She took a step down the carpeted stairs, nodded again, and as the volume increased, she slipped the door shut and released the knob. Both hands on the gun, she padded down the stairs.
The door that led outside was dead-bolted shut. What had made that crash?
Bree heard a keyboard clacking in Alex’s office. After a deep breath, she took three soft strides and then stepped to the side of the doorway, gun up.
“John?” Sampson jumped and spun away from Alex’s desktop, saw the gun, and cried, “Whoa! Jesus, Bree, you scared the hell out of me!”
“And you terrified Nana Mama,” she said, lowering her weapon. “What are you doing here? Alex said you went to the Delaware shore to be with Willow and Billie’s kids.”
“The older kids decided it was time to go back to work and Willow got stung by a jellyfish and didn’t want to stay any longer,” he said. “We came back this morning.”
“Where is she?”
“With her friend Lana and Lana’s mom. And Jannie, her favorite babysitter, is picking her up before dinner. I’m sorry, I should have knocked and told you I was coming down here to work, but I had this crazy idea about the rapes and murders and wanted to look at the files in Alex’s computer and I just used my key.”
“Hold that thought. I have to go take a skillet out of Nana Mama’s hand.”
CHAPTER 65
SAMPSON LAUGHED, SAID, “THAT’S A scary thought.”
“Isn’t it?” Bree said. She went up, calmed Nana Mama, and came back with a plate of cookies and a cup of coffee for John, who was typing again on the computer. “So what’s the crazy idea?” Bree asked.
Sampson rubbed his temples and said, “Okay, so Alex and I were looking at the last known locations of each of the eight victims, including Maya Parker and Elizabeth Hernandez, and marking where their bodies were found. We got this.”
He hit Return and the screen jumped to show a map of the greater DC area with the last known locations of the girls flagged in green and where their bodies were found in red.
“They’re being taken in and around Southeast and dumped randomly,” Bree said.
“I know, but are they random? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I had this idea that if we could put on the map the location of everyone who’d been interviewed about these crimes, we might see a pattern, or a focus, anyway, by connecting them all.”
Sampson hit Return again and the map morphed to show a web of lines connecting all the red and green flags along with yellow ones, which indicated people who had been interviewed. Bree tried to see something significant in the clusters and weavings, but if it was there, she wasn’t seeing it.
“Now watch,” he said. “I’m going to add where the young women lived and take out where they vanished.”
Bree cocked her head as blue dots began to appear and connect. Something was different about the result. There were visible intersections where dozens of unflagged lines met.
“Can you show me what’s under those lines here and here?” she asked.
Sampson typed something into the computer. A satellite image of the DC area appeared. He zoomed in on the first of those intersections, which was in the Douglas neighborhood south of the Suitland Parkway, roughly five blocks from the rave party where Peggy Dixon said she was attacked.
“Looks like a warehouse,” he said. “I’ll flag the address and go look.”
“What are these other intersecting lines?” Bree asked.
Sampson zoomed in on an apartment building in Marshall Heights and made a note of the address. Then he looked at the third area, which was north of the Suitland Parkway between Garfield Heights and Naylor Park.
“Look at Harrison Charter High School,” Bree said. “There’s a yellow dot by it. Who was interviewed there?”
Sampson highlighted the yellow dot and hit Enter. A report came up detailing an interview a detective had with Randall Christopher eighteen months before.
“Why did they talk to him?” she said, looking over Sampson’s shoulder.
“He was concerned about his female students after Elizabeth Hernandez was taken. Elizabeth didn’t go to the school, but evidently, she lived nearby. After Maya was taken, he asked to help organize searches.”
“Show me where Maya and Elizabeth lived again,” Bree said. “All the girls, for that matter.”
Sampson typed. Up came the blue dots.
Elizabeth Hernandez and Maya Parker both lived within seven blocks of Harrison Charter, Peggy Dixon within ten blocks.
To Bree’s surprise, three of the other girls lived within six blocks of that apartment building in Marshall Heights and the three early victims lived within five blocks of that building in Douglas.
“My God, look at that, John,” Bree said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Do you know what this means?”
Sampson nodded. “We know his favorite hunting ground now.”
CHAPTER 66
Alabama
AFTER A BRIEF THUNDERSTORM, THE afternoon turned sultry and buggy. Mosquitoes whined at my ears and multiple times I wanted to scratch at something crawling up my leg, but I had not moved a muscle in nearly two hours in my hiding spot in the woods along the north shore of the cove.
Mahoney was waiting farther out on the timbered point, beyond where I’d seen the shooter crouching. At five thirty, as we’d planned, I hit the panic button on our second rental, an SUV, parked deep in the woods. I counted to three and then shut it off.
Soon after, Mahoney started throwing rocks into the water. I tugged on a fishing line that ran out to a cheap, blow-up kid’s raft that held a cooler and a mannequin wearing a bathing suit, sunglasses, and a wig.
We’d put a Bud Light can in the mannequin’s hands. From fifty yards away, you’d have sworn it was some slob out for a swim and a drink.
