She was choking and weeping now.
“And because Mulch will be watching you, knowing what we share, you’re not going to the police. No, you’re going to love our little future life. You hear that, Claudia? You are going to love our future life.”
Sunday thrust a little way into her and moaned and shuddered as if in immediate climax. Then he hit her, knocked her out, and left her there, skirt up over her hips, sprawled over the back of the couch.
Excellent, the writer thought, peeling the condom off and gingerly returning it to the Baggie. I think that will do the trick rather nicely.
Chapter
28
“Alex? Wake up.”
I felt Bree shake me and opened my eyes groggily to find the lights blazing in our bedroom. It felt like I’d only just drifted off.
“Time is it?” I asked blearily. “What day is it?”
“Nearly five,” she said. “Sunday morning.”
“Five? C’mon, Bree. I need a few more hours of—”
“I can’t wait anymore,” my wife insisted. “I’m going to that building with or without you. Now.”
“Bree, I told you—”
“You said give him another night,” Bree said. “We gave him one. He could be in there sleeping as we speak.”
I was hopelessly awake by then and I could see by the way she held her jaw slightly to the right that it was useless to argue anymore.
“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “We’ll go, but then I’m coming back for a nap.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said, jumped out of bed, and started to dress.
I moved a little more slowly, but within fifteen minutes we were driving through the back streets of Southeast and then heading across the river into Anacostia. Dawn was still just a shade of gray when I stopped at a coffee shack.
“Do we have time for this?” Bree demanded.
“I don’t want to go prowling around in there until I can at least see a little,” I replied. “That old building is his home. He can walk around it in the dark easy. I can’t. And neither can you. And if we go in with our flashlights, he’ll probably just spook out of there, and at that point he might be gone forever.”
She looked at me a long moment before saying, “Hazelnut latte. Double shot of espresso.”
By the time I parked us down the street from the abandoned factory building, it was cracking light and the caffeine had done its work. I was alert and on edge when I climbed out of the car.
I described the layout to Bree, including the room where the burned body had been found, the other room where the homeless guy was camped, and the escape route I thought he’d taken up the stairs and out a rear window. Then I told her what I wanted her to do.
“Sure you want to go in there alone?” she asked.
“I think I can handle it. You?”
She smiled. “You just flush him. I’ll take care of the rest.”
We split up as we approached the building. Bree looped around the back. I went in the same way I had two nights before, through the front door, making no effort at all to be quiet. Instead, I kicked cans and made small bursts of racket as I looked for the near staircase to the basement.
It was almost full light outside, but in the old condemned building it was still twilight. Then again, I didn’t need to see the homeless guy run anyway.
I heard him go when I was almost to the bottom of the stairs, right by the room where Jane Doe’s body had been burned.
He pounded up the far stairs. I ran after him at a more leisurely pace, giving him time to make his preferred exit.
By the time I reached the broken window and looked out, he was cursing at the fact that Bree had him facedown, a knee on his back and zip-ties going around his wrists. The Louisville Slugger lay on the ground behind her.
Chapter
29
“That’s quite the swing you’ve got there,” I said to the homeless guy, whom Bree had dragged back into the building along with the baseball bat.
He said nothing as we returned him to his nest and set him down on his filthy mattress. In the light of day he bore more than a passing resemblance to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, with that wild tangle of hair and beard, and pale-blue eyes that tracked out of sync.
“Name?” I asked, noticing small twigs and bits of leaf in his beard.
“You cops?”
“As a matter of fact, we are,” I said, showing him my badge and ID.
“I need a lawyer?” he asked.
“I could arrest you for criminal trespass and assaulting a police officer,” I said. “Or you can answer our questions.”
He studied us with those weird eyes for several moments before saying, “Everett Prough.”
“Where are you from, Everett?” I asked.
“You’re looking at it,” he said.
“This where you’ve always lived?” Bree asked in a kind tone.
“Does it matter how I got here?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said. “How long’ve you lived here?”
“I dunno, off and on. What do you want, I mean for real?”
I held out Ava’s blue sweater in the plastic evidence bag. Everett Prough blinked, looked at it for several seconds and then at me, feigning a lack of interest. “So?”
“I took it from your grocery cart the night before last, right after you hit me.”
“Yeah. That sounds right. Thief.”
“Where did you get it, Everett? This sweater.”
The homeless man squirmed as if something had crawled up his pant leg, said, “Don’t remember.”
“Sure you do,” Bree said. “Do you know who that sweater belongs to?”
Prough cringed, looked at the floor as if it contained secrets that only he could decipher, and then nodded. “I know her anywhere.”
I felt a terrible sensation suddenly in my gut, a hollow feeling like no other. What was this guy to Ava? What had he done to her?
“Who does the sweater belong to?” Bree pressed.
Prough squinted and set his jaw as if he were being forced to relive some best-forgotten horror.
“Belongs to the girl,” he said. “The girl who killed that other girl and lit her body on fire.”
