But, hey! “Not so bad. I sort of like it. Think I look a little like Bono.”
“Sonny and Cher—that Bono?” asked Rudy the Dense. “I don’t know about that, mister. I think you better lookin’ than Sonny Bono. He’s dead, you know?”
“Whatever,” said Sullivan, and paid his tab, gave the barber a tip, and got the hell out of there.
Next, he drove over to the Capitol Hill neighborhood in DC.
He’d always liked the area, found it a turn-on. Most people’s image of the Capitol was the graceful steps and terraces of the west facade. But on the east side, behind the Capitol and the Supreme Court and Library of Congress buildings, was a bustling residential neighborhood that he knew fairly well. I’ve passed this way before.
The Butcher walked through Lincoln Park, which had an exceptional view of the Capitol dome now that the leaves were falling away.
He smoked a cigarette and reviewed his plan in front of the somewhat bizarre Emancipation Memorial, which featured a slave breaking out of chains while Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln, a good man by most accounts. Myself, a very bad man. Wonder how that happens? he wondered.
A few minutes later, he was breaking in to a house on C Street. He just knew this was the bitch who had talked about him. He felt it in his bones, in his blood. And soon, he’d know for sure.
He found Mena Sunderland tucked away in her adorable little kitchen. She was dressed in jeans, an immaculate white tee, scuffed-up clogs, making pasta for one while she sipped a glass of red wine. Cute as a button, he thought to himself.
“Did you miss me, Mena? I missed you. And you know what? I almost forgot how pretty you are.”
But I won’t forget you again, darling girl. I brought a camera to take your picture this time. You’re going to be in my prize photo collection after all. Oh, yes you are!
And he gave her the first cut with his scalpel.
Chapter 81
I WAS STILL INSIDE THE CHURCH when my cell phone went off, and it was trouble near the Capitol. I said a quick prayer for whoever was in jeopardy, and a prayer that we would catch the killer-rapist soon. Then I left St. Anthony’s on the run.
Sampson and I rushed to the neighborhood behind the Capitol building in his car with the siren blaring, lights flashing on the rooftop. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung up everywhere by the time we arrived. The scene, the backdrop of important government buildings, couldn’t have been more dramatic, I thought, as Sampson and I hurried up the four stone front steps of a brownstone.
Is he putting on a show for us? Is he doing it on purpose? Or did it just happen this way?
I heard a car alarm whining and glanced back toward the street. What a strange, curious sight: police, news reporters, a growing crowd of looky-loos.
Fear was plainly stamped on many of the faces, and I couldn’t help thinking that this was a familiar tableau of the age, this look of fear, this terrible state of fear that the whole country seemed to be caught up in—maybe the entire world was afraid right now.
Unfortunately, it was even worse inside the brownstone. The crime scene was already being tightly controlled by somber-faced homicide detectives and techies, but Sampson was let inside. He overrode a sergeant’s objections and brought me along.
Into the kitchen we went.
The unthinkable murder scene.
The killer’s workshop.
I saw poor Mena Sunderland where she lay on the reddish-brown tile floor. Her eyes were rolled back to the whites, and they seemed pinned to a point on the ceiling. But Mena’s eyes weren’t the first thing I noticed. Oh, what a bastard this killer was.
A carving knife was stuck in her throat, poised like a deadly stake. There were multiple wounds on the face, deep, unnecessarily vicious cuts. Her top, a white tee, had been torn away. Her jeans and panties had been pulled down around the ankles but hadn’t been stripped off. One of her shoes was on, one off, a pale-blue clog lying on its side in blood.
Sampson looked at me. “Alex, what are you getting? Tell me.”
“Not much. Not so far. I don’t think he bothered to rape her,” I said.
“Why? He pulled down her pants.”
I knelt over Mena’s body. “Nature of the wounds. All this blood. The disfigurement. He was too angry at her. He told her not to talk to us, and she disobeyed him. That’s what this is about. I think so. We might have gotten her killed, John.”
