The Rainy Day Killer (22 page)

“You’re taking a week’s leave,” Hank said to Karen. “You’re getting married, for God’s sake.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Griffin said, watching the helicopter circle around for another pass. “Maybe they’ll
catch him today.”

“Not likely,” Cassion said. “Not with just one bird in the air.”

Martinez rejoined them, with Turcotte beside her. She handed the cell phone back to the duty sergeant, who’d been wordlessly listening to the ongoing discussion, then held up her own phone. “I just spoke to the chief. He just met with Exler,” she said, referring to State’s Attorney Warren Exler, “and they convinced a judge to issue a John Doe arrest warrant based on the DNA profile from that eyelash hair. The chief turned around and used the warrant to call in the capital-area task force.”

Cassion
frowned. “Task force?”

“
A joint task force with the state, the county, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals Service,” Hank explained. “We’re a participating member, but I don’t remember us calling them in before.”

“I don’t get it,” Karen said. “What
the hell does that mean to us?”

“It means,” Martinez said, “that we no longer have the lead
, internally. This case is now being run by Special Ops.”

“Oh
, fuck me,” Karen spat.

“
But it’s a homicide investigation,” Cassion protested. “It belongs to me.”

Martinez shook her head.
“It’s now a fugitive apprehension operation, as far as the chief’s concerned. Everything gets turned over to Miller right away,” she said, referring to Lieutenant Ted Miller, who was in charge of the unit within Special Operations that handled liaison with outside agencies. She hiked a thumb at the crime scene across the street and looked at Turcotte. “The one and sole objective of all that work over there now is to get this guy’s ID for Miller. Understand? Either you and Byrne play nice with Special Agent Carson, or the FBI’ll be talking directly to the task force and leaving the GPD completely out of it.”

“This is bullshit,” Cassion said.

“It’s a done deal,” Martinez said. She glared at Turcotte. “Go. Get on it.” She turned back to Hank. “You all right?”

Hank shrugged. What was there to say? His position as lead investigator in two homicide cases had just
disappeared. At best he would be a post office, forwarding information from the FBI lab to Special Ops while the task force honchos carried out the hunt for the bastard who’d just spoken to him on the phone a few minutes ago. What was he supposed to say? That he was relieved he no longer had the responsibility? That he was looking forward to a nice little break?

“I agree with
Cassion,” he said. “It’s bullshit.”

“You know it isn’t. It’s a question of resources, like every other damned thing. We’ve been running after this guy blindfolded with both hands tied behind our backs. Now there’s an army after him. This is how
he’ll get caught, Hank, and you know it.”

A
second helicopter swooped overhead. It bore the markings of the U.S. Marshals Service. Hank was surprised at how quickly they’d gotten airborne and on the scene. He knew Martinez was right. He knew that Chief Bennett had made the correct decision.

But he was damned if he
was going to admit it.

3
2

Thursday
, May 30: mid-morning

One week later,
Karen stared out the window in the passenger seat of Sandy’s black Suburban as they tooled along the I-495 toward the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, which spanned the Potomac River south of Washington. They’d been on the road for forty-five minutes, it was a bright, cloudless morning, the Beltway was busy but moving, and they were just beginning a week’s leave. Sandy was humming something under his breath as they approached the bridge, but Karen felt uneasy, as though she were sitting on a bag of broken glass.

It
had nothing to do with the fact that she wasn’t behind the steering wheel, since sharing the driving with her beloved spouse-to-be was something she’d already conceded would be a part of her new life as a married woman. It was other stuff, and she’d been stewing about whether she should come out with it now or wait for a better time. She’d been waiting so long now, she thought she’d waited a little too long.

“
What are you thinking about?” Sandy asked, his eyes on the traffic in front of them.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, it’s not nothing. I heard you on the phone with Hank this morning. Don’t tell me you’re still upset about that case.”

She snorted.
“What a load of crap. All they’ve done is flush him out of wherever he was holed up. Now he’s in the wind, and who knows where the hell he’ll turn up next.”

