“What’s that mean?”
“It means your boyfriend is disloyal,” I said. “He keeps three different women in three different apartments, rotates among them.”
Bui’s face hardened, but she said nothing.
“How’s that make you feel, sharing him with two others, good for only one night in three?”
Le’s girlfriend blinked, stared at the floor, and said, “If that.”
“Right. And suppose his other two girlfriends decide it’s better to tell us what they know than get caught in Thao’s net. Where’s that going to leave you?”
Tears began to well in her eyes. “Up a creek,” she said. “Take off the cuffs, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
16
BREE BUILT UP a quick rapport with the twenty-four-year-old, so we decided to let her and Muller run the questioning when we returned to DC.
I went back to the office I share with Sampson and found a GoPro camera in a sealed evidence bag along with a note from the medical examiner Nancy Barton.
From the Maserati, she’d written. You’ll find it interesting. Barton had included a cable to hook up the camera to my computer. I attached it and turned the camera on. I had to fiddle until I got it in playback mode, and then Sampson and I watched the most recent MPEG file.
We watched it again. We talked about what we’d seen, and then we watched it a third time.
“I think we need to tell Michaels sooner rather than later,” Sampson said.
“Agreed,” I replied.
Ten minutes later, we were in the office of DC police chief Bryan Michaels. A welterweight fighting a paunchy belly, Michaels took a sip from his coffee cup and made a sour face.
“Damn it, I’ll never get used to this,” he said, shuddering and setting the cup down on his desk. “Hot lemon water. Supposed to be good for me, change my alkalinity.”
“Add honey,” I said.
“But first call up that video we sent you,” Sampson said.
“I could use a latte.” Michaels sighed, put on reading glasses, and turned to his computer.
A few keystrokes later, the MPEG video appeared.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Film of the last minutes of Aaron Peters’s life,” I said. “He had a GoPro Hero mounted in a fireproof housing on his dashboard. He must have hooked it up to his speedometer somehow, because-well, you’ll see.”
The chief clicked on the video, blew it up to full screen.
The camera gave us a view from the center of the dash, looking over the sleek hood and down along the headlight beams of the Maserati. In the lower right corner of the video, there was a digital speedometer. Lower left, a timer set at 0.
“Here we go, epic run,” said Aaron Peters off camera as he left Beach Drive for Rock Creek Parkway.
The timer started running as the engine roared, and the Maserati accelerated from thirty to seventy-five in under four seconds.
Peters laughed and then said, “Sonofa-”
The sounds of downshifting and brakes squealing filled the chief ’s office.
“Watch for it, Chief,” Sampson said.
Coming out of a backward S curve, a single headlamp cut the pavement beside the Maserati.
“Motorcycle?” Michaels said.
“What the… hey, asshole!” Aaron Peters said.
The headlights slashed again to the right, and you could hear the powerful whine of the motorcycle over the Maserati’s engine. But then Peters began cutting back and forth, trying to keep the motorcyclist from passing. He braked poorly in the next curve and tried to accelerate.
“Catch me if you can,” Aaron Peters said, and his speed climbed to ninety.
It didn’t seem to matter. The single headlight swung, and the motorcycle’s engine sounded almost as loud as the Maserati’s before two shots rang out. The sports car went out of control, smacked a guardrail, and did a whip-fast 360-degree skid that almost lit up the escaping motorcyclist for a split second before the car vaulted into the woods, hit the trees, and exploded into flames.
“Jesus,” Michaels said. “The guy shot from a motorcycle as he was going ninety?”
“Exactly our reaction,” I said. “Now call up the pictures I sent you.”
A minute later, the screen split into two photographs. One showed the wounds on COD Tom McGrath as photographed during his autopsy earlier in the day. The other picture was a close-up of Peters’s two head wounds.
“Okay?” Michaels said.
“In both cases, the shooting was extraordinary,” I said. “And in both cases, every bullet fired was a forty-five, perhaps from a Remington model 1911.”
Chief Michaels squinted one eye. “You think it’s the same shooter?”
“We have two slugs from Peters’s Kevlar helmet. We should have solid comparisons to the bullets that killed McGrath, but in the meantime we have to consider the possibility of one shooter, and I thought you should know.”
The chief thought a moment, said, “I don’t want any of this getting out until we’ve got a confirm or no-confirm on the ballistics. Are we clear?”
“We are,” Sampson said, and I nodded.
“Any connection between Peters and McGrath?” the chief asked.
“Nothing yet,” Sampson said.
“Keep me posted.”
“Every few hours, sir,” I said.
When we turned to leave, Michaels said, “Alex, could I have a word with you?”
I glanced at Sampson, said, “Sure.”
When the door closed behind my partner, Michaels said, “I need a chief of detectives.”
“Who are you considering?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Who better?”
I felt all sorts of conflicting emotions roil through me.
“Well?” Michaels said.
“I’m flattered, Chief,” I said. “And humbled that you think highly enough of me to offer me the job. But I need some time to think, to talk to Bree and my family.”
“You’d have more regular hours. Be able to see them more consistently, if that matters to you.”
“It does, but I still am going to need some time to-”
“Take all the time in the world. Just give me an answer by eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
17
NANA MAMA WAS in rare form that night. She’d seen Rachael Ray make chicken Provençal and decided to make it herself, doctoring the dish a bit by adding a little of this and a little of that until it was the kind of meal where you fought for seconds.
“Good, isn’t it?” I said.
“I’ll say,” Ali said.
“More, please,” Jannie said.
“Is that cumin?” Bree asked, smacking her lips.
“And a touch of curry powder,” Nana Mama said. “That and the way the onions and the chicken skin get so crispy? I’d pay for a meal like this.”
“Nana?” Ali said. “Did you check the lottery?”
Nana Mama had been playing numbers since I was a little kid. It was one of her few vices. Every week since I’d moved into her home all those years ago, she’d played a number.
“Already looked,” I said. “No one won Powerball. It’ll be up over fifty million the next draw.”
“No, Dad,” Ali said. “The charter-school lottery.”
My grandmother said, “Ali wants to go to Washington Latin, and I want him to go. He’ll be challenged academically in a charter, just as Jannie has been.”
“I should get in, right, Dad?” Ali said. “I scored ninety-six percent in math.”
“In the ninety-sixth percentile in math,” Nana Mama corrected him.
“And ninety-one percent, uh, tile, in reading,” Ali said.
“That will get you at least one more number in the lottery.”
“Two more,” Nana said. “He’ll have a good chance.”
Ali grinned down the table at me. He was such an affable brainiac, interested in so many subjects it was sometimes hard to believe he was only seven. “I’m getting in if I have to go down the chimney,” he said.