“Oh.”
Tessa looked around the kitchen, saw Martha in the doorway to the living room. “He took off?”
“Yes.” A motherly sigh. “Typical. Do you girls need anything?”
“No, we’re fine,” Tessa said.
After a light nod, Martha returned to her crossword puzzle in the living room, and Tessa saw Patrick’s computer on the kitchen table. He must have been in such a hurry that he left it.
He never left his computer behind. Ever.
Wait a minute.
Martha had already started on her crossword. Tessa put a finger to her lips to tell Dora to be quiet, then she picked up Patrick’s laptop and surreptitiously returned to her room.
Very surreptitiously.
After they were inside and the door was closed, Dora asked, “What are you doing?”
“Maybe I can’t find my father,” she said. “But Special Agent Patrick Bowers can.” She opened Patrick’s email program, found the email address for the FBI’s cybercrime division,
and typed in an urgent request for them to locate the current residence of Paul Lansing, former resident of 1682 Hennepin Avenue East, Minneapolis, MN 55431.
She glanced up.
Dora’s mouth was ajar, a glob of gum perched on her tongue. “You’re not seriously going to-”
Tessa signed the email “Special Agent Patrick Bowers.” She didn’t know his federal ID number but figured that a message coming from his personal laptop would be verification enough.
Pressed “send.”
“OK,” Dora said softly. “So, I guess you are.”
“Now,” Tessa said, “all we have to do is wait. They’re good at their job. Patrick calls them all the time. I’ll bet within an hour we know where my dad lives.”
102
Giovanni had used a gag on Amy Lynn Greer without asking for her permission.
Now, he stared at her, lying so still on the kitchen floor, hands and feet tied securely behind her back. And he thought of his grandmother on another kitchen floor long ago.
With sunlight seeping from her.
He’d seen so much sunlight over the years.
He knelt beside Amy Lynn and slapped her face to wake her. It would leave a bruise, but in a few hours that wouldn’t matter.
It didn’t do the trick, though, so he hit her again, harder, and this time she woke with a start. Blinked. Widened her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’m not going to kill you.” As he said the words, a thought, a terrible thought, must have crossed her mind because she shrank back as much as she could. Tried to move away from him. “No, I’m not here for that. I’m not going to touch you.”
Rapid breathing. Eyes searching, hoping for a way out.
“But although I’m not going to kill you, I’m afraid you will have to die tonight.” She made sounds that might have been her way of trying to cry for help, but because of the gag he couldn’t understand her words. “I chose you to play a lead role in story number nine. You know what that means, don’t you?”
More muffled sounds. She struggled, but he’d tied her well. A tear squeezed from her left eye.
“Yes, that’s right. You’ve read the story. You do know: tonight you’re going to kill yourself after you eat the heart of your dead lover.”
She shook her head desperately, frantically.
Giovanni looked at his watch. “I sent him an urgent text message on your behalf a few minutes ago telling him to hurry over, so I think he’ll be arriving any minute now.”
Then he grabbed her ankles and dragged her toward the bedroom. She twisted and struggled; couldn’t pull herself free.
“I won’t be able to let you hold your hands over your ears, so you’ll probably hear some of the sounds. I’m sorry about that. I apologize in advance.”
He situated her on the floor of the closet, closed the door, and then went to the kitchen to preheat the oven.
I burst through the door to Rachel’s Cafe.
Smelled the familiar scent of freshly roasting coffee, saw Janie working behind the counter-a sophomore journalism student. Trendy glasses, retro clothes. Newspaper spread in front of her across the counter just like usual.
A man in his early twenties wearing earbuds sat at a table near the coffee roaster, slowly swaying his head to the beat of his music. A pile of college textbooks in front of him. Apart from the two of them, Rachel’s was empty.
Janie must have wondered why I was scanning the room. “You all right, Dr. Bowers?” She knew I was a doctor, knew I worked for the government, but that’s all I’d ever told her. “Come in to get some work done?”
To get some work done. Yes.
No!
I realized what I’d done: left my computer at home.
No! How could you be so stupid?
Wait.
Tessa’s cell. Yes.
“Dr. Bowers?”
You can access the online case files with the cell phone.
“Janie.” I pulled out the phone. “This might sound like a strange request, but I have a few pictures to show you and I need you to tell me if you’ve seen any of these people in here. If any of them are regulars.”
“If they’re regulars,” she said brightly, “you’d know them.”
I shook my head. “I’m only here late in the day. I brew my own coffee in the mornings.” I tapped the screen of the cell, brought up the online case files. “Can you look at the pictures for me?”
Confusion ghosting across her face. “Sure.”
Quickly, I clicked to the “Known Victims” section of the case files and downloaded the photos for Chris Arlington, Brigitte Marcello, Benjamin Rhodes, and all the others. Then I dragged them into the phone’s photo suite so Janie wouldn’t see the word victims.
“It’s really important that you look at these carefully,” I said.
The front door opened. Cheyenne. “Pat. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Come here.”
Janie’s eyes flicked from me to Cheyenne to the cell phone. She no longer looked uneasy but frightened, and I figured it might be best to just tell her what I did for a living. I didn’t want the college guy in the corner to hear me if he unplugged his earbuds, so I lowered my voice. “I work for the FBI, Janie. And I think maybe you can help us with a case.”
“You work for the FBI?”
“Please. Just look at the pictures.” I handed her the cell, showed her how to slide her finger across the screen to scroll through the photographs. She stared at the phone for a moment, then began to view the photos one at a time.
Cheyenne stepped closer to me, piecing things together. “Are you thinking this is where John chooses-”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Janie tapped the screen. “This woman. Yeah. I’ve seen her. And this guy too.” She flicked back and forth between the two photos, pointing first at the headshot of Heather Fain and then at the picture of Ahmed Mohammed Shokr, the man who’d been poisoned on Wednesday.
“So, this is it,” I breathed. “This is-”
“Who is he, Pat?” Cheyenne asked. “Do you know?”
I shook my head.
Janie tapped the screen again, moving to the next two pictures. “This guy’s a priest, I recognize him… and sure, Dr. Bryant teaches one of my classes. He comes in here sometimes…” She flipped through the remaining pictures. “That’s it. That’s all the people I recognize.”
It was a start, but I needed more. I looked around the cafe and ran through everything in my mind. The timing. The connections. The locations.
Taking the phone, I surfed to the list of fifty-one names, and began to pore over them, looking for someone I might have run into at Rachel’s Cafe.
From where she lay bound and gagged in the closet, Amy Lynn could hear the noise of pots and pans clanging in the kitchen and the indistinct garble of police dispatch codes being called out through a radio.
She was trying to convince herself that the man who’d hit her and then tied her up was not the Day Four Killer. He was the last person on earth she would have ever suspected.
But it was him, there was no denying She heard the doorbell ring and she tried to scream, to yell for help, but was barely able to make a sound.