Criss cross, p.21
Criss Cross, page 21
Bree shrieked with laughter and then scrambled up the stairs and across the porch. She opened the front door, looked over her shoulder, grinned, stuck her tongue out at me, then went inside.
I loved seeing Bree light up like that, more girl than woman, more regular person than cop, and all because I acted like a little boy. It made me feel pretty darn good at the end of a long and complicated day that had gone sideways more than once.
But all in all, we’d made serious progress. If we didn’t have M in custody, we had someone who knew him. Nolan had said as much. To me and to Marty Forbes.
The shower was long, hot, and wonderful. Dinner—roast chicken in a citrus-mustard sauce, a recipe Nana Mama had gotten from the Rachael Ray Show—was on the table when I entered the kitchen, feeling like a new man.
“You clean up nice,” Bree said.
“Every once in a while.”
“Bree said you were covered in mud,” Ali said.
“Head to toe.”
“I wanted a picture.”
“That wasn’t happening.”
“Dad?” Jannie said. “Aren’t you going to ask me how my first day back went?”
I’d completely forgotten. “School. Yes. How are you feeling?”
She sat up straighter and smiled. “Pretty good, actually. Those vitamins really do work after a while.”
“No tiredness during the day?”
“Just once, in study hall. I put my head down and took a ten-minute nap. When do you think I can start training again?”
My grandmother said, “I know you’re champing at the bit, but the last thing you need is a relapse.”
Jannie looked glum.
I said, “Nana’s right, and you know it. So, let’s say the rest of this week, you stay on that vitamin regimen and stretch all you want while we see how you do at school. Things go well, you can start to run next week.”
My daughter chewed the inside of her cheek before saying, “So, right now, I’m, what, twelve weeks from the first of those meets?”
“Sounds right, but you have to take it easy, no pushing hard out of the gate.”
“But I like to push hard out of the gate,” Jannie said with a playful moan.
“And you will,” Bree said. “In twelve weeks.”
Jannie held up both palms. “I officially surrender.”
“Sometimes you have to surrender in order to fight another day,” Nana Mama said.
“Who said that?” Ali asked.
“I did,” my grandmother said. “Just now.”
“You should write that down, Nana,” he said.
“No, you should write that down,” she said.
Ali stared off into space for a second and was about to say something when his phone dinged. He pulled it out and looked at the screen, and a smile bloomed softly on his face.
“See?” my grandmother said. “They can’t keep their attention off their screens and on real life. I say write that down, but then—ping!—off he goes.”
Ali stuffed his phone back in his pocket, got up, and grabbed a notebook and a pen. “No, Nana, I’m going to write down all the stuff you say, and we’ll put it up on Twitter once a day. You know, like, hashtag-crazy-good-stuff-my-great-grandma-says.”
There was dead silence for a moment and then Jannie started laughing. “That could work!”
“Right!” Ali said, holding up his fist in triumph. “Nana Mama goes viral!”
My grandmother stared at both of them as if they’d lost their minds, which caused Bree and me to start laughing. It took only a few moments before Nana started to chuckle with us. “Honestly, I have no idea what’s so funny,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. A good laugh will keep you from going toes up and six feet under.”
“Write that down!” Jannie cried, and we started laughing all over again.
Chapter
87
The following afternoon, William Nolan’s attorney notified us that her client was willing to talk. Bree, John, and I were cleared through FBI security at the Bureau’s downtown headquarters soon afterward.
As we rode the elevator and walked the length of several hallways, I was still hearing the mental echoes of how hard we’d laughed the night before. We’d stop and then Nana Mama would say something else, and we’d yell, “Write that one down!”
I couldn’t remember having that much fun at dinner in a long time. It was all Ali had talked about that morning at breakfast before school. He was going to write down at least thirty good Nana-isms before he “launched the hashtag.”
“You get the feeling the mountain-biking bug might be over?” Bree asked now.
“I was thinking the same thing. Especially after he said he was skipping tonight’s Wild Wheels ride to work on Nana Mama’s social media presence.”
Sampson laughed. “The kid does jump from one thing to the next.”
“He’s exploring,” I said. “It’s what kids do.”
Ned Mahoney stepped out of a doorway near the end of the hall. He gestured at me, said, “Alex, you were his target, so you are observing today. If you have something you want asked, we’ll hear you over the earbuds. Chief Stone?”
Bree straightened her shoulders, glanced at me with mock pity, then followed Mahoney inside. John and I went into the observation booth with Special Agent Kim Tillis, who had just arrived.
On the other side of the one-way mirror, William Nolan had his left wrist cuffed to his chair and his right arm in a sling. He was hunched over and looked miserable. I was surprised to see Sandra Wendover, the same federal public defender who’d worked on Martin Forbes’s case, sitting beside him.