“It wasn’t a bad move,” Sandy said, “using the DNA profile as the basis for a
John Doe arrest warrant. More and more jurisdictions are doing it now.”

“Yeah,
but in rape cases where the statute of limitations is about to kick in. We’re talking homicides, Sandy. And not even two months old.”

“I know
, but the fact of the matter is, a judge signed off on it and your chief called in the Marshals. The case is out of your hands now. That’s all there is to it.”

Karen
bit her lip as they passed beneath big orange signs that warned of the drawbridge ahead. Traffic was slowing down as they moved across the bridge. The Woodrow Wilson was the most heavily-traveled crossing on the Potomac, and a major traffic trap when the drawbridge was up. Thankfully the warning lights weren’t flashing, meaning that the drawbridge was down, but volume was heavy, and brake lights were flaring in all six lanes ahead of them. They were facing a four-hour drive to Sandy’s parents’ place in Virginia as it was, and this wasn’t helping her mood.

Looking at
the Washington Monument in the distance, she thought of Ed Griffin’s crack a month ago about federal agents marrying local cops. She knew at the time that it was a joke, and she didn’t have a thin skin when it came to stuff like that, but she did worry about how Sandy felt. Would he find it hard to relate to local priorities when he was busy chasing The Big Picture?

Don’t be a knob
, she told herself. She was transferring anxiety to other stuff, and she knew it. The fact of the matter was that she wasn’t pissed this morning because the Rainy Day Killer case had been re-assigned, and she wasn’t feeling angsty about Sandy’s professional perspective versus her own. What a load of crap.

The truth was that s
he was worried about what lay ahead. By getting into the passenger seat of the Suburban, shutting the door, and fastening her seat belt, she’d committed to a series of events that would change her life forever. At the end of this long-assed drive, she’d unbuckle the seat belt, get out of the Suburban, and walk into something that was way outside her comfort zone. While everyone watched, she’d have to look Sandy in the eye and make the commitment, while hoping she’d read him right over the last two years. Was he as wonderful as he seemed? Would he suddenly have gigantic regrets and change his mind?

A wedding wasn’t supposed to be
such a horrific ordeal, was it?

Maybe somewhere on
the Alexander ranch she could get in a little target practice. Shred a few silhouettes, put the new baby SIG through its paces, work off some stress. After a few dozen rounds she’d start to feel more like herself again. Nothing like a little firearms recoil to jolt you back to your senses and remind you of who you really are.

The tires of the Suburban clacked over the metal seams at the edge of the drawbridge segment. Ahead, the drawbridge oper
ator’s control tower jutted up in the middle of the bridge like the prow of a tugboat. She knew they’d just reached an important and very interesting spot on the map. The Woodrow Wilson was the only bridge in the United States that passed through three different jurisdictions—Maryland behind them, Virginia ahead of them, and for the next three hundred feet, the southernmost tip of the District of Columbia. It was like a convergence of the most important influences in her life at the moment, right there at that spot, high above the Potomac River.

“I don’t think I should have a kid,” she blurted. “I don’t think it
’d be the right thing to do.”

Sandy
took a moment to respond. “Because of the schizophrenia and your mother? You don’t want to pass it on?”

“
Correct. I don’t. And I’m not out of the woods myself. I could still crash, up to the age of forty, or whatever the hell it is.” She looked at him. “That’d be awful enough for you, but add a kid to the mix? Another kid with a mother checking out of her life and into the bughouse? And passing the genes on to her? I can’t take that gamble with someone else’s life, Sandy, I just can’t. It’s not fair, no matter how much I want a kid. It’s not fair to be that selfish.”

“I understand.”

She stared at his profile, watching his eyes flick from the rear view mirror to the side mirror to the traffic ahead. His expression was completely neutral. How could he be so goddamned calm?

“I know you want kids, Sandy.”

“I want kids if you want kids,” he said, glancing at her. “If you want to adopt, we can adopt. But if you want it to be just you and me, then it’s just you and me.”

