worked on specific aspects of forensic science. He had called ahead to the Nuclear DNA Unit, also known as the NDNAU—which Jack considered a silly acronym, as it barely saved any syllables over the actual name—so that they could expect him. Even though that office received dozens of samples per day, due to the high-profile nature of the Hollows case, the examination of— and potential extraction of DNA from— the gum in Lamaya Hollows’ stomach took top priority.
Jack spent the rest of that day at the office looking through files, interview notes, photographs, and other pieces of evidence from the case. Or at least pretending to. He found it hard to focus, his attention alternating between the possibility of finding Lamaya Hollows’ killer’s DNA and trying to avoid the shameful, infuriating memories of his adulterous behavior over the past week. He left the office late, around 9:00, no longer able to tolerate sitting at his desk immersed in his thoughts. When he got home, Jonah had already gone to bed. Vicki lay in bed reading a novel. Luckily she appeared quite invested in her reading and didn’t seem interested in talking too much. Jack did not feel up to talking with her right now, fearing that his self-hate and guilt might swell up and overwhelm him.
He awoke early the next day, having slept poorly once again. He was at his desk by 7:45, and the call came from NDNAU around 9:30. They had found usable DNA, distinct from Lamaya Hollows’. They should have it sequenced by the end of the day, when they would enter into CODIS to try to find a match. Jack reminded them unnecessarily that he should be the first phone call once they make the match.
He had been right. He had likely just solved this case.
Of course, the possibility existed that CODIS would not possess a copy of the killer’s DNA, but Jack found this very unlikely. From the beginning of this case, he knew in his heart that this un-sub had struck before. Harringer had agreed; “This is not his first rodeo,” he had said during one of their briefings. Jack got up to tell Harringer that NDNAU had recovered DNA.
As Jack approached the office, Heath Reilly rushed in to tell Harringer of a tip that had come through their 800-number. A woman from Arlington had called to offer information about a white minivan she spotted coming from behind the strip mall where they had found Lamaya’s body early on the morning of the body’s discovery. When Reilly briefly reviewed previo
us tips, he found one that referred to a white minivan in the Hollows’ neighborhood on the day of the disappearance. This news excited Harringer, who assigned Reilly to cross-reference white minivans registered under the names of known sex offenders within a 500-mile radius and deployed Camilla Vanderbilt to Arlington to interview the woman in person.
Jack witnessed this all from just inside Harringer’s office, where he stood, nonplussed. Harringer looked at him with a half-snarl, confused by Jack’s silence. “This could be a big tip, Jack.”
Jack could not match his exuberance, for a variety of reasons. “I suppose.”
“You’re distracted,” Harringer observed. “What gives?”
“I found his DNA,” Jack stated simply.
Harringer’s face flattened, expressionless, before his eyebrows furrowed in a quizzical expression. Jack raised his eyebrows and nodded in confirmation. Harringer became anxious all of a sudden. “How?” he asked. Jack had never conducted an illegal investigation before—at least not that Harringer was aware of—but Harringer knew how important this case had become to Jack. He knew people sometimes did wacky things when pushed to the brink of their abilities.
“Bubble gum,” Jack said.
Harringer put his palms in the air and shook his head. Jack’s mild elusiveness began to irritate him.
“Her stomach contents. She had gum in there. I got the gum to NDNAU, and they found foreign DNA,” Jack explained.
Harringer stood baffled. “How did…?” He couldn’t finish his question, as the answer came to him before his mouth could spit out the words. “The bastard sodomized her, and she still had gum in her mouth.”
Jack nodded sadly.
“Motherfuck.” If this wasn’t Harringer’s favorite expletive, it certainly ranked somewhere in his top five.
“They should have it sequenced by tomorrow, and hopefully CODIS will spit out a match within 24 hours after that.”
Harringer nodded resolutely, effectively putting behind him the awful thoughts of what their wanted man had done to that little girl. “Good. Great, Jack. But we still should follow-through on this white minivan thing.”
“Definitely. I’ll talk to a buddy at the DMV, see if anyone driving a white minivan had any traffic violations nearby that morning.”
“Good.” Harringer put his hands on his hips and turned to go back to his desk. He stopped and turned his shoulder around to face Jack. “I want to be your first phone call when you hear from CODIS.”
“Of course.”
Jack went back to his desk. An hour later he still hadn’t made that phone call to the DMV. He knew this wild goose chase didn’t matter; he would have a photo of the killer’s driver’s license in the next 48 hours, long before anything could pan out from the white minivan tips. Yet he also knew the importance of due diligence, of following orders, and chasing down every lead. So he finally placed the call. His contact told him he would look into it and get back to him, hopefully later in the day. Jack decided he would search the records himself instead, through the secure intranet in their office. By the end of the day, he had found one white minivan pulled over for running a red light at an intersection roughly four miles from that site. Leslie Concannon, a 38-year-old married mother of four running late to pick up her youngest from kindergarten, received a citation. No other white or grey minivans had been stopped for a traffic violation that day. About ninety minutes after Jack reached this conclusion, his DMV friend called to confirm this same result.
The rest of the day and night surprisingly passed quickly. Jack mustered the inner resolve to talk casually to Vicki that night, after finding time to play with Jonah a while before his bedtime. Jack began to feel more at ease in his own skin around his family. For the first time in the last two days, he thought that he and his marriage might survive his stumble.
