“Detective Cross?” Officer Carney said.
Sampson and I spun around. The patrolman was standing in the doorway, wearing surgical booties.
“Officer, I clearly asked you to stay outside and maintain the perimeter.”
Carney’s head retreated by several inches. “I’m sorry, sir, but I thought you’d want to know that there’s a hysterical young woman outside who says she knows at least one of the people working in here tonight.”
Chapter
8
“I’m Alex Cross,” I said to the young woman after Officer Carney had brought her under the tape and led her over to me. “Could I see your identification, miss?”
Young, Asian, and wearing jeans, sneakers, and a George Washington University Windbreaker, she seemed not to hear my request at first. She just stared at the door to the Superior Spa. Everything about her looked tortured.
“Miss?” I said softly.
Her voice trembled as she asked, “They all dead?”
“I’m afraid everyone inside is deceased, yes,” I replied. “How did—”
Everything about her seemed to dissolve right then. I couldn’t catch her before she collapsed to the sidewalk. She choked, retched, and vomited several times. Then she looked up at me and began to sob. “I knew this place was—I…I told her. But she always said it was—”
The young woman started hyperventilating and then dry-heaving. I squatted down next to her, put my hand on her back, trying to comfort her. But it was as if I’d put a hot iron on her skin.
She jerked away from me, cowered against the front of a paint store, flinging up her hands, screaming, “No! No! Don’t touch me!”
“Miss,” I said. “I’m not here to—”
And then I got it.
I stood, took several steps back, and squatted down again. Like I said, I’m a big man, and I was trying to make myself smaller. I motioned with my chin for Sampson, who’d been listening, to do the same.
“Miss?” I said. “Do you work here?”
Her eyes had gone haunted again, but she shook her head violently.
“Did you used to work here?” Sampson asked.
Her eyes darted toward the front door and the tears began to gush out of her. “My parents,” she sobbed. “They’re going to know, aren’t they?”
We spent the next fifteen minutes getting the gist of her story. Her name was Blossom Mai. She was nineteen and a sophomore at George Washington University, a premed major from San Diego. Her parents were Vietnamese immigrants who’d worked eighty-hour weeks to send her to school. They covered what she had not received in scholarships for room and board, but nothing more.
The job Blossom had at school was not enough to live on, or at least it did not feel that way when she compared her life to her rich classmates’. Last fall, Blossom had made a new friend. Her name was Cam Nguyen. A year older, a junior economics major at GW, Cam came from Orange County, California, and was also a second-generation Vietnamese-American girl whose parents had scrimped for her education.
But Cam wore the latest clothes. And on Saturday nights she went to expensive bars in Georgetown. Cam seemed to have anything she wanted.
“So you asked her how she was doing it?” Sampson said.
Blossom nodded. “She said it was safer working here than as an escort because there was always an armed manager guarding you.”
The deal was simple. Each girl paid the house manager five hundred a shift. Each customer paid the manager seventy-five dollars. The girls took everything beyond that. Many nights Cam netted a thousand, sometimes fifteen hundred. But Blossom only worked at the Superior Spa for one night.
“I felt like I was in a filthy nightmare,” she told us, crying again. “I…I just couldn’t do it again. Couldn’t even spend the money. I gave it away to the homeless shelter. But Cam, she could turn things off, you know?”
“Why do you think Cam’s in there?”
“I know she’s in there,” Blossom said. “We live next door to each other in a building a few blocks from here. I saw her in the hallway two, no three hours ago. She said she was on her way here and tried to get me to go with her again.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said softly.
After a moment, Blossom asked weakly, “She’s dead? Cam?”
“We don’t know,” Sampson said. “But she’s not in there.”
“Really?” Blossom said, her eyes wide with sudden hope. “Maybe she decided not to come.”
“Got her cell phone number?”
She nodded, gave it to me. I said to Sampson, “Go inside, listen for it.”
