For fifteen minutes we waited. Hanson could still see the Ford, which had gone deep into the development and now sat there, lights off, engine idling.

  At four a.m., Hanson said, “He’s moving. Turning around.”

  “If you’re going to stop him, do it before he gets out of that development,” Sampson said. “We’ll be right along for backup.”

  “Got that,” the detective said.

  We saw her headlights come on. She drove her squad car and stopped it so it was fully blocking the entrance to the construction site.

  Sampson started our vehicle and drove up beside her, and we climbed out, hands on the butts of our service weapons. The Ford bounced along at a fair clip until the high beams caught us standing there. Hanson slapped a flashing blue bubble on the roof of her car and climbed out. The pickup kept coming.

  Hanson and John both held up their badges. The truck slowed. A window rolled down, and a Hispanic male in his late forties looked at us with a puzzled expression.

  “What’s going on here, man?” he asked.

  Hanson identified herself, walked to the pickup. “You are?”

  “Enrique Morales,” he said.

  She asked him for his identification. He fumbled for it but eventually found a Maryland driver’s license.

  Hanson took it. “You live close by?”

  “Close enough,” Morales said. “Will you tell me what is going on?”

  I said, “Why are you here in the middle of the night, Mr. Morales?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I am under a lot of pressure, and I just came to the site to make sure I was on top of things.”

  Sampson said, “You’re saying you work here?”

  “I do,” he said. With our permission, he reached over to the passenger seat and showed us a hard hat with the logo of the Lafford Construction company of Bowie, Maryland. He tapped a Lafford identification on a lanyard hanging from the rearview. “I’m the foreman on this job. Look in the back seat, you don’t believe me.”

  Hanson shone her flashlight into the rear seat, revealing rolled blueprints and surveying equipment.

  “I got a bad deadline, man,” Morales said. “That’s why I’m here instead of in bed with my wife. Why, who did you think I was?”

  “We’re not at liberty to say, sir,” Sampson said.

  “Well,” he said, looking confused, “no one dangerous, I hope.”

  “Why would you say that?” I asked.

  “I got fifteen men and more equipment coming at seven, that’s why.”

  Hanson took a picture of Morales’s driver’s license, then handed the ID back to him. “Sorry to have concerned you, sir. We’ll let you get on your way.”

  “Okay, then,” Morales said and nodded. “Thank you.”

  The state police detective went to her vehicle, climbed in, started it, and backed up. Morales began to roll up his window.

  I stopped him, said, “One more question?”

  His brow furrowed. “If it gets me closer to my Denver omelet, yes.”

  “As a kid,” I said, “before you were eighteen, ever get in trouble with the law?”

  Morales looked at me with flat, dull eyes. “Me? Never. My mother would have beat me senseless, and my father would have done worse.”

  I smiled. “Just checking. Have a good day, Mr. Morales.”

  “I’m going to try, sir.”

  He rolled up his window and drove off.

  Sampson said, “You believe him?”

  I thought about the flatness and dullness of his eyes.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  Chapter

  83

  Sampson dropped me off at home around five thirty. I was beat, and other than my suspicions concerning Enrique Morales, we had nothing to show for the night’s work.

  K. K. Rawlins had to have misinterpreted the fragments of the Tor message he’d recovered from the iPad belonging to the Dead Hours killer’s most recent victim. Maybe he had the date, time, or location wrong.

  Who knew? I was so tired, I was almost past caring when I slipped a key in the lock and opened the front door.

  The hallway and stairs were dark. I hung up my jacket, kicked off my shoes, and was about to start up the stairs when I heard a ding from the kitchen.

  Five thirty was early even by Nana Mama’s standards, so I padded down the hall and into the kitchen we’d added to the house a few years ago. I expected to find my grandmother hard at work, mixing blueberries into pancake batter or cutting bread for French toast. Instead, I found Ali sitting at the table eating soft-boiled eggs with toast and juice. He saw me and searched my face.

  “Did you get him?” he asked.

  “That is none of your business, young man,” I said firmly. “Why are you up so early?”

  Ali swallowed. “To talk to you about the Dead Hours investigation, about—”

  I was at the end of my rope. I slammed my hand so hard on the counter, he recoiled and looked at me like I was a wild thing, which was the reaction I was after.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing about the Dead Hours killer. At all. Do you understand, Ali?”

  He stared at me, then shook his head ever so slightly.

  “You don’t understand that you could have compromised the investigation?”

  “Not really, Dad,” Ali said in a thin voice. “I just wanted to show you something. Please, I think it could help you.”

  “With what?”

  “With the Dead Hours investigation,” he said. “I found this—”

  “Enough,” I said and turned on my heel. “I’m going to sleep, and when I get up, you and I are going to—”

  “Please, Dad!” Ali called out behind me.

  I ignored him until I reached the bottom of the stairs and realized I could hear him crying as he said, “Please listen to me, Dad. Please. I think I found him, and you won’t listen to me.”

  Hearing the pain in the voice of my youngest, I sighed and went back to the kitchen. He was still sobbing and wiping at tears.

  “What did you find?”

  Ali stared at me. “You really want to know?”