“Hey, c’mon,” Nolan said as Bree and Ned took chairs. “I’m dying here.”
“You’re not dying, Mr. Nolan,” Mahoney said.
“I’m in serious pain,” he insisted in a hoarse whine.
Wendover said, “My client has three broken ribs, a blown ACL in his right knee, and a separated shoulder. That could be construed as brutality.”
Mahoney snorted. “Except your client jumped off a roof into a tree and then took off trying to elude federal officers who were forced to subdue him.”
“Who cares?” Nolan said, irritated. “Because I know for a fact I’ve done nothing wrong. A misdemeanor, maybe. But not something you go away for.”
Mahoney said, “Well, Mr. Jailhouse Lawyer, here’s a news flash for you: We are holding you as the prime suspect in a federal kidnapping-and-mass-murder investigation.”
That got Nolan’s attention in a big way. He rocked back in his chair, eyes big as sand dollars, then he winced and said, “Whoa! Whoa! What are you talking about?”
Wendover said, “Wait—he’s involved in Martin Forbes’s case?”
“He is.”
“Then I must recuse, and I advise my client to stay silent until federal defenders can send over another lawyer to represent him.”
“What? No,” Nolan said. “No, just sit here, I’m not admitting to nothing because I didn’t do anything.”
Bree said, “How about cutting off people’s heads? You did that, didn’t you, M?”
Wendover said, “Mr. Nolan, I advise you not to answer.”
Nolan shook his head violently. “I do not know what they’re talking about.”
“Are you M?” Mahoney asked. “Simple question.”
Nolan’s brow knitted. “That a name or something?”
“You know it is.”
“What, like some rapper?”
“You’re saying you are not M?” Bree said.
“I can say without a doubt that I am not Em or Eminem or whoever this dude is, and I have never, ever killed anyone, much less chopped off a bunch of people’s heads.”
On the other side of the mirror, behind Mahoney and Bree, I keyed my mike, said, “The blood he splattered on my windshield.”
Bree nodded, said, “You’re sure, William? Because Dr. Cross says you threw a blood balloon at his windshield out on the Beltway.”
“Blood balloon?” Wendover said. “Do not answer that question, Mr. Nolan.”
He ignored her. “That was fake blood, and so what? It’s like a kid’s prank.”
“Except that wasn’t fake blood,” Mahoney said. “That was a blood cocktail taken from several different human beings. We haven’t done the entire DNA workup yet, Mr. Nolan, but the smart money is on the blood matching the heads and, therefore, you.”
Nolan lost all color and looked dazed by what he’d just been told.
“Okay,” Wendover said, gathering her things and standing. “I am out of here.”
“Stop!” Nolan said. “Why?”
She glared at him. “Because, Mr. Nolan, I represent an innocent man who’s in jail, accused of the heinous crimes you’ve been involved in.”
“Heinous?” he said, looking after her as she left the room. “I’ve never done anything heinous in my entire life!”
Wendover shut the door behind her. I was about to go out into the hallway to talk to her when Nolan said, “I admit I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and I did time for them, but nothing heinous. Nothing remotely heinous.”
“But you can see where this is going, William,” Bree said. “Your blood balloon. The heads. The bodies. You must already be fearing the day they execute you.”
“Wait, now. I…” He struggled and then apparently came to a decision. “I was given the balloon. I was told the blood was fake, you know, movie-prop stuff.”
In the observation booth, we all leaned forward as one.
“Who told you that, Mr. Nolan?” Bree asked. “Who gave you the balloon? And who told you to visit Marty Forbes in jail and act like Kyle Craig?”
Nolan closed his eyes, said, “He calls himself M.”
Chapter
88
Shortly after seven that evening, in the Homeland Security offices at Union Station, Mahoney, Sampson, Bree, and I crowded around Lieutenant Edith Prince, a TSA officer with access to the archival feeds from cameras mounted in and around the transportation hub.
We asked her to bring up the footage from several days before, when Nolan had been caught on-camera. The time stamp said 4:01 p.m. when the Kyle Craig lookalike appeared in the feed, walked through the main hall of the rail station, and disappeared into the Metro.
“He told us he went to a locker before going to the Metro,” Bree said.
It took a few tries before Prince picked him up on another camera feed, this one overlooking a bank of lockers open for use between six a.m. and midnight.
On the TSA lieutenant’s screen, Nolan appeared at 3:54 p.m. He went to locker C-2, one of the larger storage bins. It was open.
Nolan reached inside and up. He groped around, then pulled his hand out in a loose fist and put it in the pocket of his jacket. The door swung shut. Nolan left.
Exactly the way he had described his actions to Bree in the interrogation room.
