The Next Accident

  Shortly, he went into the front room he used as an office. He dug through a stack of cardboard boxes marked Criminology: Basic Theories, until he found a small cassette tape labeled “Miguel Sanchez: Victim Eight.” The original tape sat in an evidence storage locker in California. This was Quincy’s personal copy, used in several of his classes.

  He placed the tape in an old cassette recorder. He hit play. He sat alone in the dark, while his office filled with sounds of a young girl’s pleading wails.

  Amanda Johnson, fifteen years old and eight long hours from death.

  “Noooooooooo,” she cried. “Oh God, nooooooooooo.”

  Quincy put his head in his hands. And he knew he was in trouble, because one month after his daughter’s funeral, he still couldn’t weep.

  8

  Motel 6, Virginia

  “Who is Miguel Sanchez?” Rainie asked an hour later. She was propped up against the headboard of her mud-brown motel room, having just treated herself to a late dinner of pecan waffles at the nearby Waffle House. The Motel 6 had been highly visible from the highway and seemed as good a stopping point as any. Besides, at fifty dollars a night, no one could question her expense account.

  She’d found the motel. She’d found the neighboring Waffle House. She’d eaten her waffles alone, thinking of Officer Amity’s take on the accident scene and wishing she didn’t have a chill. Then she’d wasted ten minutes watching other diners, burly, working-class men out with their girls. In some cases, tables crowded with entire families. She was three thousand miles away from home. Funny how nothing seemed that different.

  She’d walked back to the motel knowing she should call Quincy and deliver a report on her day. Instead, she’d turned on the TV and perused the modern miracle of fifty-seven channels and still nothing to see. She told herself she didn’t have much to report, anyway. Besides, she didn’t want to seem anxious to hear Quincy’s voice. She wanted to ensure that she was treating this as business, purely business. Quincy the client.

  There had been nothing good on TV. She had spent the day in a strange state thinking, this is where Quincy lives, and she had been anxious to hear his voice. She’d called. And it had taken her all of one second to realize that she should’ve called sooner. Quincy sounded tired, nearly flat, as if he had no emotions left. She had never heard him sound like that before.

  “Miguel Sanchez was my first case,” he told her now. “Worked out of California in the mid-eighties, with his cousin, Richie Millos. They specialized in sadistic rape-murders of young prostitutes. Eight total. Sanchez liked to tape his work.”

  “Nice guy,” Rainie commented. She turned off the TV and set down the remote. “So you were instrumental in catching Sanchez?”

  “I formulated the strategy used by the police for Sanchez’s arrest. A witness had reported seeing two men dragging the eighth victim into a white van twenty-four hours before her corpse was found mutilated alongside I-5. At this point, we already knew we were dealing with an organized killer. As I explained to the LAPD, partnerships are rare for psychopaths, but in the few occasions we’ve encountered them, the partner has generally been subservient—a weak sidekick who merely fulfills the psychopath’s desire for an audience. My advice, therefore, once the police had identified two likely suspects, was that they focus their attention on the weaker member of the pair. Turn Richie to give up Miguel, who was the real instigator and threat.”

  “I’m guessing this was easier said than done.”

  “Yes. Richie idolized his older cousin. He was also terrified of him. For good reason. Six months after Richie handed over Miguel in return for a reduced sentence, he was found in the prison showers with his penis cut off and shoved down his throat. Miguel never believed in being subtle.”

  “Ah. So this fine piece of humanity called your personal line tonight?”

  “Him, and forty-seven of his fellow deviants. Then I had eight calls from various prison officials, who thought I should know that my unlisted telephone number is currently being circulated in prison yards in everything from scraps of paper to packs of cigarettes. Oh, and in one prison, my number is now scratched into the shower wall.”

  “Quincy—”

  “By my count, the forty-eight inmates represent twenty-one different correctional facilities, so I imagine I will be hearing from more prison officials in the morning.”

