“Like a restaurant dedicated to lackluster cuisine,” Sunday said in that whining, nasal voice, and tossed the salesman the keys. “I’m going over to Porsche, see if the Germans are still better engineers than the Brits.”
He started to walk off the lot.
The salesman was first slack-jawed and then insulted. “You just can’t afford it!”
The writer looked over his shoulder, said, “Thierry Mulch is a man who can afford anything he wants and do anything he wants. Remember that.”
Sunday nodded with satisfaction as he strolled north toward the Landmark Theatres complex. It was true: money had not been an issue since he’d turned eighteen. Indeed, the writer rarely gave finances a thought. He just did what he wished and had accountants who paid for it all.
And yet the writer was not given to excess unless it was necessary. Excess—chic clothes, expensive cars, and the like—attracted attention, and attention, in his opinion, was only good if there was a purpose behind it, this morning being a case in point.
Sunday found the beige vacuum repair panel van right where he’d left it: behind the theater where the employees parked. He unlocked the van, slid back the side door, climbed in, closed it, and tossed the doggie bag in the front seat.
With great care, he stripped off the flaming-red wig, Abe Lincoln beard, and eyebrows, revealing close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. Two quick movements and he’d popped out the colored contact lenses, turning his eyes from ice-blue back to light slate-gray. Out, too, came the nose rings.
He traded his outfit for jeans, a black polo shirt, and boat shoes. The purple sneakers and the rest went into a shopping bag. He traded the Mulch driver’s license for another identifying Howard Moon, residence Falls Church, Virginia.
Completing his transformation with Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and an ill-fitting Washington Nationals baseball cap, Sunday appraised himself in the rearview mirror. A sublime portrayal of a boring loser, the writer thought, nothing like the court jester who test-drove a Bentley and stunk up power breakfast at the Four Seasons.
Putting the van in gear, he drove back into the city.
It was nearly ten when Sunday parked down the street from Cross’s house. Turning on all-news radio, he listened with great interest to coverage of the Mad Man Francones murders. He was fascinated by tales of men killing other men, of women killing other women, and of every variation in between.
Murder was not only Sunday’s academic field, it was the story of his life, and the most sublime act of all in the human comedy, the snipping or slashing or squeezing away of existence, the end of the absurdity and meaninglessness of it all in an ecstatic fit of violence.
He’d heard of peaceful death, of course, but considered such tales fantasy and nonsense, wishful thinking of the most pitiful kind.
Sunday spotted Cross’s wife, Bree, exiting the house in a warm-up suit and running shoes. Through his binoculars he watched her walking down past the Dumpster. As he watched her jog off, he nodded to himself, thinking that death was never, ever peaceful. In the writer’s experience, death was always drama that rose to a wicked battle and a brutal, brutal end.
Chapter
12
Bree was getting ready for the department’s annual fitness test and left for the gym around ten. On the way downstairs, I peeked inside my daughter’s room. Jannie was two years younger than Ava but already the lanky adolescent, still sleeping because it was an in-service day for teachers.
My seven-year-old, Ali, was up, however, lying on the couch in the family room watching a DVD. A guy with a cowboy hat was running and shooting at…
“What are you watching?” I asked.
“The Walking Dead,” Ali replied. “It’s a TV show. Really good. There are, like, zombies everywhere and these are some of the last people left alive.”
“What happened to Cartoon Network?”
“It closed down after the zombies showed up,” Ali said, and gave me a grin that revealed the gap where he’d lost a tooth the week before.
Someone on the screen shot a zombie. Someone else put an axe blade in its head. “That’s the best way you can kill them,” Ali explained. “Destroy their brains.”
“I told him to turn that nonsense off,” Nana Mama chided as she walked into the room. “I don’t like him watching those zombie things.”
I wasn’t a big fan of the idea, either, but Ali groaned, “It’s good, Nana. It’s not about zombies, ’cause they don’t talk, you know? It’s more about the people who are fighting them.”
My grandmother looked at me, and I shrugged. Annoyed at my lack of resolve, she said, “Well, I’ll be long gone before that bird comes to roost. Your breakfast is ready. Then we’ll get the last things packed and moved to the basement.”
Packed and moved to the basement? I felt that squeezing sensation again when I remembered I’d promised my grandmother that I’d help her pack up the kitchen before the remodelers showed up to start. How long was that going to take? Whatever. It had to be done.
I gave her a kiss on the cheek before I went into the kitchen and found my favorite breakfast waiting: bacon, sunny-side-up eggs, toasted Portuguese bread, fried green tomatoes, and grits.
One bite and I was ten again, and feeling safe because my grandmother had rescued me and brought me to live with her in Washington instead of an orphanage down in North Carolina. That’s the power of a home-cooked meal. You don’t get that at IHOP or McDonald’s, no matter how hard they try to sell it.
“Alex, what time did the contractor say he was going to come?” Nana Mama asked as I broke up a piece of toast, stabbed a chunk of it with a fork, and dipped it in the egg yolk.
“Around noon,” I replied. “And our contractor has a name: Billy DuPris.”
