“Yes. Plackett’s a small town about thirty minutes northeast of Richmond, two thousand souls or thereabouts.” He paused for a moment. “Both the murdered man, Sparky Carroll, and Walter Givens, his murderer, from the same town—it’s got to all tie in with this ritual witch’s knife, this Athame.”
“So we have a pissed-off witch on our hands and Sparky Carroll somehow got on his bad side?”
“Sounds like it.”
“I saw an Athame once,” Sherlock said, her voice slurring, she was so tired. “I think it was medieval. It was pretty.”
Pretty? That brutal knife with its ruby dragon eyes staring out had looked alien to him, and malevolent.
Savich pulled the Porsche into the garage, turned in his seat, cupped her beloved face between his hands, leaned forward, and touched his nose to hers. “You scared the crap out of me. I love you.” He kissed her, and took her whispered “I love you, too, and I’m so happy to be here saying that to you,” and when her eyes closed, her mouth still smiling, he finally let go of his fear.
• • •
SAVICH LAY ON his back, staring at the dark ceiling, Sherlock’s head on his shoulder. She was boneless, and slightly drunk, with half a bottle of champagne in her bloodstream. Savich wished he’d drunk more champagne, maybe he’d be snoozing, too, but no, his brain was stone-cold sober.
Bless her heart, she hadn’t had time to think about consequences, but Director Comey had. He’d assigned an assistant to handle all the media requests that would be flooding in to the Bureau. He’d also sent two agents to keep the media vans away from the Savich front yard and driveway. He’d laughed, suggested Savich and Sherlock might consider visiting Canada for a while, maybe take Romeo Rodriguez and Father Joseph with them.
Maybe Banff, Savich thought, his exhausted brain finally beginning to fuzz over; he’d like to visit Banff in western Canada. Maybe swim with Sean in Lake Louise. Need a wet suit for that. Did they make wet suits small enough for Sean? Sure, they did.
Savich’s last thought before he fell asleep was how it had been possible for someone to invade Walter Givens’s mind, convince him to murder Sparky Carroll, and then make him forget all of it. And why murder him in the middle of the hallway of the third floor of the Rayburn House Office Building with a witch’s ceremonial knife?
REINEKE POST OFFICE
REINEKE, VIRGINIA
Thursday, 5:15 a.m.
Ellie Moran was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Reineke post office, a woman as stalwart and plain as the boxy red-brick building she worked in. It sat proudly in the middle of High Street, sandwiched between the sheriff’s office and Donut Heaven.
Ellie knew everyone in town, and most of their secrets. She liked to think of herself as the hub of the Reineke gossip wheel. She might not be the postmaster, but she made the place run, and when the new postmaster showed in town the year before, he figured out what was good for him fast enough and fell into line.
She’d learned nearly every job and did each well, but her favorite was greeting the first early truck from the distribution center in Richmond that delivered the big rolling metal OTR package containers. She liked the predawn, enjoyed watching the sky get lighter and lighter as she wheeled the OTRs in from the dock inside the post office and unloaded them into the route hampers. She knew all the contract drivers from the private service the post office used, knew the sound each of their big trucks made as they backed up to the dock to unload the five to ten big OTRs that held up to fifty parcels each. Brakey Alcott was driving the truck this morning. He was young enough to be her son, always sucking down coffee like young people did to stay awake so early in the morning. Usually they joked back and forth as he pushed off the OTRs onto the loading dock, and he usually gave her a wave and called her beautiful as he headed back out again. But there were no jokes today. He was quiet, sort of nervous, and couldn’t wait to wheel the OTRs onto the loading dock and get away. She tried a joke, one of her best ones about the foul-mouthed parrot and the freezer, but Brakey didn’t even seem to hear her. Girl trouble, she thought; she’d bet her new Skechers it was girl trouble.