  “Quincy—”

  “But don’t worry,” he continued, his voice no longer flat, but gaining an edge, “most corrections departments have the right to monitor an inmate’s calls, so I’m sure the new members of my fan club will be suitably punished. Maybe have a disciplinary ticket written up or receive ad seg—administrative segregation. You know, penalties I’m sure more than compensate for the sheer thrill a bunch of psychopathic lifers can get by toying with a federal agent.”

  “Change your number.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Quincy, don’t be an ass!”

  “I’m not. I’m being patient.”

  Rainie grew silent, then she got it. “You want to keep everyone calling in case you can trick one of them into revealing the original source of your phone number.”

  “In the morning, I will report the incident to my SAC. The Bureau takes the protection of its agents very seriously. I’m sure my line will be tapped and monitored in no time at all. Calls will be going out to the various prisons. Perhaps even a personal visit to one Miguel Sanchez. I would like that.”

  “Do you have a theory of who did this? It has to be somebody who knows you.”

  “Maybe. Then again, it could be some bored college flunkie who hacked into the telephone company’s records in order to have a little fun.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No. I think it’s personal. And I think the mysterious practical joker gave out more than just my private number, Rainie. Think of what Mr. Sanchez said. That he wanted to fuck my daughter in her fucking grave with a white fucking cross. Why a white cross? What’s the first thing you think of when you picture a white cross?”

  Rainie closed her eyes. She pictured a white cross, and her stomach went hollow. She shouldn’t be at this stupid motel, she realized. She shouldn’t be sitting here pretending that business was just business. She should be at Quincy’s home. She should be holding him the way he had once so kindly held her. And she should be putting her hands over his ears to spare him from what she knew he would say next. He had always been too brutally clever.

  “Arlington,” Quincy continued relentlessly. “The instigator didn’t just give out my home telephone number. He told at least one convicted sadist where to find my daughter’s grave. The son of a bitch.” His voice finally cracked. “He gave away Mandy.”

  Rainie waited. On the other end of the phone, the sound of Quincy’s breathing grew less ragged. She could feel him pulling himself back together, becoming once more the cool, composed federal agent he so prided himself on being. He needed his masks, she thought, just as she needed hers. It surprised her how much that realization hurt her.

  For no good reason, she was thinking about the baby elephant again, his desperate run across the desert. Kicked down, getting back up. And still the jackals shredded him in the end.

  “Do you think they’re connected?” she asked him shortly.

  “What?”

  “The phone calls. With Mandy’s accident. Seems rather interesting that you’ve no sooner hired someone to investigate Mandy’s death, than you’re getting a bunch of threatening calls.”

  “I don’t know, Rainie. It could simply be opportunity. There are enough people out there who have nothing better to do than hate me. Maybe they heard about my daughter’s funeral and decided it was their chance to have some fun. We’ve had incidents in the past where someone has gotten an agent’s personal information. Nothing on this big of a scale, but then again, we’re now in the computer age.”

  “I don’t like it,” Rainie said flatly. “Plus the fact that Sanchez evoked Mandy
in the phone call . . . Seems a rather pointed message.”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” Quincy sounded tired again. “I think they must be connected. Then I think I’m paranoid. Then I think I’m merely being diligent. I don’t . . . I’m not myself at the moment.”

  Rainie fell silent. She kept thinking there was something comforting she should say. She had not grown up in a house big on comfort. Thirty-two years old. It was kind of funny all the things she didn’t know how to do.

  “I spoke with the investigating officer,” she said, since like Quincy, business was what she handled best. “He did a good job at the scene. I couldn’t find anything he’d overlooked.”

  “What about the seat belt?”

  “The driver . . .” She stuttered immediately, shocked by her coldness at using that impersonal word.

  Quincy didn’t say anything and the silence loomed huge this time, a giant black void between them. They couldn’t get this right, Rainie thought suddenly, desperately. Even when they were trying, they couldn’t get this right.

