Page 36 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“Hi, Jannie.”

“Hi, Bree. Is this an okay time?”

Bree heard worry in her stepdaughter’s voice and said, “I’m all ears. What’s going on?”

“Remember I went to that national development camp after I chose Howard?”

“After tying the national high-school record in the four hundred — yes, I think I remember that.”

Ordinarily, that would have provoked a laugh and anI still can’t believe it!from Jannie. But her voice was serious when she said, “I made some friends at that camp. Some good friends, Bree.”

Bree frowned, trying to figure out where this was going. “I imagine you did.”

“Okay, so I just got off the phone with one of them, and she says —” Jannie stopped.

“Jannie?”

“She’s going to call me back. Would you meet with her if she agrees? It’s bad, Bree. What’s happening to her.”

“Of course I’ll meet her,” Bree said. “What’s going on?”

“She’s calling.” Jannie hung up.

Bree’s head spun. What had Jannie gotten herself involved in?

She was almost to the house on Fifth Street when her phone buzzed. She pulled over and checked the text:She wants to talk but she’s afraid. She doesn’t know what to do.

Bree texted back:Tell her bad things and bad people wither and die when you shine a light on them. Tell her I’ll help her if I can.

She got back on the road, reached home a minute later, and found a parking spot at the far end of the block. She was starting to parallel-park when her phone buzzed a third time:She’ll meet us. Franklin Park, SE corner, Fourteenth and I, in three hours.

CHAPTER 34

LARGELY ON SAMPSON’S INSTINCTS,we’d made headway on the Dead Hours killings. He decided to run the names of the victims through the FBI’s criminal databases and came up with three cases that had been sealed and expunged because the perpetrators were juveniles.

What are the odds of that? Five men have been killed so far and three of them had criminal histories lurking in their deep past?

Bart Masters, the dead NASA engineer, had gotten into trouble in Las Vegas when he was in his early teens. Trey O’Dell, the high-school teacher, was roughly the same age when he’d had a brush with the law in Mississippi. Theo Leaver, the second to die, had been in the Kentucky juvenile criminal justice system.

As an adult, Leaver had worked early hours for a regional baking company, driving a delivery van and stocking shelves ingrocery and convenience stores in the greater DC area. He had been found in the back of his vehicle, covered with a sheet, gunshot wounds to both eyes.

When we left the Charles School after talking to the captain, we called Eileen O’Dell, the teacher’s wife and the woman we had been interviewing when the jet was shot down. She sounded genuinely surprised to learn that her husband had been a juvenile offender.

“No, he never mentioned that, Dr. Cross. Not once. Are you sure?”

“The particulars have all been scrubbed, but we’re sure,” I said.

“I have no idea what it was about,” she said. “I can ask his parents.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ll let us know?”

“Of course,” she said. “It might be later in the day before I find out. Is this important?”

“It’s a long shot,” I said. “But let us know.”

While John drove us to the FBI command center in Arlington, I called Detective Hanson with the Maryland State Police and told her what we’d learned about Bart Masters, the NASA engineer. She was shocked because she’d checked his NASA security-clearance records and he’d come back squeaky clean.

“No mention of a juvenile record,” she told us on speaker. “I would have seen that. Know anyone in Las Vegas PD?”

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