The writer left the town house soon after; he climbed into his stylish four-door coupe and pulled out, heading north. Sampson put the squad car in gear and followed Tull at a comfortable distance.
“We have a license plate number?” I asked.
“New York plate S-C-R-B-L-R,” Sampson said. “Like scribbler?”
“Got it,” I said. He took a left and then another, heading south.
Tull was soon on local-access K Street heading east. It was a moonless night, which somehow made the headlight glare worse as we approached Twenty-Seventh.
The writer put on his left blinker, indicating he was going to take the Rock Creek Parkway heading north. We were six cars back when the light changed.
Driving down the on-ramp at thirty miles an hour, Tull merged into light traffic on the parkway, a four-lane thoroughfare surrounded by woods and divided by a strip of trees and azalea bushes. Tull accelerated to fifty.
Sampson followed suit, passing two cars. Approaching the M Street exit, we were three cars behind him in the right lane.
Then the writer pulled over into the left lane and got up alongside a black Porsche 911 Turbo Carrera. I still had my window down, so I heard the roar of huge high-horsepower engines before both vehicles went screaming up the parkway.
“Stay with him!” I shouted, and Sampson stomped on the gas.
CHAPTER 57
TULL’S STYLISH LITTLE GERMAN coupe turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a sleek but conservative-looking car with a raging monster of an engine.
The Porsche 911 tried to accelerate with the RS 7, but within the first three seconds, Tull opened a gap of twenty yards, then thirty. We were much farther behind when both high-performance vehicles hit the brakes and downshifted before the tight right and a sweeping left curve below Dupont Circle.
They vanished from sight.
“He had to have hit a hundred there,” Sampson said. “I should put the bubble up and pull him over.”
“Just keep him somewhere in range,” I said, gritting my teeth as John hit the brakes and we went through the curves.
After we came out of the second one, the parkway straightened for more than a mile. We could see the rear lights of the Audi and the Porsche a good four hundred yards ahead, weaving in and out of traffic.
“He’s nuts,” Sampson said, pounding the gas pedal. “He’s going to hit someone.”
“Or they’re going to hit him,” I said as we sped forward, gaining some ground when both vehicles hit the brakes before a big right turn north of Montrose Park.
I caught only glimpses of what happened next.
The parkway ahead of the sports cars was near empty. Both drivers took advantage of that, the 911 in the right lane and the RS 7 in the left, burying their accelerators. The cars became a blur.
“That’s it—they are going to kill people,” I said. “Put the bubble up.”
Sampson did as we entered the turn north of Montrose Park. He flipped on the siren and accelerated again.
“I don’t know if I can catch up,” Sampson said as I peered ahead, trying to pick out the rear lights of the Porsche and the Audi as we raced through the densest woods along the parkway.
We were going eighty when I caught sight of the split at the end of the road where Shoreham angles northwest and Beach Drive goes northeast. “That’s the Porsche going up Beach,” I said.
“Where’s Tull?” Sampson said, hitting the brakes before the split.
I caught a glimpse of taillights on Shoreham.
“Cathedral Avenue,” I said. “I think that’s him.”
Sampson took Shoreham and then Cathedral Avenue, a much narrower road that goes along the northwest side of Rock Creek Park. The road curves left entering the avenue, which features trees on the right and apartment buildings on the left.
When we came out of the curve, I expected to see taillights ahead. But there were none.
“Where the hell did he go?” Sampson demanded and slowed as we came up to Woodley Road, a left.
We both looked up Woodley and saw only a minivan pulling out of North Woodley Place, heading west toward Connecticut Avenue. Sampson turned off the siren and bubble and sped north on Cathedral Avenue to where it crossed Connecticut.
No Tull.
We backtracked. Sampson took us the length of Woodley Place and then up an alley between homes, apartment buildings, and small parking lots closer to Connecticut Avenue.
We shone police flashlights into every dark corner. Tull and his midnight-blue RS 7 were nowhere to be seen.
“We lost him,” Sampson said, exasperated. “A goddamn writer at the wheel and we lost him.”
CHAPTER 58
BREE LOOKED EXHAUSTED WHEN she finally came in the front door around eleven that evening. I’d been home less than twenty minutes and was still frustrated by our inability to stay with Tull.
We’d contacted our bosses and tried to have an APB put out on the writer, but since he hadn’t done anything other than race the nameless Porsche driver, we were told we were on shaky grounds as far as cause.
“Hey, baby,” I said, ditching my frustration and hugging her. “You look like you’ve been through a lot.”
Bree hugged me tighter. “I feel like I’m back from another universe.”
Between family and work, we’d had no time to talk and had communicated throughout the evening by text. I led her into the kitchen, where Nana Mama had left a pot of chicken stew warming for us. She and the kids had already gone to sleep.
I got Bree a bowl of stew and a cold beer.
“You’re an angel,” Bree said, sipping the beer and closing her eyes for a second.
“You want to tell me about your day?” I said after she’d taken a few spoonfuls and another swig of beer. “Your interrogation? Duchaine’s?”
Bree looked relieved to be asked and recounted in full her discussion with Detective Salazar and her partner and then the interrogation of Frances Duchaine.
“Wow,” I said. “I didn’t see that coming. Do you think Duchaine ordered the hits?”
“It’s almost all I’ve thought about since she stormed out of the interrogation room with her lawyer,” Bree said. “She claims she knew nothing about the sex trafficking, but how is that possible? I mean, I suppose she could have been willfully ignorant.”
I nodded. “Knew something was off but didn’t want to put her nose in there and find out what Watkins was really up to.”
“See no evil,” Bree said. “But I’m not buying it. Not totally. She had to have known the financial hole she was in. Right?”
“I would think so. There’s only so far you can go in business when you’re a pure artist, not beholden to the market.”
“Exactly. And look how huge she got. She knew.”
“But did she order them killed?”
Bree took another swig of beer, set the bottle on the table, and dropped the tension from her shoulders. “My gut says no. If it’s there, Salazar will find it. She’s good. Real good. But my gut still says no.”
“So who else could have ordered the killings? And why?”
After swallowing another spoonful of stew, she said, “I’ve got three possibles: Rivals of the two crime bosses who may have been cut out of the deal. Or rivals of that sheikh. I mean, if the Saudis can murder and cut up a journalist in their embassy, a mass murder over sex trafficking is not out of the question.”