“You believe they’ve already made mistakes?”
“I do. A couple of big ones.”
CHAPTER 11
THE FAMILY MAN SENSED the time was ripe to increase the pressure and make the critical next move in the promotion of general hysteria.
Up to this point, the killer had focused primarily on white suburban families. Now that had to change.
The Elliott family of Alexandria, Virginia, would do nicely, thank you. A family selected to change the popular buzz about the killings, broaden and deepen it, spread the fear far and wide.
With the floor plan of their Craftsman bungalow memorized, the night-vision goggles ready, and happy that there was no canine to contend with, the Family Man eased down an alley behind the house, finished putting on the hazmat gear, and vaulted the rear gate.
The killer landed and trained a laser pointer on the wide-angle security camera high above the rear door, effectively blinding it to the backyard.
There was no camera above the concrete steps that led to the basement door, a steel-clad affair with double dead bolts. With the help of a pair of stainless-steel picks and a small electromagnet, the Family Man had the bolts turned and the door open in under ten minutes.
The bungalow design presented an interesting challenge. The members of the Carpenter family had slept on different levels of their house, but the Elliotts were all clustered upstairs in three bedrooms around a common area and a bath.
The house was nearly sixty years old. A creak in a floorboard or a stair riser could alert one of them and make life and death messier than it had to be.
The Family Man got out the pistol with the sound suppressor, climbed the steep stairs out of the musty basement, and slipped into the kitchen. The night-vision goggles revealed a living room on the right and a dining room and stairs to the second floor on the left.
The killer took several breaths with closed eyes, rehearsing, before moving to the staircase and, with near robotic precision, settling each foot on the side of the risers, not in the middle, where they might squeak or squeal in protest.
The Family Man made no detectable sound the entire climb but paused at the last step anyway to listen for movement. Hearing nothing, the killer stepped up onto the landing and then slid along the wall, head up, intent on the master bedroom’s door, which was ajar.
The Family Man’s soft-soled boot accidentally kicked a wineglass on the wood floor. It hit a second wineglass, which tipped over an empty bottle, which hit the wood and rolled. It might have given another intruder a heart attack.
But, adapting, the killer just pushed up the goggles and aimed the pistol at the bedroom door.
“Tristan?” a woman said groggily on the other side. A light went on.
Then a light went on in the bathroom; the door opened and Tristan Elliott, a massive Black man who’d played lineman at Georgia Tech, stepped out. He saw the Family Man aiming the gun at him. Elliott raised his huge hands, sudden terror in his eyes, and whispered, “No, please. I know who you are. I know what you’re here to do. Don’t do it!”
“That’s not possible,” the killer said and shot him, then pushed open the master bedroom’s door to find Elliott’s wife on the edge of her bed, just about to scream.
CHAPTER 12
BREE AND I WERE up and out of our house to run at six on Thursday morning.
We usually put in five miles every other day. It was not only a chance to exercise; it was also a chance to connect and talk about the work to come.
“I’m having a tough time with my new assignment,” Bree said as we ran downhill on the south side of Capitol Hill and onto the sidewalk along Independence Avenue, headed toward the National Mall.
The spring morning was beautiful. Flowering trees and shrubs were in full bloom everywhere you looked on the Capitol grounds.
“This is the assignment you can’t talk about?” I said, trying to ignore the way my knees protested the steep descent.
“That’s the one,” she said. “But I think I can do it without naming names.”
“Handy skill to have.”
“Took years to develop.”
Bree told me she and Bluestone were working for an anonymous client who’d dug up dirt on a major player in the fashion industry.
“What kind of dirt?” I asked.
“I can’t say,” Bree said. “But it’s rough.”
“Why would a major hitter in fashion be involved with something rough?”
“Exactly my reaction,” she said, puffing as we reached the bottom of Capitol Hill and started down the Mall toward the Washington Monument. “But there’s enough on paper to suggest it may be real. There was a lawsuit filed in North Carolina, but it was dismissed and sealed before depositions took place.”
I wiped the sweat off my brow and I thought about that for a few moments. “Why North Carolina?”
“The hitter evidently has relationships with multiple textile and clothing manufacturers there. The two women and one man claim they were coerced with promises that the hitter and friends would help them get a foothold in the modeling or fashion industry. But they said it was a lie, a pretext for the roughness.”
“Reasons for dismissal and seal?”
“That’s unclear and part of why the anonymous client has asked us to investigate. I’ll put in calls this morning to the attorney who sued and see what she remembers about the case.”
“At least you’ll have a better idea of what to believe,” I said. “What else?”
“I’m going up to New York this evening,” Bree said as we took a right on Fourth Street and looped toward the north side of Capitol Hill. “I figure five days to do what I need to do, which means I’ll probably miss Jannie’s big race.”
“I’ll film it,” I said. “Or I can FaceTime you and you can see the whole thing.”
She grinned. “I like that idea better. Ready?”
“Never,” I said, seeing the sidewalk starting to climb ahead of us.
We’ve been doing this route for years, and Capitol Hill still beats me up. My calves were screaming, and I had a stitch in my side when we crested the hill and slowed to a walk at First Street.
“God, that’s steep.” I groaned.
“Never gets easier,” Bree said, panting.
We walked to Second Street and had just started to jog home slowly when my cell rang. Ned Mahoney. We slowed to a walk again.
“We’re out for a run and almost home, Ned,” I said. “Can I call you back in ten?”
“Afraid not, Alex,” Mahoney said. “Family Man struck last night in Alexandria. I need you there, pronto.”
My stomach soured as it had before I’d entered the Carpenters’ home. I hated going into the Family Man’s crime scenes—I feared the multiple victims would be too much for me to process, which meant they’d soon haunt my daydreams and my nightmares.
But I said, “I’ll be there in forty.”
“Make it thirty. I’m calling Sampson,” Ned said and hung up.
“Another one?” Bree asked in concern as I lowered the phone from my ear.
“In Alexandria,” I said, and we broke into a run toward home.
CHAPTER 13
THE FOLLOWING MORNING AROUND ten, I was at the desk I use when I’m working at Metro PD, forcing myself to study the crime scene photographs from the Elliott family home. Sampson sat at the desk opposite me, writing up the case for the murder book that would help us in our part of the overall investigation.