Coach Leclerc said firmly, “I still can’t believe that Steve Hawley was—”

  “He admitted to it,” Creighton said, cutting him off. “He was being blackmailed as well. He’s cooperating.”

  Leclerc stepped back. “I’m shocked.”

  “I am too,” Coach Neely said. “But what does this have to do with us?”

  Chapter

  86

  Detective Creighton looked from the women’s cross-country coach to the men’s track coach to Tina Dawson.

  “What was Iliana studying?” she asked. “Her major, I mean?”

  Tina frowned. “I don’t think she declared a major yet.”

  Coach Neely said, “Students have until the spring of their sophomore year to declare their major.”

  Bree said, “But you decided before classes even started, right, Tina?”

  She nodded. “Computer science. I want a job eventually.”

  “Smart move,” Bree said. “Closest thing to a sure bet these days. Growing field. Interesting work. A steady, reliable paycheck. Am I right?”

  “Something wrong with that?”

  “Nothing is wrong with that,” Creighton said. “Especially for someone with your background.”

  Coach Leclerc said, “What the hell does that mean?”

  Bree said, “Someone on scholarship. Academic and athletic.”

  “I’m proud of those scholarships,” Tina said defensively.

  “You should be. You needed them, and you got them.”

  “That’s right, I did.”

  Creighton said, “Because you came from poverty in West Virginia and a broken home, and scholarships were your only way out.”

  “Yeah, we have nothing,” Tina said in a soft snarl. “But my home isn’t broken.”

  “Weakened, then. Your father died when you were ten. Mine accident, right?”

  “Tunnel collapse.”

  “The mining company declared bankruptcy soon afterward, so you and your mother got very little.”

  “Enough for a year,” she said. “Like I said, nothing. But we made do.”

  Bree said, “And you made do, and now you’re here. But it must have stuck in your craw when you found out that Iliana Meadows’s father also died in an industrial accident but she got millions.”

  Tina stared at her in bewilderment. “I did not know that.”

  “I think you did. No, I believe you did,” Bree went on. “And it just ate you up inside. You barely scraping by, and Iliana able to rent a two-bedroom Airbnb because she didn’t like the dump of a hotel the team was staying in.”

  Tina shook her head. “I don’t know where you think you’re going with this. But I have no idea how much money she had, nor do I care.”

  Creighton laughed a little. “Oh, you care. You care a lot, Tina.”

  Coach Neely said, “I think you need to stop whatever this is until Tina has talked with a lawyer.”

  “I agree,” Coach Leclerc said.

  Tina looked over at them in disgust. “I don’t need a lawyer. All they do is take your money and run. I repeat: I had no idea she had money and I do not care.”

  Bree sighed. “The first week of school, you sold Kerrie Mountain and Iliana Meadows and I’m betting many more a device designed to improve their Wi-Fi.”

  For the first time, Bree saw Tina’s eyes twitch with desperation. “They work,” Tina said. “The Wi-Fi sucks in the dorms and they boost reception. I got them online from a wholesaler. I saw a need and I met it and made a little money. Again, what is wrong with that?”

  Bree smiled at her. “What’s wrong is that those devices are more than boosters—if they are even boosters at all. At the very least, they are keystroke loggers.”

  Tina’s nostrils flared. Creighton said, “They record everything someone using the computer types in and calls up. You knew all about Iliana’s money. And you knew about something else.”

  Bree said, “You found e-mails and texts from Iliana to her former coach. He told her he’d made a sex tape of the two of them. A perfect wedge for someone wanting to pry some of that money out of Iliana’s hands, money that would be at least a little payback, some balance when it came to her father’s and family’s worth.”

  Creighton said, “And it worked. Using an encrypted messaging system, you told them you had the tape and demanded fifty thousand dollars from each of them payable in cryptocurrency. Iliana paid. Her old coach mortgaged his house to pay.”

