Page 96 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

There was a spectacular, acrobatic catch by one of the wide receivers. It changed the mood considerably. During a commercial, Jannie said, “Bree, what’s going on with Iliana’s case?”

Bree startled again. “You know, Jannie,” she said, getting up and grabbing her phone off the coffee table. “I was thinking the same thing just now.”

She left the room, her thumbs working her screen, just as my cell rang. Caller ID saidKK.

I answered. “Mr. Rawlins. Did you get the package?”

“About six hours ago,” he said. “The laptop and the desktop opened with the passwords you gave us, but the iPad had not been set up for that yet. Meaning I got in and I found disturbing things and evidence of more coming. Can you get to a computer?”

Getting up off the couch, I said, “On my way.”

“I’m not going to bore you with how I did it, but there’s a video that was sent to McCoy using Tor.”

“The encrypted messaging system, the onion-layer thing.”

“Correct,” Rawlins said. “But we have some cutting-edge technology here in the cybercrime lab that has broken through some of that encryption, enough that I was able to track the message back to a message board on the dark web and a member with the handle ‘Fisher of Men.’”

“What kind of message board on the dark web?” I asked, climbing the stairs to my attic office.

Rawlins sighed. “One for pedophiles and the like.”

My stomach turned. I entered my office, flipped on the light, and jiggled the trackpad to wake up the computer. “Is the video proof of it?”

“Yes. It should be in your queue.”

“Then I don’t have to see it.”

“You need to see it because it was used as an advertisement of sorts, a taste of what the buyer could expect.”

“Buyer?” I said, feeling more revolted. I went to my e-mail and found the attachment from Rawlins.

“Yes, buyer,” Rawlins said impatiently. “And that’s the thing. I think this is how your Dead Hours killer targets his victims. He lures them in with this video.”

My cursor hovered over the attachment. I really did not want to watch it. “Look, KK, I’m going to take your word for it. I’m home, having a nice night with my family, watching the football game and —”

“You’ll miss your chance, then, Cross,” Rawlins shot back. “If I’m reading the decrypted fragments of messages to and from the killer right, he’s got a new fish hooked. They’re set to meet tomorrow morning.”

I clicked on the video. The screen jumped to life, and I was immediately shocked at the depravity, the cruelty, the … thirty seconds in, I had to shut it off.

Feeling cold, feeling like the Dead Hours killer needed to be wiped off the face of the earth, I said, “Where and when is this meet supposed to go down, KK?”

CHAPTER 82

BY TWO THIRTY INthe morning, John Sampson and I were set up across the street and down a hundred yards from the entry to a new residential development going in off the wooded Melford Road in Westphalia, an unincorporated area of Prince George’s County.

Detective Marilyn Hanson was also watching from a different car with a different angle on the thirty acres of recently cleared land. Near the entrance, there were culverts and water pipes stacked by idle backhoes and bulldozers.

“Why here?” Sampson said, sipping at his coffee in the dark. “The others were in urban areas, except the guy in the national park, Henry Pelham. And then he goes back to the schoolyard. And now out here with whoever is supposed to be coming.”

I shrugged. “Maybe he thinks the urban areas are too risky, so he’s mixing it up.”

“This just seems, I don’t know, out of character,” John grumbled.

“A curveball,” I agreed. “Except for where Pelham was found. Any word back on the DNA of the vomit in that park?”

Sampson got a foul look on his face. “I asked yesterday, and they said there’s a backlog, but they’d try tomorrow to at least get to the preliminaries.”

Our radios crackled with Detective Hanson’s voice. “Blue Dodge Ram, Maryland plates, coming your way. Driver is alone. Male. No firm visual.”

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