She wheeled in the first OTR, released and lowered the side of the cage, and began unloading the parcels, tossing each one into its proper route hamper, never getting it wrong. She’d been scheme-trained years before and that meant learning every street, every address, every route. She’d never been tested, but she thought she probably knew every resident’s name, except the new ones. When she finished she’d head for the employee lounge with its brand-new Keurig K-Cup machine for a cup of tea. She’d be alone, it was even too early for Eddie Hoop, the mail sorter, to show up and brag about the American postal system, the best in the world, blah, blah, blah, a tune he never tired of singing.
She hummed Justin Bieber’s “As Long as You Love Me” as she worked, her movements smooth and fast. She wheeled in the sixth and last OTR, this one filled to the top. She carefully lowered the side so the packages wouldn’t go flying off to the concrete floor. She lifted out a long, narrow package, read the address, and tossed it into route hamper eight. She paused to look at a small parcel addressed to Mrs. Lori Bamburger. From Victoria’s Secret, another pair of black lace undies that would be returned. Lori always ordered them two sizes too small.
What was that black stain nearly covering the address? She touched it—dry and smooth. Had a clerk at the distribution center spilled something on it? It was still legible, so she tossed it into the hamper and lifted out the next package. There were more black stains, drips and smears and smudges. She frowned. What was this stuff? She lifted out the next parcel.
And screamed.
SAVICH HOUSE
Thursday morning
When Savich’s cell blasted out Billy Ray, he’d been dreaming, not about Sherlock and the madman at JFK, but about walking through a stark white room whose walls were covered with mounted Athames, all their blades dripping blood, hundreds of them, some handles old and elaborately carved, others simple black-painted wood. The problem was he couldn’t find his way out.
Special Agent Jeremy Haimes, the SAC of the Richmond Field Office, was on the line to tell him about a murder in the Reineke post office. “The man yesterday, Savich, the one who was murdered in the Rayburn Office Building—I’ve got another dead man and he’s from the same town—Plackett—and he was also stabbed with some kind of ceremonial knife. That’s why I called you.”
“Jeremy, you said the body is in a post office in Reineke? How far is that from Plackett, Virginia?”
“About twenty miles southwest of Plackett.”
“Do you have an ID?”
“Yes, and this is tough. He was a cop. His name was Kane Lewis, an older guy, a paunchy grandfather, well liked. He was the sheriff’s only deputy, had been for eighteen years. That’s all I know so far. Everyone’s really shaken, as you can imagine. Can you come, Savich?”
When he, Sherlock, and Sean came downstairs half an hour later, it was to shouts from the front yard, where a half-dozen reporters were barely held in check by three FBI agents. A paparazzo had gotten close enough to snap a shot of Sean in his Transformers pajamas, staring at them out the window, a good catch. Most everyone remembered he was the kid whose video had gone viral at the San Francisco Symphony Christmas show. Savich scooped Sean up, pulled the curtains tight across the window, and took him into the kitchen as Gabriella was coming in through the back door with an FBI escort.
Forty-five minutes later Savich and Sherlock were driving to the Reineke post office.
• • •
SAVICH STOOD OVER the metal parcel cage he’d been told was called an OTR, looked at the boxes scattered around it on the floor, streaked and smudged with blood like abstract paintings. Only the packages beneath the body had kept the blood from dripping out of the OTR. He looked down to see the body of an older man with a circle of gray hair around his head. He was torque
d into a tight fetal position—difficult because he was heavy—his arms pulled between his legs. No deputy’s uniform. He wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt, old jeans, and ancient brown boots. Impossible to tell what sort of man he’d been—if he’d enjoyed jokes, if he’d loved his family, if he’d been honorable—that was all wiped away, gone in an instant, when the Athame was stuck into his heart. There had to be people out there already worrying about Kane Lewis, wondering where he was. They’d find out soon enough. Savich imagined he’d been a pleasant-looking man, but not in death. No, not in death.
Savich touched his fingers to Lewis’s neck, his cheek. He’d been dead when he was dumped into the OTR, but for how long? Maybe two, three hours? More? He looked at the long knife sticking out of his chest. Jeremy Haimes was right. It had something of the look of the ceremonial knife in Sparky Carroll’s chest, but was much plainer. Its ebony wooden handle was carved with two sickle moons, no outfacing dragons with ruby eyes. He’d seen Athames like it in that long white room in his dream the night before.