Sampson understood and left. I waited a minute and then punched in the number. It rang. My partner answered. “Right here,” he said. “The blue iPhone.”
“Okay,” I said, hung up, and looked at Blossom. “Her phone’s inside, but nothing else.”
“No,” Blossom said, shaking her head. “She would never, ever leave her phone. She was, like, a textaholic.”
“What if she’d just shot four people?” I asked. “Would she leave it behind?”
“Cam?” She paused. “I guess I don’t know.” Then anguish took her. “How am I going to explain this to my parents?”
I was confused but then understood. “Blossom, as long as you are cooperating with us, as far as we’re concerned, your parents don’t have to know a thing about this. Ever.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Blossom Mai broke down all over again.
Chapter
9
At seven forty-five the next morning, Marcus Sunday strode confidently through the lobby of the Four Seasons in Georgetown, knowing full well that no one would ever recognize him in this outrageous getup.
On another man it might have been thought a clown’s outfit: purple high-top sneakers, orange shirt and pants, ice-blue contact lenses, two nose rings, and a flaming-red Abe Lincoln beard with matching eyebrows and a matching wig that stood four inches straight up over his head. But Sunday knew that the disguise exuded a certain, well, charismatic threat, especially in a place like this, as if he were some sort of psycho Carrot Top or worse.
Indeed, the maître d’ looked mightily upset when Sunday went to the stack on a table and grabbed a copy of the Washington Post that featured a story on the death of Mad Man Francones and three others at a local massage parlor, then approached his station, saying in a nasal, whiny tone: “Table for one.”
The maître d’ tried to look down his nose at Sunday, said, “And do you have a reservation with us, sir?”
“Guest of the hotel,” Sunday said. “Room 1450.”
Room 1450 was a thousand-dollar-a-night suite. The maître d’s attitude shifted measurably, but he still eyed the writer’s attire. “Mr.…?”
“Mulch,” Sunday replied. “Thierry Mulch. Like the composted stuff.”
“Oh,” the maître d’ said as if he’d just tasted something unpleasant, and snatched up a menu. “Please follow me, Mr. Mulch.”
Inside the dining room, the air seemed at a different barometric pressure, as if some vast low had descended over the place. And it bore a smell beyond rueful bacon, sausage, and coffee that Sunday recognized as the rot of power.
Corpulent stuffed shirts with five-hundred-dollar haircuts were wall-eyeing the writer almost immediately. A brassy blond cougar in a brick-red Chanel suit looked up as he passed. Sunday winked her way, licked his upper lip with feline hunger, and almost laughed when her cheeks ignited.
He kept walking, flashing on the mystery that was Acadia Le Duc, and the indescribable fun and desires they would share in just a few short—
“Mr. Mulch?” the maître d’ said, breaking into his thoughts with a stiff gesture to a table tucked in the corner by the kitchen doors.
“Why don’t you stick me in the john?” Sunday asked in that nasal, whiny voice, then pointed over near the windows. “I’d like to sit there.”
The maître d’ went stone-faced but nod
ded and led the writer to a table where almost everyone in the place could see him.
“Thanks,” Sunday said loudly. “More like it.”
He looked around at the various dignitaries, politicians, lobbyists, and the like, many of whom were either glancing at him or staring openly. The writer gave several of them the thumbs-up. They looked like they’d just felt a tick crawling up their spine.
Brilliant entertainment, he thought, and then analyzed the forces at play.
These sorts of ridiculous people believed in decorum, tact, and manners. Sunday had found that when you brushed up hard against their rules of accepted behavior, you created agitation. And agitation, as far as he was concerned, was a good thing, a very good thing—what he lived for, as a matter of fact.
But when a waiter came over to pour coffee and take his order, Sunday behaved himself. He was hungry and had a busy day ahead.
“The frittata, the lemon and ricotta pancakes, and a large fresh-squeezed OJ,” he said.
