Chapter 53
“THIS ISN’T A CONSULT,” I told Sampson. “It’s a favor. To you, personally, John.”
Sampson raised his eyebrows knowingly. “In other words, you promised Nana and the kids no more fieldwork.”
I waved him off. “No, I didn’t promise anybody anything. Just drive and try not to hit anyone on the way. At least no one that we like.”
We were in McLean, Virginia, to interview Lisa Brandt, who had left her Georgetown apartment to go stay with a friend in the country. I had her case file on my lap, along with three others, women who had been raped but wouldn’t say anything to help the investigation and possibly stop the rapist. The serial rapist.
This was my first chance to look the papers over, but it hadn’t taken me long to agree with the originating detective’s conclusion. These attacks were all committed by one man, and the perp was definitely a psycho. The known survivors were of a type: white women in their twenties or early thirties, single, living alone in the Georgetown area. Each of them was a successful professional of some kind ? a lawyer, an account executive. Lisa Brandt was an architect. These were all smart, ambitious women.
And not one of them was willing to say a word against or about the man who had attacked her.
Our perp was clearly a discerning and self-controlled animal who knew how to put the fear of God into his victims and then make it stick. And not just once, but four times. Or maybe more than four. Because chances were very good he had other victims, women too afraid to even report they had been attacked.
“Here we are,” Sampson said. “This is where Lisa Brandt is hiding herself.”