  “I do. Whatever it is.”

  He watched me a moment more before saying, “Not whatever. Whoever.” He reached for his iPad and began tapping on the screen. “I know you’re going to want to kill me, but I’ve been at two of the three most recent Dead Hours crime scenes.”

  My head felt ready to explode. “What?”

  “I’ll explain later,” he said. “And you won’t be mad. Well, maybe a little mad, but you shouldn’t be. Not after you see these.”

  He made a final tap on the screen and turned the iPad to show me two different pictures taken at the Bart Masters crime scene. They were crisp and clear and focused on an older, slightly hunched-over man with a full beard and shaggy silver hair. He held a cane and wore a tweed overcoat and matching snap-brim cap.

  “Now, I wasn’t at the Pelham scene, but the Washington Post was.”

  He clicked on a file and up came a picture of the scene beyond the yellow tape across the entrance to the national park. Perhaps twenty people were outside their cars looking at EMTs removing the bagged body of Henry Pelham.

  Ali isolated a piece of the crowd and blew it up. There, four or five cars back, stood a man with red hair and a goatee wearing a dark blue windbreaker and cat’s-eye sunglasses.

  “Okay?” I said.

  “Wait for it,” Ali said, and he called up a picture of the crowd gathered across the street from Tyler Elementary and the Dalton McCoy crime scene. Again, he isolated someone in the crowd and blew up the image. This man’s hair was dark and cut military tight. He wore mirror aviator sunglasses and a dark hoodie.

  “I’m not seeing it,” I said.

  “I do,” Ali said. “Do you know what a super-recognizer is?”

  “I didn’t know there was such a thing. You mean with artificial intelligence?”

  He looked annoyed. “No, Dad. There are people who are born with super-recognizing abilities. They did a whole thing on them on one of Nana Mama’s favorite shows, Sixty Minutes. We did the test and I got them all correct.”

  “Which makes you a super-recognizer?”

  He nodded, tapped the screen. “They are all the same person, Dad. Shoulders hunched forward. The hair color and cut changes. So do the beard and mustache. The clothes and sunglasses try to fool you, but the cheekbones and jawline are absolutely the same.”

  I could see what he was talking about, but it wasn’t enough to be definitive. At least not in my mind.

  Until Ali tapped on the picture of the older man at the Masters crime scene. He blew up the right side of his head.

  “Look at the ear,” he said, magnifying it more. “He’s got like half an earlobe sticking out from under the hair.”

  I squinted. It was true. I said, “But the photographs of the other men are from the wrong angle.”

  Ali nodded. Then he called up another photo he’d taken of the crowd at the McCoy crime scene. In it, the guy with the tight military haircut was almost broadside to the camera. I didn’t need him to blow the picture up to see the man had half an earlobe.

  I studied the pictures, seeing in my mind the silhouette of the driver of the blue Dodge Ram pickup that had gone past me and Sampson earlier in the morning. Was half his right earlobe missing?

  “You believe me, don’t you, Dad?” Ali said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “I believe you’ve got something,” I said. “But he seems awful old for a killer.”

  “And he limps,” Ali said. “But he gets around fine. I have video of him beyond the baseball fence at the McCoy scene.”

  “Good video?”

  He brightened. “Really good. You see him from every angle, Dad. He even takes off his hat. I’ll bet you could use full-on facial-recognition software on him. Figure out who he is and why he keeps showing up.”

  I smiled and gave him a hug. “We just might try that once I’ve had some sleep.”

  Chapter

  84

  Bree kissed Alex on the cheek and headed to the bedroom door. “So, if Ali is right, is he still grounded until graduation?”

  “Sophomore year,” Alex grumbled. “Can you turn out the lights?”

  Bree clicked them off and shut the door softly behind her, then checked her watch and swore softly. She ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, which was empty. She poured herself a go-cup of coffee, grabbed two of Nana Mama’s muffins, and got her rain jacket out of the closet.

  She’d no sooner gotten out on the porch and zipped her jacket against the dreary day than a dark sedan pulled up. The window rolled down, revealing Fairfax County police detective Marcia Creighton.

  “Taxi’s here,” Detective Creighton called.

  Bree went down the steps to the street and the car. She got in and laughed. “These new squad cars all smell the same, don’t they?”

  “Every one of them,” Creighton said. “I think it’s a mandatory spray.”

  “Did you check the Airbnb?”

  “Last night,” she said. “You were right.”

  “Thank God for bad housekeepers. Paxson?”

  “Paxson,” the detective investigating Iliana Meadows’s murder said. “There were a few people I did not get to speak with the other day—the three coaches, actually.”

  “What about the roommate?”

  “Kerrie Mountain. Nice kid. Very forthcoming, even after I went through their dorm room. Said she knew nothing about a sex tape or blackmail, but she did say Iliana had become irritable in the past two weeks. You said in your text that you had another theory?”

  “I said I suspect something,” Bree said, and explained.

  When she was finished, Creighton nodded, said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Neither did I, until last night.”

  Ninety minutes later, they exited the highway and got on Route 464, about four miles south of the Pennsylvania border, and soon after, they entered the quaint little town of Paxson, which was surrounded by wooded hills and farms.

