Return of the Spider, page 13
part #33 of Alex Cross Series
Soneji opened the van door and climbed in. The drivers might have gotten a solid look at him, but they could not possibly identify him.
CHAPTER 44
EARLY ON SATURDAY, SAMPSON and I had filed reports on our surveillance of Valentine Rodolpho. Monday was supposed to be our day off, but Chief Pittman’s personal assistant called us both into work early.
When we got to his office, we found Detectives Edgar Kurtz and Corina Diehl already there, both looking hungover and pissed to be here on what was supposed to be their day off too. Also there were Lieutenant Stacey Lindahl, commander of the narcotics unit, and undercover officer Nancy Donovan, who glared at us like we were traitors.
“Lieutenant Lindahl and I have read your reports on Rodolpho,” Pittman said to me and John. “You indicate, Detective Sampson, Detective Cross, that you observed Officer Donovan hug and kiss Valentine Rodolpho.”
We nodded, but I felt bad about the decision to report the undercover officer. I felt worse after Donovan blasted us.
“Try ‘You observed her hugged and kissed by Rodolpho,’” she said angrily. “Try ‘She made only the slightest of hugs and no reciprocity to his kiss.’”
Sampson held up his hands. “We didn’t expect you to be there, and suddenly you were in his arms and then skipping away. What did you want us to do, not report it?”
She shouted, “You could have told me you were putting Rodolpho under surveillance!”
“Calm down, Officer,” Lieutenant Lindahl said. “Don’t make this worse.”
I held up my hands too. “You are a difficult person to get in touch with, Officer Donovan, but you’re right, we should have told you.”
“If you’re following him without my knowledge, you are compromising my safety and my ability to work! Why were you following him, anyway?”
“Because you mentioned in one of your recent reports that Rodolpho is the weakest link.”
She calmed down. “I think he is. I also think there’s no way he’s going to expose his weaknesses to you or almost anyone else. Even with his leg, he’s too proud for that.”
Detective Diehl said, “But you think he’ll expose his weaknesses to you?”
“I’ll have to walk a thin line, but yes, I believe there’s a good chance that I can get him to confide in me. He’s at that playful, flirting stage at the moment.”
Chief Pittman frowned. “I don’t want it going farther than that stage on your part.”
Lieutenant Lindahl nodded. “If it does, you might as well come in from the cold, Nancy, because the entire case will be compromised.”
Donovan sobered and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Of course.”
I said, “What do you know about that minor fortress out in Davidsonville?”
“What?” Pittman said, puzzled. “What fortress?”
Donovan, Diehl, and Kurtz all looked clueless as well.
Sampson raised an eyebrow. “Did you read our report to the end or stop where Officer Donovan made her appearance?”
“I stopped,” Pittman admitted. “Fill us in.”
We described following Rodolpho to the driveway of P and E Imports and Exports outside Davidsonville and then the facility itself. Pittman, Lindahl, Kurtz, and Diehl seemed unimpressed until we told them about the fence, the razor wire, the big steel structure, and the guards with AR-15s.
Donovan said, “I heard something about that place.”
Lieutenant Lindahl said, “What have you heard?”
“Just that they call it the warehouse and they have meetings there.”
Kurtz said, “Who owns the company?”
Sampson said, “Incorporated in Delaware by Patrice Prince, who is listed as president. He used a rent-a-lawyer in Wilmington as counsel. Purpose of the company is import/export between the U.S. and Haiti.”
“Which is what he told us at the crab shack,” I added.
Diehl said, “What’s so important in his import/export business that it requires an East Jesus location, a security fence, dogs, and armed men?”
Sampson said, “We asked roughly the same question in our report.”
Kurtz scowled. “But what has this got to do with the deaths of those two kids? Isn’t that the case you’re supposed to be working on?”
I said, “We believe Tony Miller and Shay Mansion might have crossed someone in LMC Fifty-One and been killed for it. The warehouse seemed like an important find.”
Officer Donovan said, “And two killings are not beyond either Prince or Rodolpho.”
Pittman crossed his arms and sat back. “Well, hearsay and beliefs don’t get us search warrants on a place like this warehouse. We’re going to need more. Dismissed.”
He turned away from us, so we got up and left the room.
Kurtz looked at Diehl, murmured, “He does that kind of thing a lot.”
“He’s worse on the phone,” Sampson said.
“Got a personality disorder if you ask me,” Lieutenant Lindahl said.
“Low social skills, anyway,” I said.
CHAPTER 45
WE FOLLOWED OFFICER DONOVAN to the squad room, where we apologized again.
“Be safe,” Sampson said. “And keep an eye on that line you’re walking.”
“I’ll do that,” Donovan said. She smiled at us wanly and left.
“Fine-looking woman,” Sampson said when she was gone.
“Brave too,” I said. “Nerves of steel.”
Diehl and Kurtz went to their desks, grabbed their things, and left to spend the rest of the day with their families.