  Tina just stood there looking evenly at them all, steely. “No. Never.”

  Bree said, “But then Iliana balked when you asked for another hundred thousand dollars. And then there you were at her Airbnb, her supposed friend, listening to her problems, telling her before she went out on her run that she should pay, that the tape coming out would destroy her reputation.”

  Tina shook her head in disgust. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. And remember, I got to the Airbnb after you and Jannie did.”

  “Because you’d already been there and gone,” Creighton said. “We found blood evidence in the shower drain in the second bedroom.”

  Bree said, “Probably came off your skin and clothes when you climbed in there. The blood spatter made by the sharp rock you hit her with got all over you and landed in a trap in the drain. Along with your DNA.”

  Tina’s jaw trembled. Suddenly, she spun around and bolted.

  Creighton and Bree took off after her, chasing her up the track. Tina might not have been a sprinter, but she quickly opened up a gap.

  Bree was ahead of Creighton but still fifty yards from Tina when she veered off the track and vaulted over the low chain-link fence that surrounded the field.

  “There’s a road below there!” Creighton gasped.

  Bree sped up, reached the fence, looked down a steep embankment, and saw Tina was slipping and sliding near the bottom. She heard the grinding roar of a semitruck as it rounded a close corner. “Tina!” Bree yelled. “Don’t!”

  But Tina had already seen the Mack truck, and in the second that followed, Tina Dawson, gifted athlete, envious blackmailer, and cold-blooded murderer, stepped off the embankment and into the road and was hit before the driver could even touch the brakes.

  Chapter

  87

  Bree came home late that evening, traumatized and depressed after seeing Tina Dawson commit suicide by semitruck rather than face arrest and prison for Iliana Meadows’s murder. Jannie was equally shaken when Bree called to tell her the person and reasons behind her friend’s death.

  “That’s so sad,” Jannie said after hearing of Tina’s end.

  “It’s crazy what people will do for love and money.”

  When she hung up, Bree sat across the kitchen table from me, looked at her beer, and said, “I already feel punch-drunk.”

  “I felt the same way when I woke up today.”

  “Get anything done since?”

  “A little. I sent Ali’s photos and the video to Keith Karl Rawlins. He’s going to run biometrics on the old guy with the weird earlobe.”

  “So wait and see.”

  “Story of a detective’s life sometimes.” Indeed, I’d found that during big investigations, the days were long and grinding, and the results seemed to seep in. But every once in a while, especially when we were getting close, a sudden torrent of information would flood in and change the entire course of the case.

  Which is what happened the next morning when K. K. Rawlins called me as Sampson was driving us to work in his Jeep Grand Cherokee.

  “Got him,” Rawlins said.

  “You’re kidding me,” I said, putting the phone on speaker.

  “I don’t kid. Well, rarely. It’s definitely him. Got hits out of Interpol, Scotland Yard, and IAFIS.”

  “Interpol?” Sampson said.

  “The earlobe thing gave him away. He’s a British national. Former Special Air Service commando and armorist. Interpol and FBI files on him say he appears to have become a contract hit man after leaving the armed forces, but he’s never been nailed for it.”

  “No sheet on him?” I asked.

  “No, there’s a sheet. He just did five years in federal prison in Colorado. He was suspected in the killing of a top bank executive in Denver with ties to the old Alejandro cartel. But they were able to convict him only on illegal weapons charges.

  “He was evidently caught building and in possession of automatic ghost guns. The judge gave him ten years, but some legal nonprofit I’ve never heard of got him released for medical reasons last February.”

  I was scribbling in my notebook as fast as I could. “Name?”

  “The old guy or the legal group?”

  “Both,” Sampson said.

  “Padraig ‘Paddy’ Filson. And the legal group is the Exoneration Project.”

  “Never heard of either of them,” I said. “But his release puts Filson on the streets a month before the Dead Hours murders began.”

  Sampson said, “Any idea where Filson is now?”