Althea Lincoln must have thought so too because there was a twig snap, a rustle of leaves, and there she was, sliding out of the forest, the hunting rifle already rising.
“FBI!” Mahoney shouted, leaping out on the shore with his pistol up. “Put the gun down, Ms. Lincoln! Now!”
She looked toward the road as her escape but saw me stepping out with my weapon drawn. Then it was as if she became more deer than human. In one fluid motion Althea Lincoln turned and vanished into the woods.
“Flank her!” Mahoney yelled and ran into the trees as well.
I charged and jumped and broke through branches and vines, trying to stay roughly parallel to what I figured was her line of travel. Every thirty or forty yards, I’d stop, listen for breaking branches, adjust my direction, and charge off again.
The ground climbed and the vegetation got thicker. When I’d gone three hundred yards, I stopped to listen once more.
I heard branches breaking but farther away. Rather than run toward the noise, I got out my phone and called Ned. He answered and I whispered for him to stop moving.
The noise I’d heard in the distance stopped.
“Where are you?” I asked quietly.
“Near the cove on the north side of the point.”
I couldn’t see water from where I was, but I didn’t have to. “I think she doubled back on us,” I said. “She’s out on that point somewhere.”
I had Mahoney caw like a crow and moved quietly to him. We backtracked the way he’d come through the woods until I found what I was looking for: a well-used game path heading out to the timbered point.
I started to sneak out the path, but Ned asked if she could have been going for a boat or a canoe. I threw caution to the wind then and ran down the path, ducking under broken branches and leaping over logs. Ned stayed right beside me.
A rooster crowed and hens squabbled. The woods thinned into an opening with a majestic view of Lake Martin, golden in the late-day sun.
In the clearing, surrounded by blooming wildflowers, stood a small cabin built of hand-hewn logs with red-trimmed windows and a roof that looked like it was made of moss.
Beyond the cabin on the rocky
point, there were two heavy chairs and a table crafted of logs and bent branches near a firepit. Everything, from the chicken coop to the gardens to the stacked firewood, was neat and cared for. Ned circled to one side of the cabin and I went to the other.
“Althea Lincoln?” he called out. “I’m FBI Special Agent in Charge Edward Mahoney. Please, ma’am, we mean you no harm. We just want to talk about Kay Willingham.”
There was no answer.
“My name is Dr. Alex Cross,” I called. “I was a friend of Kay’s. She told me you were the best friend she ever had, Althea. I saw her favorite picture of you as young girls in her house in Georgetown. I am grieving for Kay too, and we’re here investigating her murder, Althea. Please, we need your help to find who killed her.”
After several beats, Althea stepped out onto the cabin porch with her hands raised.
“Thank you, Althea,” I said.
Althea stared past me a moment, her eyes watering, then licked her lips and ran her hand over her bald head. She cleared her throat and said in a scratchy, hoarse voice, “She talked about you too, Dr. Cross. Said you were a good and honest man.” She cleared her throat again. “Sorry, I don’t talk much. And I still can’t believe my sweet Kay’s gone.”
“Neither can I. She was a force of nature.”
Althea smiled sadly, said, “That she was and always will be.”
“You’ll help us get justice for Kay?” Ned said.
“Justice?” she said with a bitter sigh. “I don’t believe in your form of justice, Special Agent Mahoney. But which hornet’s nest do you feel like kicking first?”
CHAPTER 67
“HOW FAR FROM HERE WAS Peggy Dixon attacked?” Bree asked Sampson.
It was about six in the evening, and they were standing in front of the building in the Douglas neighborhood of Southeast Washington, DC. It had been a warehouse once upon a time but now served as an incubator for start-up businesses, including the current tenants: an SAT tutoring firm, a data-mining venture, and a children’s-clothing designer.
“According to the landlord, the place was converted seventeen years ago and has been busy ever since,” Sampson said. “Forty people work here now. Could have been anyone who ever worked here.”
“Or in one of these buildings around us,” Bree said.
Sampson pulled out his phone, oriented himself, and pointed east. “The attack must have been about five blocks from here.” She thought about that. “We don’t have to look at everyone who ever worked here, just the men who did around the time of the attacks.”
Sampson nodded. “Difficult, labor-intensive, but not impossible.”
That sentiment changed after they’d driven north of the Suitland Parkway and gotten out in front of the large apartment building in Marshall Heights. It was seven stories high and had two wings, one on either side of a central courtyard.
“Must be three hundred people here,” Sampson said. “Turn-over’s probably constant.”
“Again, we just need to look at the residents and workers who were here when the girls vanished,” Bree said.
Sampson gestured across the street at another apartment building and then another beside it. “We’re going to need manpower.”
“I know,” she said.
“You coming back to work, Chief?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Let’s go to the charter school and then to the Hernandez and Parker residences. I need to see this straight in my head.”
He glanced at his watch. “That’ll work. Jannie’s with Willow until eight.”
They drove past Harrison Charter to the Parkers’ apartment building and went from there to where the Hernandez family had lived. “We’re not talking a big area to select victims from, are we?” Bree said.
“No,” Sampson said. “Just three distinct small ones.”