“You’d be happy with just that?”

He smiled then, glancing at her again. “I’d be happy with that, and no ‘just’ about it. Karen, you’re more than a handful for me. You’re everything. Absolutely. Trust me on that one. Do you want to look into adoption?”

“No. I want it to be you and me.”

He nodded. “Then it’s you and me. End of story.”

They passed beneath a big white sign with a cardinal on it that said, “Virginia Welcomes You.” On the right, Karen could see the waterfront of Alexandria
, the colorful rowhouses of Old Town, and the jutting spire of the Masonic Temple. Just ahead, as they approached the end of the bridge, was Jones Point Park.

“Well,” she
said, “I guess we better finish this drive and make it all official-like.”

“Roger that,” Sandy
laughed.

3
3

Friday
, May 31: morning

A day later, Hank was listening to
Martha Scanlan’s album
The West Was Burning
in the CD player of his rented Cadillac as he drove south on the I-95 on his way to Quantico to pick up Ed Griffin. It was another bright and sunny day, traffic was typical of a Friday morning, and Hank was grateful to have some time off.

Before leaving, he’d
briefed Helen Cassion on the active cases that would require attention while he and Karen were away. Horvath had decided at the last minute he wanted to attend the wedding, but Cassion had denied his leave request, so he would be there to continue working active cases with Belknap and Kaplan. With the Rainy Day Killer case in the hands of Special Ops, the workload would hopefully be manageable.

Cassion, for her part, was ebullient. She’d gone through her interview in the competitive process for the position of captain on
Monday, and was feeling particularly good about herself. She half-listened as Hank walked through the next steps the detectives would be taking on their most important cases, then impatiently waved a hand.

“Yeah, yeah, Donaghue
, I got it. I sign off on their reports, remember? I know all about this stuff.”

As he listened to
Scanlan’s cover of the Dylan song “I Went to See the Gypsy,” his thoughts tracked back to Wednesday, which he’d spent in the hands of Human Resources. In the morning he’d written an in-basket test as part of the competitive process. He was given an information package containing an elaborate scenario in a fictitious police department, including an organization chart and a set of letters, memos, and reports, and his task was to respond to each document in what he judged to be the appropriate manner, whether by writing memos, delegating tasks, planning meetings, or whatever else might occur to him over the course of the three-and-a-half hours he was given to complete the test. Because he understood how in-basket exercises were designed, he hadn’t experienced any difficulty with them before. In the past, he’d racked up a perfect score. This time around, he expected the outcome to be the same.

After a quick lunch
at a chip wagon down the street, he’d ridden the elevator back up to the tenth floor for his interview with the three-person selection committee, consisting of the director of Human Resources, Mrs. Mona Bloodworth, Commander Jason Stone of Midtown District, and Commander Henry Dalzell of Intelligence. Both Stone and Dalzell were wearing their Class A uniforms, while Bloodworth, a civilian, wore business attire. Hank, although a sworn officer like Stone and Dalzell, was not required by departmental policy to wear his uniform, being assigned to plain clothes duty, so he wore a navy Armani suit he particularly liked, a crisp white shirt, a cobalt tie, and black oxfords polished to a high shine.

Hank
was the last candidate to be interviewed, they explained as he sat down, and the chief expected an eligibility list from them by next Monday.

The first portion
of the interview consisted of a situational judgment test, in which scenarios were described and Hank was required to explain how he’d respond to each of them if he were the captain responsible for the area involved. In a way, it was a duplication of the in-basket exercise in that it assessed his ability to analyze a situation and exercise good judgment, but instead of a paper exercise he was faced with departmental superiors watching his body language like hawks, ready to jump on his every word.

Again, though, because he understood that situational jud
gment tests would assess his leadership skills, his personal aggressiveness, and his initiative in solving problems, he was able to anticipate the key words and phrases that would be printed on the answer sheets they were using to grade his performance. Solid preparation, an excellent memory, and a high IQ once again brought him through this test without a scratch.