  “Mandy reported the seat belt broken a month before the accident,” she tried again, her voice meek now, humbled by her mistake. “She made an appointment with the garage that serviced her vehicle, then canceled at the last minute.”

  “She’d been driving without a working seat belt for a month?”

  “It would appear so.”

  “Why didn’t someone pull her over? I thought there were seat belt laws in this state!”

  Rainie didn’t reply to his outburst. She knew he didn’t expect her to.

  “What had happened to the seat belt?” he redirected his line of questioning. “How did it break?”

  “We don’t know yet. Officer Amity is helping me locate the vehicle so I can examine it, but fourteen months later makes things difficult. Most likely the Explorer has already been broken down for parts at some salvage yard.”

  “I want to know what happened to the seat belt.”

  “I’ll find it, Quincy. You know I’ll find it.”

  “And the man, the one she was supposedly seeing?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning, I meet with Mary Olsen. Hopefully she can point me in his direction. I’ll also check in with Mandy’s local AA group. They probably know more about her personal life.”

  “AA has policies about giving out information.”

  “Then I’ll just have to turn on my charm again.”

  “Rainie—”

  “I’m on top of the case, Quincy. Things are beginning to happen and I know you need answers. I’ll get them.”

  His silence was subdued now, a long soft spell where they both sat not too many miles apart and yet still too far away. She wondered if he was sitting in a darkened room. She wondered if he’d skipped dinner again, the way he’d probably skipped lunch before that and breakfast before that. She wondered how many hours he’d pace before finally falling in a restless, exhausted sleep. And then she wondered how they could know each other so well, and still have this chasm between them.

  “I should go,” Quincy said. “I want to speak to Everett first thing in the morning.”

  “Everett?”

  “Special Agent in Charge. He’ll want to know about the phone calls, assuming he doesn’t already. Plus, I need to type up this list of names.”

  Rainie glanced at the clock. It was now after midnight.

  “Quincy,” she began.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m not that far away. One hour tops, I can be at your front door.”

  “And then what, Rainie? Then everything’s all right, because now I’m your charity case?”

  “Hey, it’s not like that at all!”

  “Yes? And what do you think it is I’ve been trying to say? Understanding is not pity. Oh, but excuse me, in your world it is.”

  “Quincy . . .”

  “Thank you for the update, Investigator Conner. Good night.”

  The phone punctuated his sharp sentence with a click. Rainie thinned her lips, shook her head, and replaced her own receiver much more slowly.

  “But my case was different,” she muttered.

  Her motel room remained silent. She figured that was an appropriate enough reply.

  Later, six hours later, the motel alarm clock beeped to life and Rainie crawled blearily out of bed. Jet lag had caught up with her. She gulped down twelve ounces of Coke for breakfast and still felt half dead.

  She hit the four-lane street, running for thirty minutes through the concrete maze of a seemingly endless strip mall tucked conveniently off Interstate 95. Middle-aged men in rumpled suits poured out of the motel. A line of cars sat impatiently at a McDonald’s drive-through.

  Rainie ran through parking lot after parking lot, dodging reckless cars and people already fed up with their morning commute. Tall maple trees and dark waxy magnolias beckoned lushly in the distance. Wild honeysuckle grabbed at cement barriers lining the parking lots as if the vine would reclaim the urban jungle as its own. Rainie coughed on diesel fumes from spewing trucks and fought her way back to Motel 6, wishing the green landscape didn’t make her think of Bakersville again and long for the feel of salty ocean air upon her face.

  She took a five-minute shower, towel-dried her hair, and combed in mousse. Expecting another long day, she donned a pair of worn jeans and a clean white T-shirt, the official uniform of the aspiring PI. She checked her phone messages on her home answering machine while lacing up her shoes. The weather was already brutally hot outside. Man, what she would give to wear sandals and shorts.

