“Don’t worry, Sala, I’ve got protection on Savich and Sherlock.” He heard what sounded like a forkful of potato salad going into Maitland’s mouth, then Sala hung up, and turned to see Ty with her head cocked to one side. She’d been listening. She said, “Octavia Ryan kept Nesser from going to trial, got the judge to rule he was incompetent, so he was sent to Central State Hospital in Virginia. He was so young, only early twenties when he was sent to Central, and now he’s only twenty-three. From what I’ve read, he was so infatuated with Lissy Smiley he’d do anything for her. And both Lissy and her mother were crazy as loons. It explains why he went crazy himself when Lissy died, why he’s out to avenge her now. Do you know more about Victor or Lissy’s family?”
Sala slipped his cell back into his pocket. “I remember Victor moved in with his aunt, his mother’s sister, Jennifer Smiley, when he was sixteen. When Lissy turned thirteen, she seduced him. From all accounts she was the love of Victor’s life. Savich believes she felt the same way. Only, well, she was crazy, so who knows? I guess you know, too, Victor was the driver for the Gang of Four, as they called themselves. Mother, daughter Lissy, and two other guys whose names I don’t remember. When they hit a bank in Georgetown, Savich happened to be there. Lissy recognized him from a news show. She was ready to kill him, but he kicked her so hard in her belly that she had to have surgery on her duodenum. Victor managed to sneak her out of the hospital, and they ran, all the way back to where Victor had an apartment in Winnett, North Carolina. He tried to blow them up, took another agent captive. It was pretty hairy, lives on the line, as you can imagine, and in the end, Savich was forced to kill her. I heard he had help from a little girl, but when anyone asked him what little girl, he only shook his head. There was lots more, but those are the salients. Have I repeated everything you already knew?”
Ty laughed. “Only a little.”
“And he tried for Sean again yesterday at the book festival. Go figure that. We’ve got to find him fast before he tries for someone else.”
“What he did was pretty lamebrain, wasn’t it, with Sherlock there ready for him?” Ty took another sip of her water. “I can’t imagine the stress, your kid in danger right along with you and your husband. I wonder where Victor Nesser is hiding. I also wonder, if Lissy was indeed the love of his life, why he now has a new girlfriend.”
“And I’m wondering if he knows he’s been identified yet. You know it’ll come as a real shock when he finds out. I only hope it doesn’t send him on a rampage. Yeah, a new girlfriend. It doesn’t make much sense to me. Doesn’t to Savich, either.”
23
* * *
EAST CAPITOL STREET NE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SUNDAY MORNING
“Papa, Marty wants to know why I’m staying with Gran.”
Sean and Savich were sitting in his mother’s light, airy kitchen, Savich eating a late breakfast of spinach crepes, one of his mom’s specialties, and a side of scrambled eggs. Sean was chowing down on Cheerios with his requisite sliced banana on top. Sherlock had said she wasn’t hungry and excused herself to spend time with his mother in the living room, giving her an update on what had happened yesterday, well out of Sean’s hearing.
Savich swallowed a bite of eggs, laid his hand over his son’s small one. “It’s almost your grandmother’s birthday, Sean, and that’s what she wanted for her present—you.” Thankfully, Sean knew very well his grandmother’s birthday was next week.
Sean preened. “I’m a birthday present? That’s awesome.” Then he looked worried. “Don’t we have to give her something else, Papa? I spent all my money yesterday at the book festival.”
“Your present to her doesn’t involve buying her anything. All you have to do is keep your room straight, enjoy yourself, and not be a pain in the butt. Senator Monroe is taking you to your day camp again tomorrow, then Gabriella will pick you up and bring you back here. Your grandmother said if it was okay with Marty’s parents, she could come back here with you tomorrow after camp and have dinner. Senator Monroe will be here to take her home. What do you think?”
“Since I’m a present, do I have to wash the dishes?”
“It’s nearly her birthday, Sean, so it’d be nice for you and Marty to help. Clear the table, like you do at home.”