A sign warned him that he’d reached the off-ramp for Exit 150A to Quantico. As he crossed the overpass, he glanced down and saw that traffic in the east-bound lanes of
Joplin Road was moving briskly. He braked and took the ramp at a slow pace, spiraling down clockwise onto Joplin and under the overpass he’d just crossed.

A white tractor trailer passed over his head as he moved b
eneath the overpass, and for an instant he flashed on the enclosed space beneath the Howard K. Chase Bridge where, more than a month ago, he’d huddled in his trench coat, hiding from the rain as they’d worked on Theresa Olsen’s body.

Still an open case
, with a suspect’s DNA profile but no identity to go with it.

For
Hank, the lack of progress made him feel as claustrophobic as the tons of concrete looming above his head. Two dead young women. A string of others before them. And the threat of more lives that would end in unspeakable horror.

Up ahead, he
saw traffic lights that marked the intersection of Joplin Road and the Jefferson Davis Highway.

Wednesday’s
interview had become more difficult when they moved from the situational judgment test to the portion intended to assess his personal suitability for the position. These questions were intended to gauge his loyalty and dedication to the department, his ethical judgment, and how his professional experience qualified him for the position. Bloodworth began with a series of soft questions about his education and his accomplishments as a child prodigy, his decision to forgo a career in the office of the state’s attorney for a cop’s life, and a few of his recent and more prominent cases in homicide. He’d answered similar questions when he’d been promoted to lieutenant and knew what to say. A few minutes later, however, Dalzell changed the pace by pressing him about his connections to the local Triad brotherhood.

“
Have you met with Lam Chun Sang, a.k.a. Uncle Sang, a known Triad figure, on at least one occasion in the recent past?”

Hank acknowledge
d that he had.

“
Do you really expect us to believe that your conversation was limited to questions relating to the Jarrett case?”

Hank explained that, as the commander well knew, in any opportunity to obtain information from a CI, one asked all sorts of questions.

“What information did you pass on to Lam to repay him for being a ‘confidential informant,’ as you put it?”

Hank responded calmly that in such a situation, as the co
mmander also knew, the idea was to ask the questions and not answer them.

Dalzell then
demanded that he explain his connections to the Mah family, including Jerome Mah, the wealthy shipping magnate who was believed to be an associate of Lam, and his son Peter Mah, the former Red Pole enforcer whose life Hank had saved while investigating the Martin Liu case.

“Peter Mah believes he owes me a debt of honor,” Hank r
eplied, “because Detective Stainer and I prevented a Triad hit squad from assassinating him.”

“
Again, does part of that debt of honor involve the exchange of money or confidential departmental information?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Speaking of the Martin Liu case,” Dalzell went on, “how do you explain the fact that you’re currently in an intimate sexual relationship with Meredith Collier Liu, the mother of the victim in that case, who is herself a known associate of Peter Mah?”

Hank paused, knowing he was supposed to rise to the bait. He suspected that everything else Dalzell had asked had been i
ntended to lead up to this question, which was supposed to cause him to lose his composure and betray a lack of professional self-control.

“
How do I explain it? Love, I guess.”

Bloodworth bit the inside of her cheek to hide
a smile.

“That’s it?” Dalzell huffed
. “That’s how you explain a relationship that could severely compromise your ability to maintain confidentiality and protect the interests of this department?”

“Yes
, sir. That’s how I explain it.”

Commander Stone, whose district included Chinatown, shifted
uncomfortably. “Are you trying to be flippant, Lieutenant?”

“Not at all
, sir. At all times I respect the confidentiality of information that comes into my possession through my duties as a sworn officer of this department, and I will always, every day, do everything in my power to protect the interests of the GPD. My relationship with Ms. Collier is personal, and her relationship with Peter Mah is, to say the least, cool.”

“Moving on—” Bloodworth began.

“One more question on the subject,” Stone interrupted. “Lieutenant, if the chief were to assign a captain to the current Chinatown task force attempting to address the violence that continues to plague that neighborhood, and you were that captain, what steps would you take to carry out your new duties?”