Sampson reacted angrily. “Alex, we told her not to come back here yet. We offered her surveillance, protection. What more could we do?”
I shook my head. “Left her alone maybe. Caught the killer before he got to her. Something else, John—anything but this.”
Chapter 82
SO NOW WE WERE INVESTIGATING the case for Mena Sunderland, too, in her memory—at least that was what I told myself, that was my rationalization. This was for Maria Cross, and Mena Sunderland, and all the others.
For the next three days I worked closely with Sampson during the day and then went out on the street with him at night. Our night shift usually took place from ten until around two. We were part of the task force patrolling Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, areas where the rapist-killer had struck before. Emotions were running high, but no one wanted him more than I did.
Still, I was trying my best to keep the very tense investigation in some kind of perspective and control. Almost every night, I managed to have dinner with Nana and the kids. I checked in with Kayla Coles in North Carolina, and she sounded better. I also conducted half a dozen sessions with my patients, including Kim Stafford, who was coming to see me twice a week and maybe even making some progress. Her fiancé had never mentioned our “talk” to her.
My morning ritual included grabbing a coffee at the Starbucks, which was right in my building, or at the Au Bon Pain on the corner of Indiana and Sixth. The problem with Au Bon Pain was that I liked their pastries too much, so I had to stay clear of the place as much as I could.
Kim was my favorite patient. Therapists usually have favorites, no matter how much they rationalize that they don’t. “Remember, I told you that Jason wasn’t such a bad guy?” she said about fifteen minutes into our session one morning. I remembered, and I also recalled cleaning his clock pretty good at the station house where he worked.
“Well, he was pure, unadulterated garbage, Dr. Cross. I’ve figured that much out. Took me a lot longer than it should have.”
I nodded and waited for more to come. I knew exactly what I wanted to hear from her next.
“I moved out on him. I waited until he went to work, then I left. The truth? I’m scared to death. But I did what I had to do.”
She got up and went to the window, which looked out onto Judiciary Square. You could also see the US District Courthouse from my place.
“How long have you been married?” she asked, glancing at the ring I still wore on my left hand.
“I was married. I’m not anymore.” I told her a little about Maria, about what had happened more than ten years before—the abridged version, the unsentimental one.
“I’m sorry,” she said when I was through. There were tears in her eyes, the last thing I’d wanted. That morning, we got through a couple of rough patches, made some progress. Then a strange thing happened—she shook my hand before she left. “You’re a good person,” she said. “Good-bye, Dr. Cross.”
And I thought that I might have just lost a patient—my first—because I’d done a good job.
Chapter 83
WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT BLEW my mind. Actually, everything had been really good about the night, until it went bad. I had treated Nana and the kids to a special dinner at Kinkead’s, near the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, our favorite restaurant in Washington. The great jazzman Hilton Fenton came over to our table and told us a funny story about the actor Morgan Freeman. Back at home, I climbed the steep wooden stairs to my office in the attic, cursing the steps under my breath, one by one.
I put on
some Sam Cooke, starting with a popular favorite, “You Send Me.” Then I pored over old DC police files from the time of Maria’s murder—hundreds of pages.
I was looking for unsolved rape cases from back then, particularly ones that had occurred in Southeast or nearby. I worked intently and listened to the music, and was surprised when I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten past three. Some interesting things had surfaced in the files from the serial case I’d remembered was going on around the same time Maria died.
In fact, the rapes had started a few weeks before Maria was shot and ended just after the murder. They never started up again. Which meant what—that the rapist might have been a visitor to Washington?
Even more interesting to me, there were no IDs of the rapist from any of the victimized women. They had received medical attention but refused to talk to the police about what had happened to them. It didn’t substantiate anything, but it kept me flipping through more pages.
I went over several more transcripts and still found no IDs from the victims.
Could it be a coincidence? I doubted it. I kept reading.