Agent Jeremy Haimes introduced them to the manager of postal operations and a postal inspector both hovering on the periphery. Both were older, shaken up and trying to hold it together, and of no help.
Several people who saw Sherlock did a double take, then were all over her with compliments and endless questions. She was polite but learned quickly to shut them off by saying only, “Yes, thank you. Now we have Deputy Lewis to attend to.”
Savich and Sherlock heard the James Bond theme “Nobody Does It Better,” and turned to see the postmaster, Mr. Mantano, turn away to answer his cell. When Mantano hung up, he walked back to them, careful not to get too close to the OTR, cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape, newly arrived forensic techs working around it. “As I told Agent Haimes, Ellie Moran, the employee who found the body, called me right away. I came down, verified that a dead man was in an OTR, called my boss in Richmond. She called the postal inspector, who called the FBI in Richmond. Everyone was here by six-thirty. I’ve kept all our employees away from that OTR—”
Sherlock asked, “What’s OTR mean, Mr. Mantano?”
He blinked at her, shook his head. “I’ve been with the post office for fourteen years and I don’t know.” He called out to another employee, then another. No one seemed to know. “It’s been in the PO lingo so long no one remembers, sorry.”
The manager of postal operations said he thought it meant “over the road,” as in transport. There was nervous laughter.
Dr. Krowder, the Richmond ME, with three assistants in his wake, shook hands with Haimes, Savich, and Sherlock, told Sherlock she was a pistol and wanted her autograph, then bent down to examine the body. “I sure don’t like seeing this after a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs,” he said over his shoulder. “This is nasty, Agents. This knife—I’ve never seen one like this before.”
“I saw one similar to it yesterday. It’s called an Athame,” Savich said. “It’s a ritual knife used in witches’ ceremonies.”
“I don’t imagine you see that every day. You’re here from Washington, Agent Savich, so I presume you know something about this knife?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what’s going on here?”
“Not yet.”
“Wait, that murder yesterday in Washington. The news said something about a ceremonial knife used to kill a man. Was it like this one?”
Savich nodded.
The sheriff was a tough-looking old buzzard and he looked angry. He said, “I’ve known Kane Lewis for thirty years, met him after I first became sheriff back in the eighties. Tough as nails and everybody knew it, but folks in Plackett liked him better than the sheriff. Lucky for the sheriff, Kane didn’t want to run against his boss, always saying life was too good for him to screw up his karma. He had a half-dozen grandkids.” He smacked his fist into his palm. “I hope you have some ideas on what kind of monster would do this.”
“Not yet, Sheriff.”
Dr. Krowder straightened and stepped aside for a tech to snap photos of Kane Lewis.
“I’d say he’s been dead about six hours. Looks obvious what killed him, but I’ll let you know anything else I discover during autopsy. Sheriff, I’m real sorry about the deputy. I guess you’re going to be the one to speak to his family?”
“Yeah, me and Sheriff Watson of Plackett, that’d be the right way to do it. A case of the devil you know—Kane’s murder is going to shake up Watson, even though he was jealous of him, hated it that everyone liked him better and respected him more. You know someone as long as he knew Kane Lewis, it burns a hole, you know? Oh, yeah, Sheriff Watson was also Kane Lewis’s brother-in-law; Kane was married to his sister, Glory. What a mess.” He shook their hands and walked away, muttering to himself. He turned back to Savich. “This is the second victim murdered with a ridiculous witch’s knife. What’s going on here, Agents?”
“We’ll find out,” Savich said.
Watson, Sherlock, and Haimes watched the techs wheel out the big OTR. Savich didn’t think it would fit into the ME’s van and wondered how they’d get it to the morgue.
