Page 91 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“You still working in the basement?”

“I like to think of it as my subterranean lair, but yes.”

“I need a favor.”

“Of course.”

“I’m going to courier over an iPhone, a laptop, and an iPad belonging to the latest Dead Hours victim. I have a password for the first two.”

“That helps,” Rawlins said. “What are we looking for?”

“A reason why a gym teacher would lie to his wife and drive from Laurel to Southeast to die at four thirty in the morning.”

“Send them out here and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ll messenger them as soon as I can,” I said. I hung up and looked over at John. “Did we ever find out if that victim found in that park had a juvenile record?”

“I haven’t had time to look at Henry Pelham,” Sampson said. “But that reminds me — we have to see where we are on the DNA in the vomit we found at the scene. The way it looks is, the killer was the one who puked.”

“Does Hanson with the state troopers know anything?” I said.

“Give her a shout. She might. And I’ll messenger those things to KK. You go home and take a nap.”

After John dropped me off at my house, I called the Maryland State Police homicide detective and got her voice mail. I left a message and was just shutting my eyes when she called back.

I picked up. “Hey there, Detective. Alex Cross here.”

“I saw. You called?”

“I did. Have you been looking into Henry Pelham?”

“Quite a bit, though it’s been tough. He has no living family and his coworkers said he was an introvert who never socialized. Neighbors barely knew him to say hi.”

“Any chance he had a juvenile record?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, there was something when he was fifteen,” she said. “But it was sealed and expunged at eighteen. Why?”

“Several other victims had juvie records that were expunged.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. Nothing since for Mr. Pelham?”

“No. Quiet guy who led a quiet life.”

“Any sense of where he broke the law as a juvenile?”

“Edgewater, Anne Arundel County, Maryland.”

“Any idea who the prosecutor or judge was?”

“No, but the presiding judge at juvie in Anne Arundel has been around at least twenty years. You might give her a call.”

Hanson gave me Judge Ernestine Ball’s phone number and wished me luck.

I called the number and left a message, figuring that I wouldn’t hear back soon because it was the weekend. Still, I identified myself and asked if I might have a few minutes of the judge’s time on a sensitive case we were working.

Several moments later, a woman called back and said, “This is Judge Ball. How can I help, Dr. Cross?”

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