Then I was stopped cold by a page in the police notes. A name and more information jumped out at me.
Maria Cross.
Social worker at Potomac Gardens.
A Detective Alvin Hightower, whom I had vaguely known back then—I was pretty sure he was dead now—had written a workup on the rape of a college girl from George Washington University. The attack took place inside a bar on M Street.
As I continued to read, I was having a hard time breathing. I was remembering a conversation that I’d had with Maria a couple of days before she died. It was about a case she was working on, about a girl who’d been raped.
According to the detective’s report, the coed had given some kind of description of the rapist to a social worker—Maria Cross. He was a white male, a little over six foot, possibly from New York. When he had finished with the girl he had taken a little bow.
My fingers shaking, I turned the page and checked the date of the initial report. And there it was—the day before Maria was murdered.
And the rapist?
The Butcher. The mob killer we’d been tracking. I remembered his rooftop bow, his unexplainable visit to my house.
The Butcher.
I would bet my life on it.
Part Four
DRAGON SLAYER
Chapter 84
NANA PICKED UP THE PHONE in the kitchen, where the family had gathered to fix supper that night. We all had a task for the meal, from peeling potatoes to making a Caesar salad and setting the table with the good silver. I tensed whenever the phone rang though. Now what? Had Sampson found something on the Butcher?
Nana spoke into the receiver. “Hello, sweetheart, how are you? How are you feeling? Oh, that’s good, that’s so good to hear. Let me get him. Alex is right here chopping vegetables like he works at Benihana. Oh, yeah, he’s doing pretty good. He’ll be lots better when he hears your voice.”
I knew it had to be Kayla, so I took the call out in the living room. Even as I did, I wondered when we had evolved into a family with telephones in just about every room, not to mention the cell phones that Damon and Jannie carried to school these days.
“So, how are you, sweetheart?” I picked up and tried to imitate Nana’s dulcet tones. “I’ve got it. You can hang up in the kitchen,” I added for the peanut gallery listening in, cackling and giggling out there.
“Hi, Kayla! Bye, Kayla!” chorused the kids.
“Bye, Kayla,” added Nana. “We love you. Get better real soon.”
She and I heard a click, and then Kayla said, “I’m doing just fine. The patient is doing beautifully. Almost healed and ready to kick some butt again.”
I smiled and felt the warmth flow through me just hearing her voice, even long distance like this. “Well, it’s good to listen to your butt-kicking voice again.”
“Yours too, Alex. And the kids and Nana. I’m sorry I didn’t call last week. My father has been under the weather, but he’s coming around now too. And you know me. I’ve been doing some pro bono work in the neighborhood. I just hate to get paid, you know.”
There was a brief pause, but then I filled the space with inane questions about Kayla’s folks and life in North Carolina, where both of us had been born. By this time, I had calmed down some about the unexpected call from Kayla, and I was more myself.
“So how are you?” I asked her. “You really okay? Almost recovered?”
“I am. I’m clearer on certain things than I’ve been in a while. Had some time to process and reflect for a change. Alex, I’ve been thinking that . . . I might not be coming back to Washington. I wanted to talk to you about it before I told anyone else.”
My stomach dropped like a runaway elevator in a skyscraper. I had suspected something like this might be coming, but I still buckled from the blow.
Kayla continued to talk. “There’s so much to do down here. Lots of sick people, of course. And I’d forgotten how nice, how sane, this place is. I’m sorry, I’m not putting this . . . saying it very well.”
I snuck in a light thought. “You’re not real verbal. That’s a problem with you scientists.”
Kayla sighed deeply. “Alex, do you think I’m wrong about this? You know what I’m saying? Of course you do.”
I wanted to tell Kayla she was dead wrong, that she should rush back here to DC, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Why was that? “All right, here’s the only answer I can give, Kayla. You know what’s right for yourself. I would never try to influence you at all. I know that I couldn’t if I wanted to. I’m not sure that came out exactly right.”