Sherlock said, “Dane and Griffin are going to the trucking company that’s under contract by the post office, to interview Brakey Alcott, the driver who delivered the OTRs early this morning.” Sherlock pulled out her tablet. “Brakey’s real name is Joseph. Says here on his Facebook page that he ended up with the Brakey nickname after he stopped his dad’s pickup too fast at age sixteen and sent his dad through the windshield, broke his dad’s neck, but thankfully he pulled through. Brakey’s twenty-four years old, fairly new to the job, but reliable and well liked. The truck company can trace his movements.”
It didn’t matter that she’d been involved in a terrorist attack only hours before, Sherlock knew how to focus. She knew what to find out and she did it fast. Savich said, “Time is the key here—the killer stabbed Deputy Lewis, then he had to get his body into the truck, bury the body in an OTR and cover it with parcels, relock the truck and skedaddle before Brakey Alcott arrives. All this with no one noticing. So had he planned all along to use Brakey’s truck? The killer took a really big risk, and for what? Our finding the body looks more like a blunder to me, by somebody on the inside.”
Sherlock said, “Ellie Moran said Brakey Alcott seemed off this morning, and her eyes implied more than that, right, Jeremy?”
“Maybe, but please remember she’s got a reputation for gossip, I hear, likes a good story. Count on Deputy Lewis’s murder being all over Reineke by ten a.m. and all over Plackett by noon.”
Savich and Sherlock left Special Agent Jeremy Haimes and walked back to the parking lot behind the post office. Savich said as he opened the Porsche’s passenger door for Sherlock, “Why set up this elaborate, bizarre way to get rid of the body? Why go to the trouble of burying him under parcels bound for the Reineke post office? It’s complicated, obviously requires intimate knowledge of the postal operation. And it puts Brakey Alcott right in the center of the spotlight. If the murderer could have forced Brakey Alcott to stab Deputy Lewis in front of half the town and then forget all about it—as Walter Givens did yesterday in the Rayburn building—why not deliver Brakey up to the world, too?”
Sherlock said, “Let’s stop and talk about it at that café I saw on Jackson Street. We can have some tea. Truth is, I’m still a little wrung out from yesterday, and a short rest would be nice.”
• • •
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Savich was drinking the last of his tea when Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith called. “Brakey Alcott, the driver, always stops six miles out of Richmond at a small diner off the highway called Milt’s. He’s in there when it opens, stays for ten minutes, drinks two black coffees, eats one bear claw, chats up the waitress. He goes back for lunch on most days. He’s nearly got her ready to go to the movies with him.
“The truck is locked at the distribution center af
ter they fill it up with parcels, and it stays locked until he unlocks it to deliver the OTRs to the Reineke post office, his first stop of the day.
“I checked the lock—not tampered with, which means our killer had a key to the truck. So how’d he get it? The private contractor the Richmond distribution center uses is the Paltrow Trucking company. The drivers are hired by the trucking company, but the trucks themselves are left at the distribution center, except when they need servicing.
“The truck keys are left on a board inside the truck bay. The OTRs are loaded up early in the morning, between three and four a.m. Then the drivers simply pick up their keys on the way out. It’s a close-knit group, so making a copy of the truck key would be difficult unless everyone knew you, so I’m thinking one of the drivers or an employee.”
Savich said, “So no report of any strangers around within the past week?”
“No. In fact . . .”
Savich smiled into his cell. “Spit it out, Griffin.”
“It seems to me the killer has to be connected to the post office or to the trucking company. No one else would know their operations well enough, know the schedule and all that. So I’m thinking Brakey Alcott, for whatever reason, has got to be connected, maybe even be the killer, otherwise the whole operation has too many unknowns. If Brakey doesn’t pan out, I’ll move on to the other employees at the distribution center and the post office, but I’ll tell you, Savich, it feels like he’s at center court.”
Savich said, “But unlike Walter Givens, who killed Sparky Carroll in front of fifty witnesses, this murder was an attempt to hide the killer’s identity. When you find Brakey Alcott, Griffin, see if he, like Givens, has no idea that he even could have committed the murder. Keep it low-key, Griffin—you need his help, that sort of approach, very nonthreatening. If you think he’s another dupe like Givens, you need to keep him close, so take him back to the Hoover Building.