He actually slept until the bludgeoning cacophony of his alarm at 7:00 the next morning. He got to work by 8:30, feeling somewhat refreshed. At 9:15, more due to lack of something better to do than any other reason, he called NDNAU. When he got connected to the forensic scientist whom he had spoken to yesterday, the man seemed surprised to hear from him.
“I was just about to call you,” he said. His voice had the nasal, geeky intonation one might expect from a forensic scientist who spent all his working days in a laboratory. “We finished the sequence, and, within… oh… 35 minutes, I’d say…CODIS gave us a match.”
Jack’s heart raced. He had experienced the exhilaration of big breaks before, on other cases, but he couldn’t remember feeling so electrified by it before. “Send it over. Please.”
“Sure,” the scientist replied. “Jackson Byrne…” he said aloud as he searched the e-mail directory for Jack address. “Here. Got it.”
Jack could hear the guy tap his mouse with authority, likely as he hit “send.” Jack maximized Outlook on his desktop. Within several seconds— that seemed more like days—a new e-mail popped into Jack’s inbox. “Got it. Thanks,” Jack said as he already began to remove the receiver from his face to place it back onto the phone.
He opened the e-mail and double-clicked on the attachment, a three-page document containing mostly a bunch of lines of code of a DNA sequence. But Jack focused solely on the very top of the first page: the driver’s license. Melvin Andrew Young’s driver’s license.
Melvin Andrew Young.
The name meant nothing to Jack. He had never heard it before.
But he recognized the face.
I interviewed him.
Jack looked up at the ceiling, his mind racing through the mental pictures of all the people he had interviewed during this investigation, trying to remember where he had seen this man before. He looked back down at the screen, studying the man’s face. His eyes quickly scanned the rest of the document, stopping briefly to notice that Young’s vehicle registration listed a black Toyota RAV 4 SUV, not a white minivan.
I told you so, he allowed himself to think smugly.
It seemed that this brief diversion provided what his brain needed to arrive at its epiphany.
The school. Melvin Young is a teacher at Lamaya Hollows’ school.
But that teacher’s name was not Melvin Young.
DAY SEVEN:
SUNDAY
50
Reilly awoke in a daze on Sunday morning, initially confused by his strange surroundings. Despite how frequently this happened to him when he slept in an unfamiliar place, it still produced a modicum of anxiety until he remembered: the hotel room in Front Royal. He looked at his wristwatch—he had always slept wearing his wristwatch—which read 7:50. He knew Camilla well, and knew she would be awake by now.
“Hello.” Camilla sounded out of breath when she answered her phone.
“Hey, it’s Heath.”
“Hey… Sorry I’m… just finishing… a jog.”
“No prob. Meet in the lobby in thirty?”
Camilla paused briefly on the other end. When she spoke again, she controlled her breath remarkably well. “Can do, but I’ll still need to grab a quick breakfast.”
“Me too. See you then.”
Thirty-four minutes later, Reilly emerged from the elevator into the small lobby of the hotel. Camilla stood waiting for him. She pointed to the small café area that abutted the lobby. “Free continental breakfast?”
“Free food always tastes better,” Reilly replied.
Reilly had a muffin, a banana, and a coffee; Camilla drank a bottle of water with her English muffin and grabbed an apple and another water to go. Camilla drove again. They sat quietly for the first few minutes, until Reilly broke the silence.
“I hate—HATE—this part of the job.”
Camilla looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You say that every time.”
“Do I?” he asked, but he knew that he did.
Camilla nodded. “Yes.”
“Maybe I’m hoping that if I complain enough about it someday you’ll just offer to do this yourself.”
�
�Fat chance.” Camilla smiled at him. “We work well together. I spend so much effort trying to ask empathetic questions that I sometimes miss subtle stuff. You just sit there, looking like a stump, but you pick up on that stuff.”
“Fair enough,” Reilly said, appeased. In reality he had no idea how well Camilla knew him, and how well she could play his strings.
“How was your date last night?” Camilla asked playfully.
“C’mon.”
“What?”
Reilly shook his head and took a deep breath. “She said she had no idea how ‘The Playground Predator’ got out. She actually seemed pretty pissed about it. I believe her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Shocker there.”
“Come on!” Reilly now seemed to get a little upset, taking offense that he might let a possible attraction—to which he hadn’t actually admitted yet—get in the way of his professional judgment.
“Turn right onto South End Way,” the pleasant, ostensibly British woman on the nav system instructed from the middle of the dashboard.
“Oh, please. I’m just teasing you,” Camilla said with a chuckle as she turned the wheel. “And so what? There’d be nothing wrong with it. She’s an attractive, single woman, you’re a… single man…” She didn’t want to stroke his ego too much, so she left out any complimentary adjectives.
“Well, at any rate,” Reilly began, trying to change the subject. “She offered some interesting thoughts on the case.”
Camilla’s smile faded quickly, back to business. “Such as?”
“She pointed out that the three cities in which the murders have happened form an arc.”
“An arc?”
Reilly brought up his right forefinger to draw a curved line in the air in front of him. “York, PA at the top, like 12 o’clock; Frederick just shy of 11; and Front Royal at about 9 o’clock.”
“And DC in the middle,” Camilla finished the thought.
Reilly brought his finger right in front of his chest, pointing directly outward, and thrust it forward into the middle of the imaginary circle he had begun drawing in the air. “DC in the middle.”