Page 98 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

She asked him for his identification. He fumbled for it but eventually found a Maryland driver’s license.

Hanson took it. “You live close by?”

“Close enough,” Morales said. “Will you tell me what is going on?”

I said, “Why are you here in the middle of the night, Mr. Morales?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I am under a lot of pressure, and I just came to the site to make sure I was on top of things.”

Sampson said, “You’re saying you work here?”

“I do,” he said. With our permission, he reached over to the passenger seat and showed us a hard hat with the logo of the Lafford Construction company of Bowie, Maryland. He tapped a Lafford identification on a lanyard hanging from the rearview. “I’m the foreman on this job. Look in the back seat, you don’t believe me.”

Hanson shone her flashlight into the rear seat, revealing rolled blueprints and surveying equipment.

“I got a bad deadline, man,” Morales said. “That’s why I’m here instead of in bed with my wife. Why, who did you think I was?”

“We’re not at liberty to say, sir,” Sampson said.

“Well,” he said, looking confused, “no one dangerous, I hope.”

“Why would you say that?” I asked.

“I got fifteen men and more equipment coming at seven, that’s why.”

Hanson took a picture of Morales’s driver’s license, then handed the ID back to him. “Sorry to have concerned you, sir. We’ll let you get on your way.”

“Okay, then,” Morales said and nodded. “Thank you.”

The state police detective went to her vehicle, climbed in, started it, and backed up. Morales began to roll up his window.

I stopped him, said, “One more question?”

His brow furrowed. “If it gets me closer to my Denver omelet, yes.”

“As a kid,” I said, “before you were eighteen, ever get in trouble with the law?”

Morales looked at me with flat, dull eyes. “Me? Never. My mother would have beat me senseless, and my father would have done worse.”

I smiled. “Just checking. Have a good day, Mr. Morales.”

“I’m going to try, sir.”

He rolled up his window and drove off.

Sampson said, “You believe him?”

I thought about the flatness and dullness of his eyes.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

CHAPTER 83

SAMPSON DROPPED ME OFFat home around five thirty. I was beat, and other than my suspicions concerning Enrique Morales, we had nothing to show for the night’s work.

K. K. Rawlins had to have misinterpreted the fragments of the Tor message he’d recovered from the iPad belonging to the Dead Hours killer’s most recent victim. Maybe he had the date, time, or location wrong.

Who knew? I was so tired, I was almost past caring when I slipped a key in the lock and opened the front door.

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