He jogged toward me. “That was ballsy.”
“Thanks.”
“The right call too. Despite what Wellington is gonna say.”
I recalled the congressman’s words: “Do you know for certain that revealing all this information will be in the best interest of my daughter?”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed Mahan was involved.” His voice was sharp with anger directed at himself. “I jumped the gun.”
“None of that matters. We just need to-”
“Find these psychos.”
“Yeah. Let’s get to the command post.”
He pointed toward the exit door. “My car is this way.”
“Is it close?”
“Right outside.” I could worry about my car later. We headed in the direction he’d pointed. “Fill me in,” I said. “What do we know?”
“My officers just finished interviewing the primate center’s staff.” He sounded exasperated. “Keepers, researchers, custodians, administrators, interns-everyone who’s not on vacation.”
“And?”
“Nothing solid. I can’t see any connection between them and the crime.”
I trusted he’d been thorough. “Forensics?”
“The chimps managed to destroy or contaminate nearly all the evidence we might have pulled from the habitat. Also, there weren’t any incriminating prints on the leather straps or the contents of Mollie’s purse. All wiped clean. Nothing so far on the rope used to hang Mahan either.”
Of course.
We made it to the door, left the building.
“There must be something. Do we know where Mahan’s abduction took place? Where his car might have been parked prior to appearing in the parking garage?”
Now we were at Doehring’s squad. Both of us climbed in.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
I didn’t need to tell him to make the call to find out. He had the radio in one hand and was cranking the ignition with the other.
I recalled my class discussion earlier in the day about planning the perfect murder. So far, these killers were right on target.
Except for one thing: if our hypothesis was correct that there were multiple offenders, that meant there was at least one accomplice. And that meant there was a loose end.
The DC streets were clogged, but we pulled into traffic and headed toward Metro police headquarters.
2:12 p.m.
Astrid finally arrived at the hotel, wearing a wig, sunglasses, a small disguise. She was somewhat rushed, somewhat frustrated: the task force had made the discovery much quicker than she’d expected.
But it wouldn’t change things. Everything else was still in play.
She peered into the van and saw that Brad had forgotten the duffel bag and the woman’s laptop computer. She sighed, retrieved them, then entered the hotel through the alley door where Brad had made sure the video footage was looping. At least he’d remembered to leave that propped open for her.
She went to the stairwell.
Because of the FBI’s progress, they would move up the schedule.
Mollie would die at 2:45 instead of 3:00. Just to make sure.
“Did the lab remove the glare from last night’s video?” I asked Doehring. “The footage of the Volvo?”
“Most of it, from what I heard, but not enough for us to ID the driver.”
Come on, Pat. What are you missing here? What are you missing?
The Volvo’s driver slowed down as he approached the light… He switched plates so that you’d notice… So that you’d notice…
I phoned Ralph. “Any ID on the woman yet?”
“No. We’ve got a list of possibles, Metro PD is going through them.”
“Did the agents find footage of any unidentified people leaving the facility last night?”
“They should finish in about ten minutes.”
“They should have finished an hour ago!” I snapped.
“They gave me some crap about a lot of people being there.” His tone was fiercer than mine had been. “A lot of partial faces, having to analyze stride length, posture, height, weight, whatever.”
“Just tell ’em to hurry.”
“Oh, believe me, they know.”
End call.
Doehring threw on his siren and overheads. Slowly, cars began to edge to the side as much as they could to let us through, but with the congestion in both lanes, it didn’t make that much of a difference.
I considered the locations we knew of so far… the electronics store… the primate research facility… the Metro stop where Mollie had been seen yesterday afternoon… the Connecticut Avenue bridge where Rusty had been found…
The killers approached the primate center from the south, less than ninety minutes after Mollie was last seen.
Oh.
Obvious!
I could hardly believe I’d missed it.
I tapped at my phone, pulled up the videos of Mahan’s car approaching the facility.
Doehring glanced at me. “What are you thinking?”
“The Volvo would have traveled through more than one light.”
Astrid opened the hotel room door and saw Mollie Fischer sitting on the bed, shivering with fear, her hands bound behind her, her legs tied together. Blood oozed down the left side of her forehead from something Brad must have done to her. Now he dabbed at the blood, even though in a few minutes none of that would matter.
Both of them looked her way. She entered the room, closed, then dead-bolted the door behind her.
And the voice inside of her, the one that Astrid realized was beginning to sound more and more like her father, narrated: Most people do not scream as they die, they move through the doorway with a slight gasp or a soft breath, or a faint and final moan. One would think that the culminating act of life would be more dramatic, more exciting, but that final moment is not nearly as fascinating as the movies make it seem. More often than not, it’s disappointingly anticlimactic. Passing away is actually a good phrase to describe it. We slip into the eternal sea, and the ripples of our lives quickly fade and settle and disappear. And soon, so soon, we are forgotten.
Astrid looked at the woman and thought of death-the ones she’d witnessed, the ones she’d helped arrange-thought of the pain and meaninglessness of the life that precedes it. Sometimes the passing away starts years before passing through the doorway.
Just like Dad’s.
Brad finished wiping the woman’s forehead and turned on the television, clicked through the channels until he found a car chase that seemed loud enough to hide any sounds Mollie might make when they removed her gag.
Astrid didn’t like the idea of having Brad inflict undue physical harm, but Mollie’s compliance was important, so she told her, “In a moment we’re going to remove that gag. And if you make any sound, I’ll have my friend beat you until you’re unconscious, and then do things to you that I can guarantee you would not want done. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
A small and terrified nod.
Power.
Power over hope.
Astrid motioned for Brad to loosen the gag.
No!
I’d been hoping to track the Volvo’s path backward to its point of origin, but I came up empty. Admittedly, I was flying through the footage too quickly to be absolutely certain, but I wasn’t able to locate the Volvo at any other traffic lights, and there were plenty of routes he might have taken to evade the city’s traffic cameras if he knew their location.
If only we knew the identity of the Jane Doe at the research center…
Timing, timing, timing.
We were almost to HQ, but I didn’t want to wait. Using the radio in Doehring’s cruiser I called the command post, identified myself, spoke with one of the officers. “The missing persons you’ve been following up on. Have you checked their recent phone calls, credit card usage, emails?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Send them to me.”
Astrid had studied acting when she was an undergrad, and now she was enjoying her role.
She flipped open Mollie’s laptop, logged into the hotel’s wireless connection, and then positioned the screen so that Mollie could see it. “I am going to give you a gift that very few people have ever been offered.”