My grandmother used to be an inner-city high school vice principal, and even at ninety-plus she usually has a bemused, seen-it-all air about her. But that morning she looked stressed in the way she worried her hands with her apron and glanced all around the kitchen as if trying to figure out what to do next.
I put down my fork. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, Alex,” she said, hesitated. “I just don’t know where to start.”
“I said I’d help you, and I will, just as soon as I finish eating.”
Distracted, she swallowed, looked all around again, nodded.
“Something is bothering you,” I said.
“It’s nothing,” Nana Mama replied. “Just a foolish old woman who can’t abide change is all.”
I saw it then, understood the source of her anxiety. From the moment I set foot in this house more than thirty years ago, my grandmother’s kitchen had been just that, her kitchen, this domain that she ruled with skill, humor, and unquestioned authority, with a place for everything and everything in its place.
I got up, went to her, and put my arms around her, amazed at how tiny she felt. “You said you wanted a new kitchen,” I said. “A fancy six-burner stove with a built-in griddle. The new stainless fridge. All of it.”
“I know,” she said, pressing her head into my chest. “I just get sentimental. That’s all. Nothing will ever be the same, Alex.”
I released her, put my finger under her chin. “Weren’t you the one who taught me that every minute of life is a change?”
“Doesn’t make it easier,” she said.
“You want me to call Mr. DuPris, pull the plug?”
She bit at her lip a second and then shook her head. “No. I’ll just have to make do. What’s that they always say, ‘Evolve or die’?”
“Seems to me I’ve heard that somewhere,” I said.
There was an awkward silence between us before she said, “You go on back, and when you finish with your breakfast we’ll start with the cookbooks, the spices, and everything I want in the fancy new pantry I’m—”
My cell phone rang. Captain Quintus. I didn’t want to answer but did.
“Cross,” I said.
“Where are you?” the homicide capta
in barked. “All hell is breaking loose down here. The chief wants answers. The mayor wants answers. The Francones killing has become a symbol of the murder rate, Alex. All hell is breaking loose.”
“And I’ve got a contractor coming in to tear my house apart in less than two hours,” I replied. “I promise you I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Quintus’s voice turned heated. “Goddamn it, Alex, find someone else to do it and get your ass in here.”
I clicked off the phone without giving him an answer.
Chapter
13
Earlier that same Friday morning and several blocks south of the Takoma Metro station, Kelli Adams, a blond woman wearing heavy makeup and a conservative blue suit, watched a sleek black Audi A5 roll up in front of Child’s Play day care center.
A tall, rail-thin guy in a Brooks Brothers suit came flying out of the Audi, ran around the other side.
He yanked open the passenger-side door, fumbled around inside, and soon came out with an eight-month-old baby girl and a blue diaper bag. He hurried through the gate and up the steps, then disappeared inside.
“Father of the year,” Adams muttered under her breath. “It’s time your little girl got to know her mother.”
The father of the year exited Child’s Play, ran down the stairs, jumped into his Audi, and sped off.
That’s enough of that, Adams thought righteously, and started across the street. Giving the front door a quick double rap with her knuckles to indicate she meant business, Adams entered Child’s Play and found herself in the center hallway facing a counter staffed by a cheery-looking young woman whose nameplate said SUSAN.
“Hi,” Susan said. “Can I help you?”
“I’d like to see Marylyn Green,” Adams replied. “She does run this facility?”
“Yes. And you are?”
Adams pulled out a billfold and showed Susan an ID card from the city’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. She worked as an investigator with the office’s agency for child and family services.
Susan stood up. “I’ll get Ms. Green.”
“Why don’t you take me to her.”
“What’s this about?” Susan asked.
Adams gave her a cold stare. Susan pushed a button behind the counter. There was a buzzing noise. The door to her right came unlocked. They entered a hallway that smelled of children and babies and echoed with their laughs and cries. They exited into a large room where toddlers were playing.
“Ms. Green,” Susan called to a tall redheaded woman with a kind face. “Someone to see you.”
Adams showed her ID again, said, “I’d like to see Joss Branson. She is in your care, correct?”
“Yes. Joss? What’s wrong?”
“What isn’t?” Adams said.
The day care owner led the way into a nursery. There were four cribs in the room. Three were occupied by sleeping babies. A fourth lay on her back, squalling while a tired-looking woman in her fifties changed her diapers.
“Eliza, Ms. Adams is an investigator with DC Child and Family Services,” Marylyn Green said, looking confused. “She wishes to see Joss.”
Eliza pressed the last diaper tape into place and said, “You’re looking at her.”
Adams crossed to the changing table and picked up the wailing child.
“What’s wrong?” Marylyn Green asked again.
“Is she often agitated like this?” Adams demanded.
Eliza looked uncertain. “We call this the crying hour, usually right after they all come in. But they settle down. I guess Joss a little less easily.”
“It’s probably the meth.”
“What!” Green said.
“No,” Eliza said. “Mr. Branson is a scientist at the Smithsonian, and his wife, Crystal, has cancer. Why would they—”
“Mr. Branson is a chemist, and you’re right, she does have cancer. We believe it’s like that television show Breaking Bad. DEA tells us they cook it in the basement. Explains the Audi, doesn’t it?”
