Walter felt himself nod and stopped. He didn’t want to give this man anything. The other man’s hand had drifted over to a photograph of Brayman lying in that bed, Willow draped over him.

  “The point is, whether COD is strictly aneurysms or a mix of the CODs I just mentioned, how do you explain nineteen people dying within minutes of each other, all of natural causes? People who were relatively healthy an hour earlier?”

  Walter remained quiet.

  “Twenty-three people dead of natural causes just on this table.”

  He let this hang in the air for a long moment, and when Walter still didn’t say anything, he lowered his voice. “I know the thought has occurred to you, probably a few times, but it’s one of those things you dismiss, because as a detective, it’s not possible so it doesn’t make the board, but still, I know you thought it. Hell, it was the first thing I thought of when I saw one of those glowing handprints.” His voice dropped even lower. “These people were infected. Don’t ask me how, I don’t have that, but somehow, they were infected with death. I’ve even floated the theory that life was taken from them, drained, because that almost makes more sense than the other theories tentatively sticking to the wall.” He went back to the victim from the Edison. “Take Glenn Beede here—it’s like someone put a straw in him and sucked out all the life. Same with Aneta Kostenko. Your buddy Michael Driscoll, too, can’t forget about him. Whatever this is may have moved a little slower in him, but there’s no mistaking he caught the same bug. Then you got Earl Golston and all these other people in the brownstone. They all got themselves a little tap.” He tapped the side of his forehead with his index finger. “Hurried, but just enough to take them out, might as well have been a bullet to the brain. Like someone quickly cleaning house before they skipped town. Fast and efficient.”

  The man glanced at his watch and started putting everything back in his satchel. He left Golston’s drawings of the girl for last. “I know you’ve got a thing for her, O’Brien. I know the two of you have history. I’m honestly still not sure whose side of this whole thing you’re on, but I can tell you, there are sides, and it’s in your best interest to be on mine.”

  “I still don’t know who you are.”

  When Harwood’s desk was empty, the man said, “My name is Lincoln Sealey and I’m either your new best friend or your worst enemy.” He stood and started for the door. “Do you have a go-bag?”

  “If you tossed my room, you know I do. It’s part of our training here.”

  “Get it, and meet me in the field near the east gate in ten minutes. There’s something else I want to show you.”

  Chapter

  55

  Because FBI agents often have to leave home for extended periods of time, and are usually given little to no notice when expected to take that leave, all FBI recruits are taught how to properly pack and maintain a go-bag upon arrival at the academy. Walter’s was a large black duffel containing five changes of clothing, travel versions of his various toiletries, a microcassette recorder, and a box of ammunition for his 9mm. Although most recruits weren’t issued personal weapons until graduation, Walter was permitted to keep his due to his tenure in law enforcement prior to joining the Bureau.

  Walter kept his go-bag in the closet next to his roommate’s, but when he reentered his room now, he found it sitting on top of his bed. Aside from that, there were no visible signs Sealey had been in the room, but that was enough. Plus, when Walter lifted his mattress, he discovered that his copy of Golston’s notebook and the maps and notes he’d compiled over the years were all gone.

  He’d worry about that later.

  Sealey had only given him ten minutes. He’d lost two of those running back to his dorm in the Madison building across the common from Admin. Walter quickly stripped out of his sweaty clothing, took a four-minute shower, toweled off, dressed, and was out the door with two of his ten minutes remaining. Several shuttles continually circled the Quantico campus, and he managed to board one as it was pulling away from the dorms. Walter watched the seconds tick away as the bus lumbered out onto Bureau Parkway toward the east end of campus, and rather than wait to make the full loop, he got off at Hoover Road and ran the rest of the way across the grass to the east gate.

  Walter had expected a car, but as he neared, he remembered Sealey had said the field near the east gate, not the gate itself, and sitting in that field, rotors quickly picking up speed, stood a white-and-blue Bell 206 helicopter, back door open, and Sealey motioning for him to get inside.