  “No,” Rawlins said. “But he’s got a federal parole officer.”

  “Got a number?”

  “And a name,” he said, and gave them to me.

  John said, “Great work, KK. Any word on the DNA from the Henry Pelham site? The vomit with the blood clots? I know there’s a backlog.”

  “Huge logjams upstairs, but now that we have a name to check, I’ll go up and get it to the front of the line ASAP. Promise.”

  As soon as we ended the call, I punched in the number for Filson’s federal parole officer. Jeannie Michaels answered on the second ring.

  I identified myself and inquired about Padraig Filson.

  “Paddy?” Michaels said. “What’s he on the edge of now?”

  “Edge of?”

  “On the edge of something bad but not over the line, so he can’t be convicted of anything. It’s the story of his criminal career.”

  “Repeat offender?”

  “Did time in Scotland and France before his daughter moved here to Denver and he followed. Didn’t take long before a shady banker was executed, and ATF caught Paddy building untraceable machine guns. So, again, what’s he on the edge of now?”

  I told her about the Dead Hours murders.

  “Could be him,” she said after a pause. “I mean, the whole thing with the sheet and shooting out the eyes seems wildly out of character, but it’s possible.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “Two weeks ago, he was in Ohio,” the parole officer said. “But at the moment, no, I don’t know. He’s been moving around. Working at various Amazon warehouses.”

  Sampson said, “He got released for medical reasons?”

  “Paddy’s terminal,” Michaels said. “Slow-moving cancer with no cure. Maybe a year to live now.”

  “Can you do us a favor and ping him?” I said. “Get on the phone with him long enough to track his location?”

  “Well, we weren’t scheduled for a check-in until the day after tomorrow, but I’ll give him a try. No promises. He uses one of those damn phones with the prepaid cards and keeps it off most of the time.”

  We’d no sooner gotten to Metro PD headquarters than the federal parole officer called us back.

  “You’re lucky I’ve got U.S. marshals across the hall,” she said. “They do this kind of phone tracking of fugitives all the time. Anyway, they set it up before I called Paddy, and they traced his location. He told me he’s in Omaha, but they have him in Springfield, Virginia. Outside an Amazon warehouse.”

  Chapter

  88

  By the time we reached the Amazon fulfillment center in Springfield, Virginia, about five miles southeast of downtown Washington, DC, Paddy Filson had finished his overnight shift and left.

  The warehouse supervisor said he had no permanent address for Mr. Filson. He believed that Filson, like a lot of people who worked at the fulfillment center, lived in some kind of mobile home or trailer.

  “Try the Burke Lake campground or Pohick Bay,” he said. “They’re the closest.”

  We got back in the car, pulled up a Google map of the area, and saw Burke Lake to our west less than three miles and Pohick Bay farther to our southeast.

  “Burke first?” I said.

  Sampson shook his head. “My gut says he’s at Pohick. Look how close that campground is to Accokeek and that national park where they found Henry Pelham.”

  “Other side of the river,” I said. “He has to drive all the way north to the bridge and then come back down.”

  “It’s still close,” Sampson said. “But we’ll check Burke Lake first.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we were waved through the gate. The manager said he had only ten campers this time of year, what with the weather getting colder. None of the campers matched the photograph we showed him of Filson.

  “He’s at Pohick,” Sampson said when we left. “I’m feeling it.”

  It took us more than half an hour to get there. In the light, steady rain, autumn leaves were falling on the narrow route east off the interstate.

  When we reached Pohick Bay Regional Park and the entrance to the campground, we found the guard shack empty but the gate open. A sign there said WINTER FEES COLLECTED ONCE A WEEK.

  An older woman walking a dachshund appeared. We drove up to her. She acted suspicious until Sampson showed her his badge, and I showed her a picture of Filson.

  “Gray, blue, and white Forest River Arctic Wolf fifth wheel,” she replied. “Dark blue Dodge Ram pickup. He’s been here long as I have. Works at Amazon and talks to no one. What’s he done?”