“Bacon?” the waiter asked.
Sunday made a face as if he might be ill, said, “No, never again.”
When the waiter left, the writer read the story about the Francones murder with great interest, especially the fact that Alex Cross had been assigned to the case. Well, who else, right?
Rather than getting truly pissed off, however, Sunday refocused on the task at hand. Make a scene, he thought.
Looking around again, the writer noticed that a nerdy man in a Brooks Brothers suit that screamed professional boor had taken a seat at the table to his left. The boor was studying his iPhone intently. Sunday recognized him as a syndicated political pundit and mainstay of the morning talk shows, a pasty-faced guy in a bow tie who never used a single-syllable word when a six-syllable one would do.
Perfect target, the writer realized, and began to enjoy himself. Serendipity, that was what it was. Chance fortune.
“Porn?” Sunday called over to the pundit.
The chattering head looked up, confused.
The writer gestured at the phone and observed in that nasal, whiny voice: “I figured you had to be watching something, like, really nasty to be that locked on.”
“Hardly,” the man shot back in a harsh whisper. “Have some couth.”
“That one of the specials here?” Sunday asked, glancing down at his menu. “I must have missed that. Does couth come poached or fried?”
The pundit was studying his iPhone even more intently now.
“I know you,” Sunday said. “You’re a guy who’s got an opinion on everything. So I want to know: Do you think Pooh was right?”
The pundit sighed, looked at the writer, said, “Pooh? As in the bear?”
“Or Ursus mellitus, as you might say,” Sunday replied good-naturedly. “Now, I consider Pooh Bear to be one of the great thinkers of all time. Right up with Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, and Bob Dylan. Especially when it came to breakfast.”
The pundit got exasperated. “What are you babbling about?”
Sunday acted offended, touched his fingers to his flaming-red hair.
“Babbling?” he said. “Thierry Mulch? Well, no more than you in your latest column. All I was doing was discussing Pooh Bear and his immortal disquisition with Piglet regarding breakfast.
“Don’t you remember?” Sunday demanded angrily. “Pooh Bear thought breakfast was the most exciting part of the day. There’s his thesis, my good man. Agree or disagree? No reason to say ‘affirmative’ or ‘demonstrably false.’ A simple yes or no will do.”
Chapter
10
Sensing the bed shifting as a new weight compressed it, I came slowly to consciousness, feeling as if I’d gone to sleep only a few minutes before. But when I groggily opened my eyes, it was broad daylight and my beautiful wife, Bree, lay on her belly beside me, dressed for the gym. She was up on her elbows, her chin cradled in her hands. Tears clouded her eyes, but she was beaming.
“Sorry to wake you up, Alex. I know you got in late and the Mad Man Francones case and all. But I thought you’d want to know.”
I blinked dumbly, yawned, and said, “Know what?”
“Jeannie Shelton just called, from the lab?”
“Okay?” I said, glancing at the clock. Ten past nine. What ungodly time had I gone to bed? It had to have been after—
“Alex, the burned body in that old factory wasn’t Ava,” Bree said.
That was like guzzling a pot of French roast. I sat up, alert and jittery.
“But the identification, the necklace?”
“They ran Ava’s dental records against the burned girl’s,” my wife said. “Not even close to a match. Ava had congenitally missing teeth. The dead girl had a full set.”
Relief washed over me like a wave and I felt tears welling to match Bree’s. Ava Williams was still alive.
Nana Mama took Ava in when she was fourteen, an orphan and runaway from a foster home. She’d lived with us almost a year. For a time, life in our house seemed to have been good for Ava. Or at least it seemed that way to us. She’d bonded with Bree and seemed to tolerate the rest of us.
But then Ava had started hanging with the wrong crowd. We suspected drug use, maybe alcohol, and quicker and sadder than you’d think, she was gone, until a burned corpse was discovered in an old, abandoned factory in Southeast that was also a reputed hangout for junkies and the homeless. Ava’s silver bracelet, which she’d worn constantly, was on the dead girl’s wrist. So was a necklace my grandmother had given her. The news had been devastating.