“But it’s not like he focused on one area exclusively and then moved on to the next,” she said. “He returned to each locale. Fifteen years ago, Audrey Nyman, the first victim in the series, lived about a mile north of that apartment building. Victim two lived within nine blocks of the business incubator thirteen years ago. Victim three lived south of the apartment building eleven years ago. Number four was taken north of the incubator nine years ago and victims five and six were south and west of the incubator eight and six years ago.”
Sampson nodded. “He hunted every two years for quite a while. But then Dixon was attacked near the incubator two years ago. Elizabeth Hernandez vanished six months later when she was living near but not attending Harrison Charter. Eight months later, Maya Parker, also living close to but not attending Harrison, was taken.”
“It’s not just the proximity to those three places. It’s the timing again. Shorter and shorter between the attacks.”
“I see it,” Sampson said. “He’s escalating.”
“He is. And it’s been almost five months since Maya Parker. He’s going to hunt again, and sooner rather than later.”
“I agree. But I need to go home, read to Willow before bed. That’s always been our daddy time.”
Seeing Sampson’s eyes glisten, Bree said, “Keep it that way, John.”
“I’m trying,” he said. “Everything I’ve read says continuity is the best thing I can give her. I know how to be a good father. What I’m scared to death about is how to be a good mother to Willow, how to be what Billie was to her. You know?”
Bree heard and felt the turmoil in his voice. “You will figure out how to be what Willow needs, John. The same way Nana Mama became the person Alex needed after his own mom died. And the same way Alex had to adapt after his first wife was murdered. You will grow into who you have to be for her. And we will help you every step of the way. Jannie told me just this morning that she can babysit Willow anytime you need. And Ali says he’ll tutor her in math.”
Sampson smiled, tears welling in his eyes as he pulled up in front of Bree’s home. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”
“We’ll talk in the morning? By phone? No sneaking into the basement?”
“I promise,” he said, laughing.
“Kiss Willow good night for us,” she said, climbing out of the car.
“Will do. And give my best to Alex when you talk to him, wherever he is.”
CHAPTER 68
NED MAHONEY AND I SAT around Althea Lincoln’s firepit for almost four hours as night came on and the flames danced and roiled, as mesmerizing as the disturbing stories she told us.
“You’re a brave woman, Althea,” I said after she’d finished talking. “Kay was blessed to have you as a friend.”
Althea burst into tears. “Kay was my sister in every sense. My mom worked for her grandmother. We played together in diapers. What else could I have done?”
“You did the right thing,” Mahoney said. “From where I’m sitting, you’re the only one who always looked out for her interests.”
I nodded. “You never manipulated her. You never took advantage of her.”
“Well,” she said, wiping her tears with her sleeve. “I asked her for this land and she gave it to me. And I asked her to help Napoleon.”
“He was your half brother,” I said. “And besides, you know Kay loved him.”
“And Napoleon loved Kay to the day he died. The whole mess was just so sad, unjust, evil, you know? What some men will do to others for money and power.”
“And what some women will do for love,” I said and smiled at her across the dying fire, still trying to wrap my head around everything she’d told us.
It began to sprinkle rain.
Ned stood. “We’re going to need to get out of here so we can set about proving all this in the morning, get the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham involved.”
“Thanks for the food, Althea,” I said. “The fish was excellent.”
“Fresh-caught this morning,” she said, gesturing toward the lake in the darkness. “The fish like it off the point there for some reason, the way it’s shallow and then drops deep. I thi
nk — ”
A flat, suppressed crack came from the woods behind the cabin; the bullet hit Althea, spun her around, and dropped her. The second shot missed me but came so close, I heard the high zip-whine of it ripping past my ear.
“Get to cover!” Mahoney shouted before diving to his right, away from the fire, and going over the bank.
I threw the table on its side, grabbed Althea by the collar, and dragged her behind it just before a volley of shots rang out from multiple guns fitted with suppressors, sounding almost like a paintball war. Bullets splintered the wood above me as I glanced around the table and caught the muzzle flash of the last two shots coming from the direction of the chicken coop.
I returned fire, three quick shots, then ducked back down. Althea groaned. “They shot me.”
Two unsuppressed shots rang out from Mahoney’s last position. He’s flanking them, I thought.
“We’re going to get you out of here and to a hospital,” I told Althea. “Is there any way off this point besides swimming?”
Before she could reply, the shooting started again, closer now, hitting the stout table and the chairs beside it. I jumped up and fired four rounds, left to right, and ducked down, expecting another volley, but there was silence.
“My skiff,” Althea gasped. “It’s off the right side of the point, pulled up onshore.”
“Outboard?”
“Yes.”
It began to rain harder. Even so, I heard a movement to our left and emptied the gun in that direction, dropped the clip, and rammed my second one home. “Can you walk?” I asked.
“I’m having trouble breathing. It hit me left of my right shoulder.”
Her lung could be damaged, I thought. The shooting started up again, this time in the direction Mahoney had gone, which was also roughly where Althea said the boat was.
“You trust me?” I said.
“I do.”
“I’m putting you across my shoulders, fireman’s carry. We’re getting out of here.”
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