  “There’s an accident on the parkway holding up traffic; this will be faster,” Sealey shouted out, handing Walter a pair of headphones before closing the door and tapping the pilot on the shoulder. They were airborne a moment later, swooping over the academy.

  Walter’s headphones had a microphone, but when he spoke, Sealey didn’t appear to hear him. When he saw Sealey’s lips move, maybe speaking to the pilot, he realized he was on a different channel. Walter reached for the selector above his head, but when he attempted to adjust the dial, Sealey shook his head and mouthed the words leave it.

  Less than three minutes later, they touched down at the Marine Corps Air Facility adjacent to the academy.

  Before the rotors had a chance to slow, Sealey had the door open and motioned for Walter to follow as he jumped out, hunched down low, and ran toward a small jet parked on the tarmac about fifty feet away, his black satchel thumping against his leg. Duffel in hand, Walter ran after him, up the stairs, and into the plane. It might have been a Gulfstream, Walter wasn’t sure, but aside from Sealey and the two pilots up front, it was empty. Sealey dropped into one of the seats and placed his bag at his side. He motioned for Walter to take the seat across from him and told the pilot, “Let’s go, we’re on a ticking clock here.”

  The copilot rose from his seat, went to the door, and pressed a button. There was a hydraulic whoosh as the steps retracted into the side of the plane. Then he pulled the door closed and manually engaged the lock, double-checked everything, and returned to the cockpit. A second later they were moving. Less than a minute after that, they were in the air.

  “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t expect Sealey to answer, so he was a bit surprised when the man did.

  “Atlanta. Well, just outside Atlanta.”

  “What about my classes?”

  Sealey didn’t answer that. Instead, he opened up a small compartment next to the table, revealing a minibar with a wide assortment of beverages and snacks. “Do you want something to drink?”

  Walter had had enough of the cloak-and-dagger shit. “I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

  Sealey shrugged, scanned the bottles, and took one out. “I’m gonna have some Scotch.”

  “I don’t drink, remember?”

  Sealey rolled his eyes, took out a can of soda, and set it on the table in front of Walter. “Coke and a smile it is.”

  He unfastened the clasps on his satchel, removed Golston’s file and notebook, and placed them on the table. Then he reached back in and removed Walter’s copy of Golston’s notebook, his personal notes, and the various maps he had marked up over the years. Thumbing through the notebook, Sealey let his finger linger on several of the entries—dates, initials, and cities. “So, how many did you manage to track down?”

  Fairly certain Sealey already knew the answer, Walter told him. “Six.”

  Sealey flipped back through Walter’s copied notebook again, slower this time. “Which six? You didn’t mark them.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Sealey pursed his lips and placed his palm on top of the pages. “Well, considering what you had to work with, I suppose six in five years isn’t bad. I know about Lou Morter in Tampa. I had you followed when you flew down there a couple years back. Jim Malerman, too. In Austin. We already had George Grendal in ’48. Who were the others?”

  Walter still said nothing.

  Sealey sighed, took a drink of his Scotch, and looked out the window at the white clouds below them as they continued to climb. “If you’re not willing to help, I might as well let you out right here.”

  Walter felt his ears pop from the altitude, stuffed a finger in one, and tried to open it back up, but it did little good. He settled back in the seat. “How many did you find?”

  Sealey set his glass back down on the table and gave it a quarter turn. “A good number of the local law enforcement offices are computerized now, but the data is a mess. Nobody is using the same software. There are about a half dozen systems available off the shelf and who knows how many proprietary databases in use. The FBI is working to try and tie it all together, bring it all into NCIS or something like it, but we’re still a few years away from that. Those aside, you’ve got all the smaller municipalities who just can’t afford to computerize and are still working with paper. Then there are the outfits somewhere in the middle—they have a computer system, but they’re still keying everything in. That could go on for years. We’ve developed flags. Based on the locations in this notebook, the dates and initials, we’ve got people searching all those databases as they come online, matching things up. Between NCIS and several other federal databases, my team has managed to track down twenty-three, and we’re close on at least nine more. All dead by natural causes, which doesn’t make things any easier since we have to search hospital and coroner records, too.”