We were getting ready to leave ourselves when something on the muted television in the squad room caught my eye. Under the words BREAKING NEWS was a photo of a pretty, older blond woman. The chyron below read LOCAL REAL ESTATE AGENT STRANGLED. POLICE SEEK PUBLIC’S HELP.
Sampson left to use the men’s room. I unmuted the TV. The screen jumped to a young reporter standing near a strip of yellow police tape with officers behind him going to and from a house on a tree-lined street.
“Fairfax County detectives are telling us that Brenda Miles, a longtime real estate agent in Northern Virginia, was found strangled to death late yesterday by a friend who’d become concerned when she missed a dinner date Saturday evening and didn’t answer her door on Sunday.
“Miles, fifty-two, had held an open house here in Groveton shortly before she was murdered. Witnesses reported seeing a tall, slightly stooped man wearing a green coverall, running shoes, and a ball cap and carrying a toolbox leaving the scene.
“He drove away in an older white panel van with no markings on it. Detectives are asking anyone who may have seen the suspect or the white panel van in the Groveton area on Saturday night to call the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office.”
I stared at the screen, then muted it when the broadcast turned to other news. Sampson came back and said, “Ready?”
“Give me five minutes,” I said, and called the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office.
Dispatch patched me through to Detective Deb Angelis, the lead detective on the case, who was still on the scene.
“Angelis,” she said, sounding tired.
I identified myself and said, “I know you’re swamped, Detective, but did your witnesses get the license plate on the white van?”
“No. The light above the rear plate was conveniently out.”
“Not even the state?”
There was a pause before she said, “We’re withholding that for the moment.”
“Let me take a wild guess. Pennsylvania?”
After another pause, Angelis said, “How did you know that?”
I pumped my fist. “We had a van like that around the area where Conrad Talbot, the lacrosse player from Alexandria, was shot. We have footage of it.”
“That I would like to see, Detective Cross. Thank you.”
“Would you mind if my partner and I came and looked at the scene? We’ll share whatever we’ve got.”
“Sure,” she said. “Body’s long gone, but we’ll be here a few more hours.”
I hung up, looked at Sampson. “The white van is in play. We better tell Pittman.”
The chief groaned when we told him. “C’mon, there have to be a thousand panel vans like that in the greater metro area.”
“But not near murder scenes with broken lights over Pennsylvania plates,” I said.
The chief began to knead his temples. “So he’s no longer impersonating Berkowitz, is that what you’re telling me? After I went out on a limb to support your theory?”
I held up my hands. “I’m just following a common denominator, a beat-up white van with a faulty light above Pennsylvania plates. Shouldn’t we at least go and take a look, sir?”
The chief chewed on that a moment, then flicked his hand at us. “Go. But you’re not on department time. You’re on your own.”
CHAPTER 46
FAIRFAX COUNTY SHERIFF’S DETECTIVE Deb Angelis was in her forties, a little locomotive of a woman with tawny hair and a way of chopping at the air when she got worked up about something.
“I can give you twenty minutes, then I have to leave,” Detective Angelis said as we stood on the porch outside the crime scene putting on hairnets, latex gloves, and booties.
“We appreciate it,” Sampson said.
“Can you tell us what’s solid so far?” I asked.
“A couple from Chevy Chase were the last people to see Brenda Miles alive. They said they saw a workman on his way in as they left. A plumber, they thought,” Angelis said. She gestured down the street. “After the murder, two neighbors who were driving by reported seeing a man carrying a toolbox and wearing a green coverall and booties like these cross the street and go to a white panel van.”
A woman who’d been out walking her dog said she saw the van pull out fast.
“She said the rear plate wasn’t illuminated, but there was enough daylight left and she was close enough to see that the plates were gold and blue, like Pennsylvania plates.”
“She didn’t see any numbers at all?”
“She’s seventy-seven. We’re lucky she caught the colors. No one else got a good look at either his face or the plates.”
Sampson asked, “What about the headlights on the van? Was one missing?”
“No one mentioned that.”
That didn’t help us, but it didn’t rule out the van either. He could have fixed it.
We went inside. Angelis showed us the chalk outline where Brenda Miles had been found. A table and lamp were turned over. The floor runner had been kicked aside. Faux pearls from a broken necklace lay where they’d fallen. A crime scene photographer documented their locations.
Sampson said, “She fought him.”
The detective nodded. “Her fingernails were broken and so was one of her heels. But he had to have surprised her to begin with. The medical examiner said he used a rope from behind, crushed her larynx.”
Angelis said the ME believed the body had been moved postmortem, after the rope was taken from her neck.
“Then she was turned prone, and her slacks and panties were pulled to her knees,” the detective said. “He sexually abused her with a wooden spoon that he left in her.”
Sampson said, “He leave anything on her?”
“Nothing obvious. But her clothes haven’t been processed yet.”
“No other sign of sexual contact?”
She shook her head. “From the timeline we’ve put together, he was in and out of here in ten, fifteen minutes. No more. The couple said he came up the walk at roughly five minutes to five. The older lady with the dog thought it was no later than ten after five when he squealed out of his parking spot. Pretty brazen.”
