Although single and, according to her staff, not dating anyone, Duffy had left work early the day of her disappearance and bought a merry widow corset at a Victoria’s Secret at a mall in Falls Church. Her car was still parked there eight days later.
Security tapes from the mall revealed Ms. Duffy getting into a black Chevy Tahoe. The windows were tinted. The license plates were doctored.
But using computer-image enhancement programs, we’d been able to make out the sticker on the bumper of the vehicle. It said spellman’s live bait and tackle.
Sampson and I came to an overgrown clearing with a lake beyond it. There were several boarded-up cottages in the tangle of thorny vines that choked the place.
Sampson pointed to the biggest building, which had a caved-in front porch roof. Hanging by a single nail, a rusty sign said spellman’s live bait and tackle.
We walked down to the water.
“Place is hardly developed at all,” I said. “Just a few cabins way over there.”
“You’re saying this could be a retirement investment?” Sampson asked as crows began to quarrel somewhere in the woods.
“Gorgeous spot,” I said, seeing a crow dive-bomb into the weeds on the far side of the old fishing shop. Another one came screaming in behind it, and then they both came out angry over something.
I walked that way, found a game trail, followed it for fifteen yards. Then I stopped and called out to Sampson.
He came over quickly and peered at the colorful mound in the trail in front of me. “Gummy bears?”
Chapter 28
“What the heck’s a pile of gummy bears doing there?” Sampson asked.
“Exactly,” I said, squeezing one. “And they’re fresh.”
“I don’t get this.”
“Arlene Duffy always kept a jar of these on her desk, remember?” I said, gazing down the game trail. “There are more of them up there.”
Sampson and I stepped off the trail and walked parallel to it through the thorns and vines, seeing a gummy bear or two every few feet. We soon left the clearing and entered a thicket.
The light was dimmer, but I could see a crow on its side, quivering, on the trail ahead of me. There were gummy bears all around the bird, which seemed to be suffering some kind of seizure.
“Those candies are poisoned,” I said, gesturing at the crow. “Some of them, anyway.”
We found another dead bird and then a third before we reached a second, smaller clearing in the forest. A single decrepit cabin slouched there, overgrown by climbing vines, moss, and saplings.
The gummy bears led us toward the cabin, but when the breeze picked up and changed direction, the candies no longer mattered.
“Jesus,” Sampson said, pulling out a handkerchief and covering his mouth and nose. “I think there’s camphor in the car if we need it,” he said.
I mouth-breathed as I walked up onto the ramshackle porch, already hearing the blowflies. I got out the small flashlight I always carry and flicked it on.
The plank floor was buckled and covered in dead leaves, trash, and the odd gummy bear or two. I stepped gingerly inside, hoping to God the floor didn’t give way.
The boards grumbled but held as I took another step, then a third.
I swung the flashlight toward the buzzing flies. The beam passed over an old woodstove and the ruins of a couch before illuminating a headless corpse lashed to a chair. The head rested on a table beside her.
“It’s her,” I called out, feeling depressed and angry. “Arlene Duffy.”
“Shit,” Sampson said. “You’re sure?”
“She’s wearing the merry widow,” I said, playing the light over her. “And he cut off her head, Meat Man — style.”
“You’re kidding,” Sampson said, no doubt remembering the gruesome details of a case we had worked a decade before.
“I wish I were,” I said, taking a step toward her. She’d been dead for at least two days and was putrefying in the heat.
Despite the cloud of flies, I could see the gummy bears stuffed in her mouth. A note written in lipstick was pinned to her chest.
I’ve done the world a favor, Alex Cross, it read. This bitch was a molester and pornographer. She used drug-laced gummy bears to subdue her victims. Check the jar on her desk. And arrest her assistant. If she didn’t know, she suspected. — M
Chapter 29
Present day
More than a decade after that message and four days after M managed to put a head and finger in the back of our car in Ohio, I entered the visitors’ center at the Alexandria jail for my scheduled meeting with Martin Forbes.
I didn’t fully trust Marty Forbes’s alibi tale. I still believed he could have found the reference to M in files at Quantico and then cooked up everything else, hoping to lure me in to help him.
Forbes was smiling when he entered the booth on the opposite side of the bulletproof glass.
“I read the papers,” he said. “I see it’s out in the open now. M is messing with you, isn’t he, Cross?”
“He sent a note.”
“What did it say?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”
That pissed off Forbes. “You don’t trust me. This is my life.”
“I know it is, and no, I don’t trust you. Not entirely. That’s just the way it is.”
He stewed over that for a while and then said, “I’m a smart guy. I was a good agent, a good investigator.”
“I’d agree with that.”
“Then use me,” Forbes said, tapping his head. “I do nothing but sit around all day. Who was the woman? The head?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“C’mon, Cross, let me in. I can help.”
I thought about it and decided to let him in on some of it. I read him a copy of the note M had left us.
Forbes listened, gazing off into the middle distance.
“He called himself Mastermind,” he said after a few moments. “Craig’s alias.”
I shook my head. “M didn’t call himself Mastermind. He said that he was a mastermind.”
“Still. That’s something.”
“It’s not,” I insisted. “Craig’s dead. I saw him blown apart and consumed in flames. This guy’s using words he knows will yank our chain. It’s misdirection.”
“I know what I saw,” Forbes said.
“While you were drugged,” I said. “It could have been a hallucination. Or M wore a disguise to look like Craig.”
I could tell Forbes was not convinced, but he let the issue drop and said, “He called the media. That’s a bold move.”
“Very bold,” I said. “And now they know he has a name. Or a letter, anyway.”
“Is the story getting traction?”
“The media doesn’t know the extent of it all yet,” I said. “Not by a mile.”
“What does that mean?” he said, studying me.
I considered telling him about the earlier notes from M but then decided to keep that close. “Your story, for one,” I said.
“It’s going to come out,” Forbes said. “I’ve told the Bureau about this.”
That was news to me, but before I could question him, he said, “And I told you and my attorney.”
“That’s a good thing,” I said. “But I’d appreciate it if you kept a lid on that until it comes out in court. If he wants you in here, there’s a reason.”
He stared at me, then shook his head in disgust. “You’re not here about me at all, Cross. I had it wrong. You’re not the straight shooter I thought you were. You’re in it for yourself, same as M, same as everyone else. Meanwhile, I sit and rot.”
Before I could reply, he slammed down the phone, glared at me, and then got up and walked away.