Sean said thoughtfully, “I’ll tell Marty it’s her job to clear the table.” He gave his father a beatific smile. “I’ll be the boss.”
It was close, but Savich didn’t roll his eyes. Sean telling Marty what to do? He’d like to see that. He said, “That’s something you can work out with Marty. Now, after breakfast, you and Gran and Senator Monroe are going to Christ Church.”
“I like going there. It’s old, Papa. Gran told me it was old even when she was young. She says we can snuggle in with all those people who sat where we’re sitting. She says lots of them were politicians, but what can you do?”
Savich laughed.
“Will you and Mama come with us?”
“Not this time. Your mother and I have some important work to attend to.”
Sean forgot about Christ Church. He gave his father a long, serious look. “Are you going to catch that man with the big chocolate bar in Mr. McGurk’s tent yesterday? Mama told a lady to grab me and Marty, and she ran after him.”
No hope for it. “That’s right. He wasn’t a nice man, Sean, and we need to find him.”
“And then I’ll get to come home?”
When had Sean gotten so grown-up? “Yes, then you’ll come home. So enjoy your stay here in Gran Disneyland. It won’t last much longer.”
* * *
It was quiet in the Hoover Building at noon on Sunday, the immense hallways echoing Sherlock’s and Savich’s footsteps. They walked into the CAU and saw Agent Lucy McKnight and two agents on loan from the Criminal Division, Dirk Platt and Jerry Barnes, manning the Victor Nesser hotline phones. The agents looked up when Savich said, “Thanks, guys, for coming in to handle the hotline.”
They answered with some good-natured bitching, but only because neither agent had gotten any worthwhile calls that merited follow-up, one a Nesser sighting in Anchorage, one from San Diego. Dirk said, “Amazing how fast this guy can move. One woman claimed she saw Victor driving over the Mexican border. When I told her it couldn’t be possible, she asked if I was single.”
“I’m the one with the luck,” Agent Lucy McKnight called out. “Wait’ll you hear what I’ve got.”
Dirk’s phone rang. “Lots of folks out and about on a Sunday,” he said, and picked it up. “Hotline, Agent Comptom. What do you have for me?”
When Lucy hung up from another call, she said, “Do you know my no-good husband is off fishing with his father and brothers at Cape Hatteras, like they do every single year? Okay, okay, so listen to this call I just got: a park ranger, Gina Clemmens, at Greenbrier State Park in Maryland is pretty certain Victor Nesser tried to get into the park late yesterday. Greenbrier is about sixty miles east of Willicott. She had to turn him away because there were no campsites left. I asked her if she was in the kiosk until she closed down the gate, and she said yes, of course. Then she backed up, said she did take a bathroom break, but it wasn’t more than ten minutes. When she came back, she was on the gate for another half hour, then closed it down.”
Savich said, “Still, Victor could have driven in while she was on break and parked out of sight, maybe away from the parking lot, taken his camping equipment into the woods for the night, and left this morning.”
“Exactly. Ranger Clemmens said she saw some camping equipment in the backseat of the car. A Kia, she said, dark green, with a Virginia license plate she didn’t write down, since she’d turned him away.”
Sherlock said, “Did the ranger see a woman in the car?”
“I asked her, but she said she didn’t notice anyone else. But she guesses there could have been someone hunched down in the backseat with all the camping gear.”
Lucy gave them a fat smile. “But I haven’t finished. Two minutes before you guys walked in, I got a call from a Mr. Norm Chitter, of Norm’s Fish and Bait in Bowman, Maryland, right outside Greenbrier State Park. Victor was in his store to buy some junk food, saw himself on the TV, ‘turned paler than a week-old trout’—his words—and ran. Dropped a box of Milk Duds on his mad dash out of the store.”
Sherlock heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness he didn’t shoot Mr. Chitter.”
“—or his wife, who saw him, too, came into the store from the back room as Victor was running out the front door.”