This was wildly different from the Talbot and Beltsville shootings. I tried to imagine the same suspect doing this. Aside from the white van, nothing seemed connected.
Detective Angelis looked at me. “I read about your theory that the shooter in those other cases was imitating Berkowitz. You’re a profiler, right?”
I nodded. “I wrote my PhD dissertation on serial killers and mass murderers.”
Sampson said, “It’s gonna be published. The man’s got insight.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say my white van is your white van, and this same guy is responsible for five attacks, four dead bodies. Tell me who we’re looking for here, aside from the physical descriptions we’ve got.”
I thought about it for a few moments. “With the Bulldog shootings, there was a sense of randomness, that maybe those were crimes of opportunity. He might have seen people drive out to Bear Island and gone there knowing he’d find targets. Same thing with the two hospital techs.
“But if this is the same white Ford Econoline van, then the killer is more than just an opportunist, and we’d have to rethink. Similarities to Berkowitz’s MO aside, if we assume it’s the same perp, we can note he always kills up close, first with the forty-four and now with the rope. This suggests that it’s satisfying to him to be in proximity to his victim. He gets his jollies from being right there.”
I theorized that this seemed like an escalation, that the killer had probably enjoyed strangling Brenda Miles more than he had the close-range shootings. It likely excited him, sent his adrenaline surging.
“You described him earlier as brazen, Detective,” I went on. “But unless he’s an out-and-out homicidal maniac, he’s a thinker and a thorough planner, and that’s what allows him to act so brazenly.”
She crossed her arms. “Explain.”
“Think about it. Whether or not our guy personally knew Brenda Miles, he clearly knew how real estate open houses worked. The choice to come in at the last minute, dressed as a workman, carrying the toolbox? He had reason to believe that approach would allow him to get close to the victim.”
“At least get him in the door,” Sampson agreed. “But how’d he know she’d be solo?”
“No clue. But, and I’m speculating here, he could have just taken a chance that she’d be alone. Or he could have scouted the place, watched her earlier in the day.”
Angelis asked, “What does he get out of this?”
“Aside from the rush? He’s living out his fantasies, certainly. Maybe he became fixated on the Son of Sam murders and decided to copy them. And then he wanted a more intimate experience and picked up the rope.”
“Assuming it is the same van and the same driver,” Sampson said, “why did he leave the scene so quickly when there was still some daylight? Do you think he wanted to be seen?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he is completely unstable and does not care,” I said.
Angelis shook her head. “This guy cared. Sounds like he was intentionally hiding his face. Witnesses said he was carrying the toolbox up on his right shoulder and holding his left arm and hand across the other side, like he was shielding himself from the headlight glare. Totally blocked anyone’s view of his face.”
Sampson said, “So maybe he wanted to be partially seen leaving the house, crossing the street to the van, and driving away fast. What’s the motivation for that?”
Sampson was looking at me. I threw up my hands. “Even with my doctorate in the psychology of criminal minds, John, I have no good answer for that.”
CHAPTER 47
WITHIN MINUTES OF MEETING Charles Pendleton Little, Gary Soneji pegged him as one of those scrubbed, preening, and entitled guys he used to see walking around Princeton when he was growing up, young men of practiced cheer and false camaraderie, the sort who threw around references to their pedigrees, education, and wealth as proof of their innate superiority.
“My ancestors were among the first Jamestown colonists,” the headmaster of the Washington Day School told Soneji, settling into a leather chair behind a neatly organized desk in his office. “Six generations of my family have attended William and Mary, my alma mater. I’m blessed to have that kind of tradition and history behind me, despite not following my father or brother into the family banking business. I believe, however, that my background has given me a unique perspective on the value of constancy, rigor, and growth, all of which are at the heart of the Washington Day School experience and tradition.”
Soneji had sailed through an initial interview with a vice principal, reveling in openly using his Gary Soneji pseudonym for the first time while honing a somewhat nerdy but affable persona, like Peter O’Toole’s beloved Mr. Chips from the old film.
Wearing the toupee with the bald spot, the facial prosthetics, the green contact lenses, and the English-schoolboy glasses—a look that aged him by at least ten years—Soneji brightened. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Little. And this school is remarkable. I would be thrilled to be a part of the faculty here,” he said. After purposely hesitating, he added, “Though it’s only fair for me to let you know that I’m also interviewing at other high-caliber schools in the area.”
Soneji saw the light of competition spark in Little’s eyes. Gotcha. He demurred politely when the headmaster pressed for more details, feigning embarrassment for even bringing up the specter of a counteroffer.
A trim man in his fifties with a full head of silver hair slicked back, Little reminded Soneji of one of those bronzed Ralph Lauren male models of a certain age, instantly at home on a golf course or on a tennis court or in Bimini, the kind of guy who breezes through life with nary a whisper of effort. He was unused to being denied once he decided to acquire something.
After some persuasive back-and-forth—in which Soneji manipulated the headmaster into increasing his pay and decreasing his hours—they came to an agreement, with Soneji agreeing to decline his other (fictitious) offers.
