“He always wore a mask,” Craig said, gesturing at the one he’d set by the dead man’s head. “And he was careful to clean the women up. But the detective said there was no doubt in his mind that St. Michel was his man.”
“You think he’s the one who killed Kissy Raider?” Sampson asked.
“He’s looking awful good for it to me,” Craig said.
I took a flashlight from my pocket and shone it inside the van, where there was a kit waiting: strips of duct tape for his victim’s mouth and ankles, hanging above a pair of handcuffs linked through a bracket welded into the van’s wall.
“He had it worked out. Looks just like what happened to Kissy,” Sampson said.
“But it’s not,” I said. “Kissy was restrained by nylon webbing and eyebolts.”
“Close enough,” Craig said.
“Maybe,” I said, opening the passenger door of the van.
The dome light had been turned off, but I beamed my flashlight under the seats, across the dash console, and into the glove compartment.
Then, as the first Fairfax County Sheriff patrol cars pulled into the parking lot, I went through St. Michel’s pockets. I found nothing.
“Is it the same guy?” Sampson said after I’d taken a step or two back from the scene.
“I don’t know,” I said. “If it is, where’s the bleach solution? More important, where’s the tie he was going to strangle her with?”
Chapter 21
Present day
Eventually I put away the files in the attic and went back to bed. The next day, operating on less than five hours of sleep, I managed to see several private clients in my basement office. But in the gaps between appointments, my mind slipped repeatedly into the deep past, replaying how Kyle Craig had appeared out of nowhere to shoot Gerald St. Michel.
But no nylon webbing. No eyebolts in the van wall. No bleach. No tie.
A dozen years later, I could still feel the instinctive response I’d had to those discrepancies in the pattern, could still remember how I left the crime scene with lingering doubts that St. Michel was our serial rapist and killer.
But as Sampson kept saying, St. Michel had targeted a blond single mom who had a young son and worked at Hooters. What were the odds of two different killers sharing the same target profile? Pretty slim, and that and the fact that there were no new attacks for a while had allowed me to dismiss my doubts.
Then a man grabbed a young blond woman late at night in Falls Church, Virginia. He used a necktie to bind her hands and threw her in a panel van. She managed to escape when he stopped at a light and was able to give police a rough description of her assailant.
I was lost in thought when a knock came at my office door, and I shot up about a foot in the air, I was so startled.
“Yes?” I said, frowning because I was done with patients for the day.
“Alex, I’m baking brownies,” my grandmother said, opening the door. “And Ali’s home from school.”
Brownies. I glanced at my watch. Half past four. A good time for a break.
“I’ll be right up,” I promised, and I shut down my laptop.
When I entered the kitchen, the smell of baking brownies was incredible.
“Don’t you go looking in that oven,” Nana Mama said. “I’ve got them on a timer.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, pouring myself some orange juice, but I desperately wanted to open the oven and breathe in the aroma of my grandmother’s heavenly brownie concoction, which had three different kinds of chocolate and chopped walnuts and pistachios.
Ali came into the kitchen and put his school bag on the counter. “Hi, Dad. How long, Nana?”
“Ten minutes. Anyone can wait ten minutes.”
He started to protest, but I said, “Rule number one: Listen to Nana. Rule number two: See rule number one.”
“Sound advice,” my grandmother said, walking up behind me, turning on the light in the oven, and crouching to look through the glass.
The front doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it!” Ali said, and he darted off.
I decided to go back down to my office and finish writing a note on one of my clients, and I was about to ask Nana to send down a fresh brownie when they were done when I heard Ali say, “Hi, Captain Abrahamsen!”
“Isn’t he the nice man who brought Ali home?” Nana Mama said.
“One and the same,” I said, leaving the kitchen for the front hall. The captain was on the porch in his U.S. Army dress uniform. He was chatting with Ali through the screen, saw me, and straightened up.
“Mr. Cross,” he said, smiling.
“Captain,” I said, then I looked at Ali. “Aren’t you going to let him in?”
Ali opened the door.
Abrahamsen wore laminated badges that I recognized as Pentagon and U.S. Capitol passes. He held up a plastic shopping bag, then stepped inside and said, “I had to be up on the Hill for a meeting, and I thought Ali might be able to use these for his bike. They’re surplus.”
Ali took the bag and looked inside. “Whoa!”
He pulled out a knobby tire wrapped in rubber bands, a small bicycle pump, a tube for the tire, and a patch kit.
The captain grinned at Ali and then looked at me. “He really should have the patch kit with him if he’s off riding by himself.”
“Good point,” I said. “Do you know how to use it, Ali?”
My son shrugged. “Sort of. I watched someone do it on YouTube.”
Abrahamsen said, “I’ve got twenty minutes. Get your bike. I’ll show you.”
“You won’t get dirty?” Ali asked.
“Not if you do the work.”
Ali looked at me, and I bobbed my chin. He took the porch steps two at a time and disappeared around the corner.
“I wish I had his energy,” Abrahamsen said, then he laughed. “He reminds me of my stepbrother. Willis is ten too.”
He pulled out his wallet, thumbed through it, and came up with a picture of himself kneeling by a towheaded boy in a Little League uniform.
“Where’s he live?” I asked, seeing palm trees in the background.
“Southern Cal,” Abrahamsen said. “With my dad and his second wife. Love that kid.”
“What do you do for the army?”
“Now?” he said. “I brief folks up on the Hill. Liaison work, mostly.”
“And you bicycle.”
The captain grinned. “My orders do include training rides three times a week.”
“Lifer?” I asked as Ali came puffing up the porch stairs, bike over his shoulder.
“If the work stays challenging, I could put my twenty in.”
“Captain?” Ali said.
“Be right out,” he said. “Can I use your latrine?”
“Sure,” I said. “Right down the hall, through the kitchen, and on your left.”
“Thank you,” he said. He walked by me and almost bumped into Nana Mama, who had appeared with a plate of warm brownies.
“I figured you’d want some, Captain Abrahamsen,” she said.
Abrahamsen laughed. “You must be Nana Mama.”
“The one and only,” I said. “The captain needs to use our bathroom.”
“Through the kitchen and on the left. I’ll put these on the porch for you all.”
My cell phone rang. FBI special agent Mahoney. “Ned,” I said.
“Pack an overnight,” Mahoney said. “And get to Reagan National Airport.”
Chapter 22
Four hours later, Mahoney and I pulled into the driveway of a beautiful home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Diane Jenkins, a forty-two-year-old mother of two, had vanished thirty-seven hours before. Her husband, Melvin, owner of a string of home-nursing companies, said his wife had failed to pick up their daughters after school. The girls and their father had tried to reach Mrs. Jenkins for hours but their calls went straight to voice mail.