Marylyn Green’s hand went to her mouth. “My God, we had no—”
“Why would you?” Adams snapped. “In any case, I am here because we are concerned that Joss has been exposed to a multitude of toxins. Because of an ongoing federal investigation, we are not free to step in and take Joss, but I have a writ that allows me to take her to have her blood, skin, and clothing tested so we have a clear idea of her level of exposure. I am assuming you can keep this confidential? As I said, there is an ongoing FBI investigation of her parents. And I won’t be long. We’ll go to Bethesda.”
“Yes, of course, my God, whatever is best for Joss.”
“Should I get her things?” Eliza asked.
“That would be much appreciated,” Adams said, bouncing Joss in her arms. “The sooner I can get her to the lab, the sooner I can have her back.”
“Oh, you’ve got time,” the day care owner said. “Mr. Branson is rarely here before five to get her.”
For the first time, Adams smiled. “That makes things a little easier.”
Chapter
14
Around four that afternoon, Cynthia Wu slowly peeled back the Mad Man’s scalp, revealing a nasty splintered hole where the .40-caliber hollow-point bullet had entered the back of his head, and finally the shattered cheekbone where the bullet had exited.
“How far was the shot?” John Sampson asked.
“Ten? Fifteen feet?” the medical examiner replied.
“Like you said, John, looks like a pro,” I commented.
“Either that or obsessed,” Sampson replied, gesturing across the room, where another medical examiner was working on Kim Ho, one of the dead Korean women from the massage parlor. “Everyone in the spa except our boy here was shot at close range. I’m thinking the shooter likes to see their faces, their reactions just before he pulls the trigger, but he got intimidated when he saw Francones’s size.”
It was possible, I supposed, another variation in the catalog of strange fetishes we’d seen over the years in association with mass and serial murderers.
“Sometimes close-range shots like this are meant to disfigure as well as kill,” I said. “But that’s usually the case in murders provoked by the infidelity of one partner or another.”
“Far as I can tell, the Mad Man was all about infidelity,” Sampson replied. “But you believe the gossip, he somehow managed to get along with all of them, you know, like Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men.”
“Charlie disgusted most of the women he slept with eventually. Didn’t you see the one where he dies and they have the funeral?”
“No, I must have missed that one,” Sampson said.
“Any clue where Mad Man’s girlfriends were at the time of death?”
“I don’t have a complete inventory of his harem, but according to People Magazine, he’s been seen in public quite a bit with Mandy Bell Lee, the country-western singer. They met after a Titans game in Nashville last year.”
“Where’s she?”
“I can find out.”
“Mad Man must have had an agent, lawyer, some kind of business manager. Those people might know about enemies or financial grudges. Maybe about coke use, too. Anything else?”
“Quintus and the DA have filed for a warrant in Virginia so we can search his place out in McLean. Until it comes through, the sheriff over there has the estate blocked off.”
I was about to ask when the warrant was likely to come through when my phone beeped, alerting me to an e-mail. I stepped aside and opened it, seeing documents attached courtesy of Captain Quintus.
I scanned them. A Delaware real estate trust had bought the building that housed the Superior Spa the year before. The massage parlor was a DBA of Relax LLC, a Falls Church, Virginia, company with a post office box address and a Trenton Wiggs named as president.
One more piece of the puzzle, I thought, and considered what I’d been able to dig up after moving the last of the kitchen into boxes and the basement and wa
tching the horror in my grandmother’s face when Billy DuPris entered the house with crowbars and rolls of plastic sheeting.
Donald Blunt, the dead night manager of the massage parlor, had been working on his doctorate in molecular biology at the University of Maryland. I’d tracked down his two roommates at their apartment in College Park.
One roommate said Blunt took the job at the spa because it “paid like twenty bucks an hour, was light duty that allowed him time to study, and he got his rocks off, like, anytime he wanted.” The other roommate said Blunt had no enemies that he knew of. And neither roommate could come up with a scenario that would have a cold-blooded killer targeting their friend.
In the two hours I’d had before the scheduled autopsies, I’d tried to work on the chain of circumstances that had led the two dead Korean women to the United States, to Washington, and to the Superior Spa. I started by putting in a request with USCIS to see their temporary work visa applications but was told it would take several days to fulfill the request.
On the way to the morgue, I made a depressing inch of headway on Cam Nguyen, the missing third prostitute. Other detectives had been to her place that morning and found it empty. Once the forensics team finished at the Superior Spa, they would move to her place.
I kept that from Cam Nguyen’s parents in Garden Grove, California. I’d called them from my car. They said they had not spoken with their daughter in nearly a week. The mom went hysterical in Vietnamese and left the phone when I explained that Cam was missing and wanted for questioning in connection with murders at a massage parlor where she was reputed to work.
Cam’s father had turned furious, accused me of dragging Cam’s name through the mud, but then broke down when I told him I was only giving him the facts as I knew them.
“Cam such a smart girl,” her father had sobbed. “Cam supposed to follow American dream, make us proud.”
Standing there in the morgue, surrounded by the massage parlor dead, I couldn’t help thinking of my daughter, Jannie, and imagining the dimensions of Mr. Nguyen’s heartache.