  “There’s a hundred and forty-nine entries.”

  Sealey nodded. “Yeah. Spanning almost fifty years and hitting nearly every state in the union. You saw it with your maps—back and forth across the country. Hits one coast, heads back, then reverses again. Just back and forth, back and forth.” He waved his arm around to illustrate, then took another drink of his Scotch. “Here’s the thing, though. The more names we figure out, the less important I think identifying them all might be. Whether I’ve got a real name or not, I know each entry represents the same thing—a dead man between the ages of twenty and forty—found dead of natural causes under unusual circumstances. We’ve got her trail either way.”

  As he said her, he tapped one of the sketches in the notebook, traced the girl’s dark hair with his fingertip.

  “All male?”

  Sealey rolled his hand. “In the notebook, yeah, but we’ve found a handful of female vics throughout the years. Motive seems to be different, though. They seem to be women who got in her way, like your bus depot vic, Aneta Kostenko—we think she saw something she shouldn’t have and your girl shut her down quick and dirty.”

  “My girl?” Walter said softly. “Amy Archer wasn’t alive for most of the entries in Golston’s notes. He was chasing something, but it wasn’t her.”

  “I’m not so sure. This is bigger than that. This is bigger than just her.” Sealey finished off his Scotch and poured another. “Could be a family, like a string of women related by blood. Mothers, daughters, sisters…Amy Archer isn’t even your little girlfriend’s real name.”

  This last bit felt like a punch to Walter’s gut. “What?”

  A glimmer entered the corner of Sealey’s eye. “All these years, all the pseudonyms, and still you actually believe she told you her real name? Maybe I put more faith in you than you deserve, O’Brien.”

  Sealey reached back into his satchel, took out a pad, and placed it on the table between them. Several names were written on the first page. “The first name we have on record, the one with George Grendal, was Jane Toppan, right?”

  Walter nodded.

  “Well, Jane Toppan is the alias of a woman named Honora Kelley, born in 1854. She was arrested in 1901 and confessed to thirty-one murders. Get this: she told the cops who brought her in that her goal was ‘to have killed more people—helpless people—than any other man or woman who ever lived.’ She was a prize, that one. The name your girl initially gave you—Amy Archer—that’s one pulled from the history books, too. The real Amy Archer, better known as Amy Duggan ‘Sister’ Archer-Gilligan, killed five people that we know of, probably more, between 1910 and 1917 in Connecticut. Nursing home fraud. Then we got the name your girl gave to Michael Driscoll.”

  “Amelia Dyer.”

  “Yeah, Amelia Dyer. Another winner. They’ve pinned three to four hundred murders on the real Amelia Dyer over in the UK between 1880 and 1896. Kids, mostly. She’d adopt them for money from wealthy families of daughters with ‘accidents,’ then she’d kill the kids after she got paid and dispose of the bodies. Fucking monster, but she had a good racket going. Made her a rich woman. Bought her a good defense at trial, but not good enough—they still hanged her.”

  Sealey turned the list around so he could read it. “Let’s see, who else we got? What was the name she gave you during your play-date at that Italian place?”

  “Velma Barfield.”

  “From Dubuque, Iowa, right?”

  Walter nodded.

  “Well, that’s not quite right. Iowa, I mean. The real Velma Barfield was born Margie Velma Bullard in South Carolina back in 1932, executed by lethal injection in 1978 with six murders behind her. Married into the Barfield name.” He met Walter’s gaze. “The point is, she played you. Every name she gave you was bogus. I think she picked the names of female serial killers throughout history as some private joke. Maybe she wanted to see if you’d catch on, who knows. Not just you, though; that’s my point here. Golston has records dating back to 1948, and I don’t think that was the start of it. He stumbled into the middle somewhere, just like you, like me. Who knows when this really started. I think what we’re dealing with here is a long line of female serial killers, black widows, all related somehow, operating together like a cult. Like a mother who passes the bug on to her daughter…multiple generations. Golston followed them most of his adult life, got obsessed. Tracked them to your doorstep. That’s why his last entry has your initials, then they killed him. I’m guessing he arranged a meet at the Four Seasons, and they took him out. That’s why his death is staged to look more accidental. I think they wanted to cover that one up.”