  She blew the thought aside while hearing that she had six new messages, a personal record. She grabbed the motel pen and pad of paper.

  First two messages were from clients wanting updates. She really should do that. The next three messages were all hang ups, received in hourly intervals. If the person couldn’t be bothered to leave a message, she decided, she couldn’t be bothered to wonder about who they were. The final message was from some lawyer she’d never heard of, requesting a basic information packet.

  She eyed the clock, judged it to be four A.M. Pacific Coast time, and shrewdly called back the law firm to tell the lawyer that her secretary would send him something in the mail. Then she left her number at Motel 6, just in case the lawyer wanted a more immediate reply. She now felt industrious and exceedingly clever and it was not even noon.

  Rainie finished lacing her shoes. After a moment’s hesitation, she slid her Glock .40 into a shoulder holster. A simple black jacket covered the bulge.

  Seven A.M., she picked up her notes and headed out the door. The sun glared harsh white, causing her to blink. Her tiny rental car felt like it was two hundred degrees inside. Damn, she thought. It was going to be a killer of a day.

  9

  Quantico, Virginia

  “The first call arrived at two thirty-two P.M., Tuesday afternoon.” Back in the bowels of the earth, Quincy reported last night’s events in his crispest voice to Special Agent in Charge Chad Everett, while the SAC nodded attentively and a fluorescent bulb buzzed ominously overhead. “At ten-eighteen P.M., I personally handled a call from Miguel Sanchez. There have been more calls since; given the circumstances, I’ve been letting the machine pick up.” Quincy handed over copies of the freshly made case file to the assembled agents. They accepted the information while continuing to regard him gravely.

  “Enclosed you will find a complete list of caller activity and the corrections departments currently involved in the situation,” he continued. “Eight officers checked in with me, which you will see noted. In some cases, they reported my personal information being passed along from inmate to inmate in the yard. More interesting, however, is the last two officers, who identified the source of the information as being an ad currently running in their local prison newsletters. In one newsletter, I’m a producer looking to interview inmates for an upcoming documentary on prison life. Interested parties are encouraged to contact me directly at the number listed below. In another
newsletter, I’m eagerly seeking a prison pen pal, again, please contact me at the number listed below.”

  Quincy smiled tightly. “I’m still waiting to hear back from a few sources, but it would appear that similar ads just appeared in at least six other newsletters, including Cellpals, Freedom Now, and my personal favorite, Prison Legal News, which has a monthly circulation of over three thousand. Then there are the Web sites, such as PrisonPenPals.com, which apparently has been paid to e-mail my ad to dozens of prisoners ‘seeking a new friend.’ Look at me. I’m a groupie.”

  Quincy shut the case file and sat down grimly. All eyes were still on him, but he had nothing more to add. This was his life. Now it had been violated. Phone call after phone call, message after message promising a slow, tortured death. He could not remember the last time he had slept.

  At least the Bureau was taking the situation seriously. A small case team had been assembled in Everett’s office. A younger man with a mop of sandy brown hair, Special Agent Randy Jackson, represented the Technical Services Division, in charge of wiretapping. From NCAVC were Special Agent Glenda Rodman, an older woman with a penchant for severe gray suits, and Special Agent Albert Montgomery, whose bloodshot eyes and hound-dog face already made Quincy uncomfortable. The agent had either taken a red-eye flight last night, or he’d been drinking heavily. Perhaps both. Then again, who was Quincy, with his own wan features, to judge?

  “For the record, who has access to your personal telephone number?” Everett asked, while Special Agent Rodman sat up straighter and positioned her pen over her yellow legal pad of notes.

  “My family,” Quincy replied immediately. “Some professionals, including fellow agents and members of law enforcement. Some friends. I’ve included as complete a list as possible in my notes. In all honesty, I’ve had that number for the past five years, and even I was surprised by how many people now have it.”

  “You’ve worked over two hundred and ninety-six active cases,” Glenda spoke up.