  Paxson bustled with midmorning activity despite the fact that it was a misty Sunday. A steady stream of students moved between the town and the Paxson State campus.

  Creighton drove in the main entrance and found a spot in visitors’ parking. Bree and Creighton went to the administrative offices and had a talk with the bursar.

  It had begun to drizzle when they found Iliana Meadows’s roommate, Kerrie Mountain, studying in her dorm room. A short redhead with fair skin and freckles, Mountain was clearly devastated by Iliana’s death and seemed to hold nothing back as they questioned her.

  “I guess I knew she had money because she always had plenty to spend,” Mountain said near the end of their conversation. “But I didn’t know it was, like, that much.”

  Creighton said, “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Kids on campus are saying Iliana had millions because of some accident that killed her father.”

  Bree moved around the dorm room, saw a keyboard, a mouse, and a dark screen. “She connected these to her laptop?”

  Mountain nodded. “She said she liked to see things on bigger screens. Her laptop’s missing, right?”

  “It is,” Bree said, moving the keyboard. “And so is her phone.”

  “You think the person who killed her took them?”

  “Possible,” Creighton said, watching her closely.

  Bree turned the screen a little, noticed a small device in one of the USB ports. At first, she thought it was a thumb drive, but then she took a closer look. She turned the screen completely. “Do you know what this is?”

  Iliana’s roommate nodded. “It helps with Wi-Fi connections. Like an antenna. I’ve got one too.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  Mountain told them. “We got a discount. Two for one. And the Wi-Fi seems better. Why?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Bree said. “Don’t touch them and don’t talk to anyone about them until we return.”

  “No,” she said. “I won’t. I mean, I really don’t know what’s going on.”

  With a slight scowl, Detective Creighton crossed her arms and said, “Neither do I.”

  Chapter

  85

  As Creighton and Bree hustled through the light rain to the Paxson field house, Bree explained the devices and their ramifications.

  “Jesus,” Creighton said when Bree was done. “I never would have caught that.”

  “Alex showed me one once,” she said. “Someone tried to use one on him.”

  “Okay, how do we handle it?” Creighton asked. “Strategically?”

  “You’re the one with jurisdiction.”

  “And you’re a former big-city chief of detectives with way more experience.”

  “Make the questions sound routine at first, like follow-ups to some loose threads. Get them to answer before you tie them in knots.”

  The detective smiled. “I like that.”

  “Your call, but I’m willing to bluff on this one if we have to.”

  “Let’s see how things go,” Creighton said as they climbed the steps to the field house where the heads of the various athletic departments had offices.

  “You’ve been here before,” Bree said.

  “Last week, but the coaches I wanted to talk with were all at another meet,” Detective Creighton said, opening a door to the main office. “The staff are all here today, even though it’s Sunday, because there’s a big meet tomorrow.”

  Behind the front desk, an attractive young woman wearing a Paxson State Athletics hoodie was giggling at something said by a tall man wearing running shorts and a rain jacket.

  Bree recognized him even before he’d twisted his head to see who’d come in. When he did, he sobered.

  “Coach Leclerc,” Creighton said. “One of the people we wanted to see.”

  “Didn’t know you were coming by, Detective.”

  “A whim,” Creighton replied. “We were in the area, and I had a few quick follow-up questions, if you don’t mind.”

  Leclerc glanced at his watch, cleared his throat, said, “We’re having a special speed practice right now, but sure, we can go to my office.”

  “And Coach Neely?” Bree said.

  “Already outside with her team,” he said, moving down a hallway.

  “Let’s go out there,” Creighton said.

  “It’s raining.”

  “We won’t melt,” Bree said.

  Leclerc shrugged and then took two sharp turns and pushed through a fire exit door. That put them in a tunnel that they followed to the small football stadium and track. Women’s cross-country coach Marie Neely stood at the near side of the track looking at a stopwatch while Tina Dawson and several other girls came gasping across the finish line.

  “Better,” Neely said.

  Breathing hard, Tina grimaced and said, “I don’t know why I’m doing two-hundreds. I’m a distance runner, Marie.”

  “You qualified for regionals with that run at George Mason,” Neely said crisply. “But if you want to compete at nationals, you will need a hard-sprint finish in you.”

  Tina finally noticed Detective Creighton, Bree, and Coach Leclerc. She wiped a strand of wet hair from her eyes. “Hello?”

  Coach Neely turned and peered at them from under the hood of her rain jacket.

  “They have some questions,” Leclerc said.

  “I’m running a practice,” Neely said. “Big meet tomorrow.”

  “We’ll ask between timings,” Creighton said.

  Neely looked at Leclerc, then sighed. “As you wish. Tina, you’ve got two more. Jog back. Stay warm.”

  “We’d kind of like Tina to stay,” Bree said.

  Tina appeared relieved. “I’d like to stay too.”

  Irritated, Neely said, “Put sweats on, Tina. Okay, ask away.”

  The Fairfax County detective said, “One of the things that Jannie Cross told us was that Iliana had confided in her that she wanted to talk with Bree because she was being blackmailed over a sex tape.”