  “We just want to ask him a few questions about Amazon.”

  She laughed. “I can tell you all about Amazon.”

  “We’ll find you afterward,” I said.

  “One thing you should know before you go down there—he’s got guns. Weird ones.”

  “What do you mean, weird?”

  “Like I think he builds them. In the trailer.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been a big help.”

  As we pulled away from her, both Sampson and I were thinking about the recent firefight we’d survived outside Sami Abdallah’s home.

  John said, “Backup?”

  “Let’s drive by,” I said. “See what we see and then decide.”

  The campsite was heavily wooded and spotless but for the leaves falling on the pavement. We rolled slowly down the slick access lane.

  There was some kind of rig—motor home or travel trailer—parked in almost every site, including the one on the far right, closest to the bay itself, a new fifth-wheel insulated trailer beside a midnight-blue three-quarter-ton Dodge that faced the lane.

  “Same truck that went past us the other night,” I said, then saw that the pickup’s rear cap window was up and the tailgate down. I caught movement. “He’s in the back of the truck. I’m going.”

  As Sampson started to take the curve in the lane back to the entrance of the campground, I eased open the door of his Jeep Grand Cherokee. He tapped the brakes. I stepped out and walked with the Jeep long enough to close the door softly.

  Sampson rolled on around the loop and out of sight. The wet leaves and the rain dripping from the trees covered the sound of my footfalls as I drew my weapon and went around the back of the trailer, sticking to the taller dead grass to keep silent.

  Gun up, I stepped out sideways from behind the back of the trailer and saw Filson facing away from me on his hands and knees in the back of his truck, rearranging plastic bins and crates. He was wearing a different coat than he’d been wearing in Ali’s pictures, a shorter one that revealed a pistol in a holster on his right hip.

  For a second, I questioned my decision not to wait for backup. But two steps later, I was right behind him and to his left, just off the edge of the tailgate.

  Holding the gun double-fisted, I aimed at the back of his now shaven head, the point where it met his spine. An instantaneous death shot.

  Calmly, softly, I said, “Police, Mr. Filson. If you go for that gun, I will blow your head off. I cannot miss from this distance.”

  The older man tensed at the first words out of my mouth, and I thought from the way his right shoulder twitched that he wanted desperately to go for his gun. But then his back just kind of sagged.

  “That’s it, then,” he said in a heavy brogue. “What would you have me do?”

  “Lie down in the truck, facedown, fingers laced behind your head.”

  Filson complied just as Sampson ran up, his service weapon drawn.

  “He’s armed,” I said. “Right hip. We’ll pull him out by his feet.”

  With each of us aiming a gun at him with one hand, we dragged him back far enough to strip the pistol from its holster.

  “Any other weapons?” I asked.

  “Not on me,” Filson said, still facedown with his hands behind his shaved head.

  “Roll over and get out,” Sampson said.

  He rolled over awkwardly, then scooched out, looking much older than his sixty years. When he slid off the tailgate, John holstered his weapon, spun Filson around, and put zip cuffs on him.

  “You’re under arrest for the Dead Hours killings,” Sampson said.

  Before he could read the man his rights, Filson smiled oddly and said, “Well, then, you’ve come to the right place, haven’t you?”

  Chapter

  89

  It began to rain hard. We put Filson in the back of Sampson’s car and alerted the FBI to bring criminalists to the campground.

  After two local Fairfax County Sheriff’s deputies arrived to seal off the scene, the rain let up a bit. John and I entered the trailer, put on gloves, and began to search.

  It didn’t take much time to find the long coat he’d been wearing in Ali’s first pictures and then the windbreaker from the Post pictures. He had a drawer full of cheap sunglasses and a stack of white sheets on one of the bunks. Beneath the sink we discovered gunsmithing equipment, including a miniature lathe and drill press.