Page 114 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“Football? He was big but he didn’t look big enough for the pros.”

I pulled out my phone and called up a picture of Captain Davis. “This him?”

The teen glanced at the photo. “Nah, nothing like him.”

I asked Rex to describe Rosella Santiago’s live-in.

“Around five ten, maybe a hundred and ninety pounds? Real thick guy. Looked and sounded Arab to me. Brown eyes. Short black hair.”

“Beard?”

“Nope.”

I called up another picture, this one of Leslie Parks and his mysterious friend Ibrahim in Fenway Park. “What about this guy?” I asked, showing him the photo.

Rex took the phone and studied it a few seconds before nodding. “He’s shaved the beard and cut his hair. But that’s definitely Marion Davis.”

“Does he have a vehicle? Davis?”

“Yeah, one of those high-ceilinged vans. A Mercedes.”

“A Sprinter?”

“That’s right. Dark gray. Signs for his painting service on the side.”

“Virginia plates?”

“Pennsylvania,” he said. “And I think it’s a rental.”

“How do you know that?”

“There was a QR code on the driver’s side, lower left corner of the windshield. I used to clean cars at Avis at night. They all have them.”

CHAPTER 96

THE RAIN CONTINUED ASnight came on. Marion Davis drove steadily north on I-95, past Laurel, Maryland.

His mind kept looping in and out of the plan, looking for any weaknesses and finding none. Davis had done his homework meticulously over the past several months. He glanced at the digital clock on the console: 5:45 p.m.

It was a good night to die, he decided. If all went well, dying would not be necessary, but Davis was mentally prepared if need be.

He got off the interstate at the Savage exit and took a right. A minute later, he pulled into the drive of a Colonial that was empty and for sale. He opened the garage door with the remote he’d stolen at an open house for the place the week before, pulled in, shut the garage door, and got out of the van with his tools.

Davis lifted the hood and found the wiring and chip for the Mercedes tracking and security system. He clipped the control leads and crushed the chip, then retrieved a set of Florida license plates from beneath the passenger seat. He exchanged the Pennsylvania plates for the Sunshine State plates, tossed the others in a trash can, returned to the driver’s seat, and sent a text over his burner phone to a memorized number:Are you still selling that Chevy?

Without waiting for a reply, Davis put on heavier clothes — a Canada Goose parka, wool pants, and knee-high Muck boots — and got back on the interstate heading toward the Beltway and the District of Columbia. A half hour later, he was south of DC, exiting at the Lorton, Virginia, exit, when his phone buzzed with a text:Chevy sold, sorry.

Davis’s heart began to pound.We’re on.

He heard noise coming from the rear of the van, looked over his shoulder, and saw Captain Davis sitting upright and glaring at him.

“Good,” Marion Davis said. “I was hoping I hadn’t clipped you too hard. It’s actually easier if you’re awake.”

Captain Davis struggled against the tape around his wrists and ankles. But Marion Davis had done the job right. The captain could struggle all he wanted; it would do him no good.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” Marion Davis asked, not caring that his captive couldn’t answer. “Ibrahim Obaid. We met once. At Leslie Parks’s place in North Carolina when you were posted at Fort Bragg. We didn’t talk long. I was leaving. You were just coming in.” Marion Davis laughed bitterly. “I knew who you were, of course. Leslie had told me all about you. How you were the man in the cockpit who bombed my villagein Iraq, how you were responsible for the deaths of so many in my family.”

He fell silent for a moment, letting that sink in. “You were the perfect man to take the fall for me, Captain. Guilt-ridden for what you did there, which turned into a drinking problem that got you fired from the American Airlines pilot program, and then your ex-girlfriend finds out the drinking was all about the atrocities you committed. Poor unstable woman — she killed herself and her daughter over it. All I had to do was change my name from Ibrahim Obaid to Marion Davis and the game was on.”

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