Chapter
30
Two hours earlier, and pulsing again with the thrill of anticipation, Sunday sat in the van parked down the street from the service entrance of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, drinking yet another can of Red Bull to stay fully awake. He’d been there ever since his escapade in Alexandria.
The writer figured to make his move around a quarter to five. To pass the time, he stuffed cotton into his cheeks, put in brown contact lenses, and pulled on a dark-brown pompadour wig and a pair of flesh-colored latex gloves. He used the gloves to smear self-tanning liquid all over his face and then wiped them dry with Kleenex.
Four forty-five went by, and nothing.
So did four fifty.
Sunday began to doubt his instincts, a rare event. But then he spotted a late-model Toyota sedan driving by the service entrance, passing his van, and parking down the street. A man climbed out wearing black slacks, black shoes, a white shirt, and a tie. He carried a white server’s jacket. The first breakfast waiter was arriving for work.
Without hesitation, Sunday got out of his van. He, too, wore black slacks and black shoes, a white shirt, and a tie.
Sunday crossed the street, angling at the waiter: late twenties, looking barely awake.
“’Scuse me, mate,” the writer called in a decent Australian accent. “First day on the job.”
“Follow me,” the waiter said dully as he passed.
“Right you are,” Sunday said, and hit the back of the waiter’s skull hard with a sap.
The waiter pitched forward, but the writer caught him by the back of his shirt before he could face-plant on the sidewalk. Dragging him behind one of the hotel’s Dumpsters, Sunday rifled through his pockets, found his hotel ID. He stuck it in his pocket
and put on the jacket. Not a bad fit.
He hit the waiter again and hard enough that he wouldn’t move for hours. Then he threw trash on the man, went directly to the service entrance, and used the ID in the electronic security box. He grinned when it opened.
Entering the empty service hall in the basement at the rear of the hotel, Sunday smelled bread baking, bacon frying, and coffee brewing. Fighting off the nausea the smell of bacon provoked, he grabbed one of three room service carts parked to one side of the hall, pushed it into a less well-lit part of the hallway. He threw his gym bag on the cart’s lower shelf. He found a white tablecloth and then several plates. He tossed on a napkin and silverware, a steak knife, two drinking glasses, and an empty coffee carafe.
“Java’s almost up,” a woman commented.
The writer turned, smiling in welcome. Fifteen feet down the hall, in her early fifties, wearing a flour-dusted apron, she shook a cigarette from a pack.
“Excellent,” Sunday said agreeably.
“New?” she asked, squinting as if she couldn’t see him very well.
“I am,” he said. “A temporary gig, but could turn permanent. Happy here?”
Her laugh became a smoker’s cough. “Happy as you can be slaving at a four-hundred-degree oven at four a.m. on Sunday morning. Good luck. Gotta have a cig.”
“Enjoy.”
The service door opened and shut. Sunday waited and then went to the doorway where the woman had appeared. He found a staging area outside the already bustling main kitchen, which was visible through a pass-through window. Three coffeemakers were bubbling to the right of the pass-through. He grabbed a carafe, walked over, and was filling it when a man called from the kitchen, “Denver omelet, bacon, and no potatoes up.”
The writer filled the carafe three-quarters full and waited for the chef to leave before grabbing the breakfast plate and hustling back to the hall. He set the plate under the stainless cover and hurried ahead, looking for a service elevator.
He found one around the corner, got in, and pushed the button for the fourteenth floor, keeping his head down. When the doors closed, he squatted, got the gym bag, and unzipped it, hoping he had the correct room.
Shortly after leaving the hotel the evening before, he’d used a throwaway phone to call the Mandarin Oriental and ask to be connected to Timothy Jackson’s room. Jackson had answered and Sunday had affected a British accent, saying, “This is Mr. Mulch with the front desk. We’ve been getting reports of loud noise and music in room 604, next door to you, sir, and wanted to—”
“You’re way off, Mulch. I’m in 1401,” Jackson said, irritated. “But while I’ve got you on the line, I want breakfast at six forty-five. I’ll hang the order on the door.”
“Very good sir,” Sunday had said, and rung off.
From the gym bag, the writer removed a white 120-milliliter bottle with a label that read:
QZT VAPES
92.2% TASTELESS NICOTINE LIQUID
EXTRACTED FROM THE FINEST SOUTH CAROLINA FLUE-CURED LEAVES
Seeing that the elevator had already passed the seventh floor, Sunday quickly opened the bottle. Happy again for the latex gloves he was wearing, he poured several ounces into the coffee.
Ding! The elevator doors opened. The fourteenth floor.
The writer glanced at his watch. It was 5:25 when he set off. He felt no fear, had no thought of capture, only pure intent. He spotted the security camera high up on the first corner, pulled a small can of Pam out of the gym bag, and sprayed the lens with vegetable oil as he passed.
He did the same with the three other cameras on the floor before going to room 1401, where he knocked sharply.