  Walter slumped back in his seat and thought about all this. It was a lot to take in. “Black widows are usually motivated by money, right? Did you find—”

  Sealey cut him off. “Nope. If they’re stealing from their vics, we haven’t found proof. That doesn’t mean we won’t, but we haven’t yet. But there’s a distinct pattern here, and we’re on it.”

  “How do you explain the other things we found in Golston’s apartment?”

  “The hair, nails, and teeth? All the salt?”

  Walter nodded.

  “No clue. But we’ll figure it out,” he told him. “They’re like that bottle of wine you found in Golston’s room at the Four Seasons with the needle marks.”

  “Opus One,” Walter remembered. “It came back from the lab negative for poison. We never figured out what he injected.”

  “Our lab found low levels of something called oxenberry.”

  A puzzled look filled Walter’s face. “What the hell is oxenberry?”

  “It’s a berry that grows in Asia. Might give you the shits but not lethal. We never could figure out why he went through the trouble. Someday we’ll tick that box, but not today.” Sealey looked at his watch, took his black satchel from the seat beside him, and placed it on the table. “Pick through what you want. I don’t have any secrets from you. The sooner you understand that, the better for both of us. We’ve got a few more hours, and I need to get some shut-eye. I suggest you do, too. We’re gonna hit the ground running.”

  With that, Sealey pulled down the window’s plastic shade, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

  No way Walter was going to sleep. He started pulling everything out of the bag before Sealey changed his mind.

  Chapter

  56

  By the time Lincoln Sealey’s eyes opened again, Walter had picked through every scrap of paper in the man’s bag, memorized what he could, took notes (which he carefully hid away in his pockets) on the rest, and put everything back where he’d found it. He didn’t want to give Sealey the satisfaction of knowing which items drew Walter’s focus (particularly which ones were new to him) and which didn’t. The only item still on the table was the notepad with the various aliases. Aside from Amy Archer, Jane Toppan, Amelia Dyer, and Velma Barfield, the list also contained the names Gesche Gottfried, Nannie Doss, Myra Hindley, Leonarda Cianciulli, Dagmar Overbye, and nearly two dozen others. But Walter couldn’t help but think of her as Amy Archer.

  The plane had started its descent, Walter felt it in his gut.

  Sealey licked his dry lips and pulled himself back up into a sitting position. “I’m guessing you didn’t get any sleep?”

  “Not a chance. My brain is running on overdrive right now.” Walter had found a coffee maker near the back of the plane and was on his second pot. That probably hadn’t helped. “How many do you think are involved here?”

  “Victims?”

  “No, killers.”

  Sealey shrugged. “Best guess? One for every five years we have on record, so at least ten but most likely more. Golston had the most complete record, but like I said, this machine was in motion well before he stumbled into it. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they were operating ten, even twenty years before he found them in ’48. Their motive is the key to this whole thing. We figure out why they’re doing it, then we can get in front of them.”

  The plane lurched as the wheels made contact with the pavement.

  Before they stopped moving, Sealey was on his feet and working the controls at the door. “Grab my bag, let’s go.”

  Walter slid the notepad back into Sealey’s satchel, threw his own bag over his shoulder, and followed him through the door and down the steps to a black Suburban parked on the tarmac. They scrambled into the rear seat and pulled the doors shut.

  “Is this Hartsfield?”

  Sealey shook his head. “Dobbins in Marietta—about sixteen miles northwest of Atlanta. I try to avoid civilian airports whenever possible.” He tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Go.”