“Isn’t that wonderful?” Bree asked.
“Better than wonderful,” I said, and wiped at my eyes. “But where is she? And who’s the dead girl?”
“Jeannie said no match on her yet. But Jane Doe is definitely not our Ava.”
Tired as I was, my mind has been conditioned over decades of police work to think a certain way, whether I want to or not. The relief I’d felt at learning that Ava was alive was replaced by a colder sensation as I considered the idea that the young runaway who’d found shelter under my roof could have killed another young woman, planted phony identification on her, and then set her on fire.
But because my wife and Ava had become so close, I said nothing.
“We have to find her,” Bree said. “Bring her home.”
I thought about Pete Francones and the other victims at the massage parlor and wondered how I was going to make time to search for Ava.
“Let’s start tonight if you get home at a reasonable hour,” Bree insisted.
“I don’t think there will be any reasonable hours for me for a long time,” I said. “The Francones case is going to be a media circus.”
“Already is,” she said. “And I get what a slam this is going to be for you, Alex. I really do. But don’t worry. I’ll start looking for Ava myself. When you can, you pitch in. Okay?”
I stroked her cheek, said, “You’re such a good person, Bree Stone.”
My wife kissed my hand, said, “You are, too, baby. The best man I know.”
Chapter
11
Outside the front entrance of the Four Seasons in Georgetown, security guards flanked Marcus Sunday as he waited for the valet to bring him his car. The maître d’ coldly handed him a doggie bag containing his breakfast.
“You guys have zero sense of humor,” Sunday remarked, making a show of stroking his flaming-red Abe Lincoln beard.
“Harassing our patrons and posing as a guest are not funny matters, Mr. Mulch,” the maître d’ seethed.
“I was checking in later today,” the writer replied with great indignation. “Or thought about it, anyway. But now? No chance, gentlemen. No chance.”
A two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar Bentley Continental GT Coupe convertible rolled up. The writer went around, took the keys, and gave the valet a fifty before donning driving gloves and climbing in. He glanced over at the shocked maître d’ and the guards, scratched at his fake beard with his middle finger, and drove out from u
nder the hotel’s portico onto Pennsylvania Avenue, heading east.
That had to have made an impression, Sunday thought, and felt very happy. That breakfast room had been the height of absurdity: a place of power plagued with so many rules, customs, and mores that any creativity, any resourcefulness was impossible.
But if anything, Marcus Sunday was a very, very creative and very, very resourceful man. Take the driver’s license in his wallet that identified him as Thierry Mulch of Boise, Idaho. The bogus ID had cost him $145, purchased from a kid he met in Boston who catered to the underage drinking crowd at the local colleges. The fake license was flawless, like the six other Thierry Mulch driver’s licenses he carried from time to time, so good that he’d used them to get past TSA agents at the airport, blue-light watermarks and all.
TSA: The Stupid Administration.
Turning north onto Rock Creek Parkway with a triumphant grin on his face, the writer thought of the quality of those fake licenses as more evidence in support of one of his long-held theories. Sunday had heard politicians claim that corporations were people, but the writer took it a step further:
People are documents, my friends!
There was no disputing that fact, as far as he was concerned. With the right papers and the right attitude you could be anyone. Hell, you could be six or seven people at once with the correct documents.
Wasn’t his life sterling proof of that? Indeed it was, and in every way.
Those ideas pleased Sunday as he pulled into the EuroMotorcars lot in Bethesda. He parked out front, noticed the subtle odor of azaleas on the breeze, and had no sooner turned off the ignition than a man with a scrubbed, boyish face hurried out the door of the dealership.
“Mr. Thierry Mulch!” he cried, fairly skipping toward the convertible. “What do you think of the Bentley?”