“Oh, I think it did. You’re just being honest,” she said. “I do have to figure out what’s best for me. It’s my nature, isn’t it? It’s both of our natures.”
We went on talking for a while, but when we finally hung up I had this terrible feeling about what had just happened. I lost her, didn’t I? What is wrong with me? Why didn’t I tell Kayla I needed her? Why didn’t I tell her to come back to Washington as soon as she could? Why didn’t I tell her I loved her?
After dinner, I went upstairs to the attic, my retreat, my escape hatch, and I tried to lose myself in the remainder of old files from the time of Maria’s death. I didn’t think too much about Kayla. I just kept thinking about Maria, missing her more than I had in years, wondering what our life could have been if she hadn’t died.
Around one in the morning, I finally tiptoed downstairs. I slipped into Ali’s room again. Quiet as a church mouse, I lay down beside my sweet, dreaming boy.
I held little Alex’s hand with my pinkie, and I silently mouthed the words, Help me, pup.
Chapter 85
THINGS WERE HAPPENING FAST NOW . . . for better or worse. Michael Sullivan hadn’t been this wired and full of tension in years, and actually he kind of liked the revved-up feeling just fine. He was back, wasn’t he? Hell yes, he was in his prime, too. He’d never been angrier or more focused. The only real problem was that he was finding he needed more action, any kind would do. He couldn’t sit still in that motel anymore, couldn’t watch old episodes of Law & Order or play any more soccer or baseball with the boys.
He needed to hunt; needed to keep moving; needed his adrenaline fixes in closer proximity.
Mistake.
So he found himself back in DC—where he shouldn’t be—not even with his new short haircut and wearing a Georgetown Hoyas silver-and-blue hoodie that made him look like some kind of lame Yuppie wannabe who deserved to be punched in the face and kicked in the head while he was down.
But damn it all, he did like the women here, the tight-assed professional types best of all. He’d just finished reading John Updike’s Villages and wondered if old man Updike was half as horny as some of the characters he wrote about. Hadn’t that horned toad written Couples too? Plus, Updike was like seventy-something and still scribbling about sex like he was a teenager on the farm in Pe
nnsylvania, screwing anything with two, three, or four legs. But hell, maybe he was missing the point of the book. Or maybe Updike was. Was that possible? That a writer didn’t really get what he was writing about himself?
Anyway, he did fancy the fancy-pants women of Georgetown. They smelled so good, looked really good, talked good. The Women of Georgetown, now that would be a good book for somebody to write, maybe even Johnny U.
Jeez, he was amusing to himself anyway. On the car ride in from Maryland he’d been listening to U2, and Bono had been wailing about wanting to spend some time inside the head of his lover, and Sullivan wondered—all cornball Irish romanticism aside—if that was really such a capital idea. Did Caitlin need to be inside his head? Definitely not. Did he need to be inside hers? No. Because he didn’t really like a lot of empty space.
So where the hell was he?
Ah, Thirty-first Street. Coming up on Blues Alley, which was fairly deserted at this time of day—as opposed to nighttime, when the clubs were open around these parts of Washington and the crowds came calling. He was listening to James McMurtry and the Heartless Bastards now. He liked the CD well enough to stay in his parked car an extra few minutes.
Finally he climbed out, stretched his legs, and took a breath of moderately foul city air.
Ready or not, here I come. He decided to cut through to Wisconsin Avenue and check out the ladies there, maybe lure one back into the alley somehow. Then what? Hell, whatever he damn well felt like. He was Michael Sullivan, the Butcher of Sligo, a real crazy bastard if ever there was one on this spinning ball of gas and rock. What was that old line he liked? Three out of four voices inside my head say go for it.
The Thirty-first Street entrance to the alley was bathed in this faded yellow glow from the lights at a spaghetti joint called Ristorante Piccolo. A lot of the hot spots on M Street, which ran parallel to the alley, had their service entrances back here.