Surprised, Hank hesitated before responding. He
could tell from the look on Bloodworth’s face that Stone had just deviated from the script they’d been following up to that point. He glanced at Dalzell, who stared at him intently, obviously having expected Stone to ask this question at the last moment.

Hank
knew there was constant friction between Lieutenant Jarvis, the current head of the task force, and Dalzell’s analysts in Intelligence, whose reports and advice Jarvis preferred to ignore. He also knew the relationship between Jarvis and the district was even worse. Stone’s people felt, with good cause, that their toes were constantly being stepped on. He suddenly understood that he’d already passed the test as far as both uniformed members of the committee were concerned. They were asking this final question now in order to have his response on the record. Perhaps they hoped it would give them some sort of leverage down the road against the task force and the way it conducted business. Perhaps the chief did, in fact, intend to have a captain take charge of the task force, and they wanted it to be him.

Hank disliked playing political head games
, but he had very strong opinions about the way Jarvis had been running the show in Chinatown, and if Stone and Dalzell wanted something on the record, he was more than happy to oblige them.

“The first thing that would happen,” Hank said, “is that the elders would invite me for tea. As I understand it, there’s a nice little garden
behind a grocery store down on Lexington where they like to get together.” He glanced at Dalzell, who nodded slightly. “I’d accept that invitation and have a cup of tea. I might try one of those pastries they’re all addicted to. I’d ask about their health, pat the dog on the head, and admire the flowers.”

Bloodworth frowned, not following him at all.

“Go on,” Stone prompted.

“The elders only want peace and quiet to pursue their bus
iness,” Hank said, looking at Bloodworth. “They hate these home invasions and drive-by shootings and all the rest of the violence.”

“I thought they thrived on it,”
she said.

“Just the opposite.
They hate it when one of their own goes rogue and starts making waves. It draws the spotlight to them and brings unwanted police attention that plays serious hell with business. Believe it or not, they want good relations with us. They understand it’s our job to shut them down, but they have this ideal vision in which it’s an honorable game played by honorable men according to a well-defined set of rules.”

He
saw Bloodworth’s frown and leaned forward. “These men are criminals, make no mistake. Their businesses include drug trafficking, human smuggling, prostitution, and pornography. As a sworn officer, it’s my duty to shut them down and send them to prison. But if we understand how they think, we can use it to our advantage. To them, relationships are extremely important. It’s what they refer to as
guanxi
, a network of family and business connections. Within this network they operate according to a principle called
renqing
, which implies not only emotional commitment but also an exchange of favors or other considerations.”

He sat back again. “The commander asked earlier about my relationship with Peter Mah. Unfortunately, because I protected him from a Triad hit team in 2011, Mah feels I’m now part of his
guanxi
network and that he has a
renqing
-type obligation to me. While he’s been out of the country, one of his employees has been hovering around, feeding me information and watching my coattails. Commander Dalzell’s quite right to question whether or not I’m reciprocating in some fashion but, believe me, I’ve gone out of my way to make it clear to the Mahs that I don’t buy into it and I won’t play along. Just the same, if they want to continue treating me as though this relationship actually exists, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.

“So, yes, I’d have a cup of tea with the elders and listen to what they fe
lt obligated to say to me. I’d respond with respect, and I’d suggest that if we were to consider some kind of reciprocal agreement, it would have to involve the cessation of all this violence right up front. If they were to remove the troublemakers themselves, send them back to Hong Kong or Fukian province or wherever they come from, and they took care of this in such a way that I had no personal knowledge of it that I’d be obligated to report to Homeland Security, then I could probably live with it. The mayor could probably live with it. In exchange, perhaps I wouldn’t go blundering around down there like Dogberry on speed, the way Jarvis is right now. In fact, if they took care of it themselves and got rid of all the troublemakers, we wouldn’t need the task force at all, would we? Which would make them very happy.”