As Sunday half expected, he got no answer the first time, so he knocked even more loudly and said in a Hispanic accent, “Room service.”
He heard cursing inside and then someone coming to the door. The writer smiled at the peephole with total confidence. The bolt threw, the door opened. A pissed-off Timothy Jackson looked out at him.
“I said six forty-five,” Jackson complained. “It’s five twenty-five.”
Sunday acted flustered. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. They write down wrong?”
“So much for the five-star rating,” Jackson snapped.
“You want I should come back?” the writer asked.
Jackson took a deep breath, then shook his head. “No, I’m up already. Bring it in. It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, sir,” Sunday said, acting the deferential servant as he wheeled the cart into the room, one of those executive affairs with a king-size bed, a sofa, and a desk for the traveling businessman.
Jackson walked behind him, letting the door shut. The writer parked the cart by the sofa, said, “This good?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” the attorney replied, and yawned. Sunday knelt as if to lock the cart’s wheels while swiping the exterior and interior of Preston Elliot’s used condom on the leg of Jackson’s suit pants, which were lying on a chair. Pocketing the condom, the writer stood, picked up the coffee carafe.
“That’s not decaf, is it?” Jackson asked.
“French roast, sir,” Sunday said.
“Good, that’s what I—” The attorney had lifted the cover over the omelet. “What the fuck? I asked for three eggs sunny side up, bacon, and wheat toast.”
Sunday did his best to grovel. “I am so sorry, sir. I take and get you right away the right breakfast.”
“What?” the attorney groused. “Yes, please do that. This isn’t what I ordered at all.”
“I leave you coffee, though, and be right back.”
“Sugar and milk, too. And get me a copy of the Washington Post.”
Sunday bowed and set the cup, saucer, carafe, milk, and sugar bowl on the table. “I apologize again, sir. There will be no charge for breakfast.”
“Well,” Jackson said as Sunday wheeled the cart away. “That’s good.”
“It’s the least the Mandarin Oriental could do,” the writer replied, and let the door shut behind him.
Chapter
31
Bree and I left the old factory building shaken and depressed, with Everett Prough following us in a slow homeless-person shuffle.
“I can’t believe it,” Bree said in a low pained voice.
“His story’s plausible,” I replied, not liking the sour taste of it any better.
“But convincing?”
I struggled to answer. We’d shown the homeless man a photograph of Ava, and he’d fingered her as a killer and a mutilator. Prough said Ava was one of six or seven runaway girls he’d encountered squatting and using drugs in the old factory over the past few months. He moved his nest often, rotating among several places so as not to attract attention. When he returned to the factory around dusk the night of the murder, it had been a month since he’d last slept in the basement.
Approaching the abandoned building, Prough claimed he heard girls arguing over money and meth. They were high on something for sure. Prough said he snuck in and watched from the shadows as Ava and another girl with Goth black hair got into a screaming match that became a hair-pulling catfight.
“She tripped the other girl and then hit her like this with her elbow,” Prough told us, holding his wrist and driving the elbow of that same arm sharply to the side and behind him in a move I sadly recognized.
I’d taught it to Ava. I’d taught it to all my kids.
Prough said the Goth girl had fallen hard at the blow. Her head had struck a post. She never moved again.
“The one who hit her started crying once she realized what she’d done,” Prough said. “Then she got a can of gasoline and poured it over the Goth girl, and lit a cigarette and threw it on the gas.”
Prough said Ava had a blue backpack when she ran from the factory. Not wanting to be around when the body was found, he said he followed Ava several minutes later and found the sweater lying in her escape path.
Several things had bothered me about the story. “Where’d the gas c
ome from?” I asked.
Prough shrugged. “She had it in there for some reason.”
“That would mean premeditation if she brought it with her,” Bree said.
Prough was puzzled by that but then shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
“How many times had you seen her before that night?”
“More than once,” Prough said.
“She talk to you?” Bree asked.
“She didn’t know I was there, ever,” Prough said. “I don’t like people.”
“But you spy on them?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
“You’re willing to testify to what you saw?” I asked.
He hesitated, nodded, said, “If that’s what it takes.”
I had recorded most of our conversation. But we were taking Prough downtown to make a sworn statement. We put him in the backseat and had to roll the windows down, he smelled so bad. I started the car, feeling numbed by the idea that the shy girl who’d lived under our roof for so long might have run away, gotten caught up in the world of street drugs, murdered another girl, and then desecrated her body.
My cell rang before I’d driven a block. Sampson. I answered, said, “John?”
“Alex, Timmy Jackson was just found dead at the Mandarin Oriental.”
Chapter
32
Mandy Lee Francones’s attorney lay sprawled at the foot of the king-size bed. A coffee cup was spilled beside him. The attorney’s eyes were severely bloodshot and looked buggy. His mouth was open as if gasping.
“First glance, I’d say a massive heart attack, Detectives,” said Tony Bracket, the ME on the scene.
“This guy’s like thirty-four,” Sampson said. “And he’s built like a bull.”