“What happened just there?” Prince asked.
“Nolan says he retrieved a claim check for a piece of carry-on luggage in storage at the Willard Hotel,” Bree said.
“Now we just need to figure out who put the claim check in the locker, and the luggage at the hotel,” Mahoney said.
“Can’t help you with the hotel,” Prince said, and she gave her computer an order. “But just maybe…”
The viewer played backward at six times normal speed. I had trouble keeping my eyes on the screen. My mind kept leaping back to the Kyle Craig lookalike’s claim that he was contacted two years before through an anonymous Panamanian server and an e-mail account belonging to someone named M.
The sender was aware of Nolan’s circumstances, that he was an ex-con trying to stay clean years after his release from prison, that he was working too many hours for too little pay.
M also knew Nolan had been an actor and a stuntman and thought he’d be perfect for several roles he had coming up. The first role would involve five days of work, and the pay was one hundred thousand dollars, twenty-five up front, seventy-five on completion.
“For doing what?” Bree had asked.
Nolan had shifted and winced. “I don’t think I should answer that, actually.”
Mahoney leaned across the table. “Headless bodies, William. Blood from those bodies in your possession. Start talking or start thinking about what you want for your last meal.”
The stuntman wasn’t happy, but he spilled everything. He’d been the one who chloroformed Marty Forbes in that Fort Lauderdale motel room. He’d been the one who’d put an IV in Forbes’s arm and run drugs into him. He’d been the one who’d kept the maids away the entire four days Marty had lain in a chemical haze.
“I waited until Forbes was starting to come around, and then I left,” Nolan said. “Five days later, I get a UPS box filled with seventy-five grand in cash. I’m still not sure what I did to earn it.”
“You were part of a frame job that put Forbes behind bars for murders he did not commit,” Bree said.
“I didn’t commit them either!” Nolan said. “And I didn’t know about Forbes being in jail until ten days ago, when I was told to go see him but say nothing.”
Nolan claimed M had contacted him again back in February and offered him a month of work that would pay two hundred grand. For that he was supposed to stay at the Regal Motel and wait until he was told what to do.
“Still via this Panamanian e-mail account?”
“No,” Nolan said. “He made me switch to this phone application called Wickr.”
That’s when I believed everything Nolan said. I’d already been inclined to believe him when he said M had made contact with him through a Panamanian e-mail account, just like he had with Marty Forbes. But Wickr, the anonymous, disappearing digital-telegram system, was how M had contacted me, goaded me to—
“Stop!” Bree said, startling me from my thoughts.
The feed froze on the screen inside the Homeland Security offices. It showed a young Caucasian woman wearing a peasant dress and a woolen cap over blond dreadlocks. She was standing in front of locker C-2.
Chapter
89
Lieutenant Prince started the feed in slow motion. At 2:29 p.m. on the same day that Nolan retrieved the claim check, a young woman went to the locker, pulled out a backpack and a woven purse. She put the purse over her shoulder and across her chest, bandolier-style, took the backpack, and left.
We could see the young woman from all angles, and she never seemed to reach up toward the top of the locker. Prince rewound the footage and found the same young woman earlier, at 12:40 p.m., when she first deposited her gear in C-2 and locked it.
Sampson said, “She could have put the claim check in there when she loaded the locker. You can’t see her hands for a good eight seconds there.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Keep going backward and speed it up.”
Prince gave her computer an order. The footage went in reverse again, this time at sixteen times normal speed. We had to concentrate, had to stare right at locker C-2 and nothing else. My iPhone buzzed, alerting me to a text. I ignored it.
“There,” Bree said, pointing at the screen.
“Got it,” Prince said and slowed the pace to normal speed.
At 10:22 a.m., a man in a long, dark raincoat wearing a black cowboy hat with a clear plastic rain cover over it unlocked C-2. He retrieved a valise and left. The hat brim made it impossible for us to see his face. When he turned, I noticed the hat had some kind of band around the crown, but it was obscured by the rain cover.
I couldn’t see it earlier, at 9:54 a.m., when the cowboy entered the locker area the first time. He put the valise inside C-2, locked the door, and departed, never giving us a single view of his face.
“I don’t see when he could have planted the claim,” Bree said. “It’s all business. He puts the valise in and takes it out.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “But mark that place, Lieutenant Prince, and then keep going back in time.”
At 8:12 a.m. on the day Nolan got the claim check, a big man, African-American, wearing a blue sweatshirt, hood up, entered the locker area and looked around. He wore dark sunglasses and seemed agitated before going to C-2, unlocking it, and reaching inside it up to his elbow.
The big man’s shoulder moved as if he were groping for something, and then he pulled out a laptop computer in a sleeve. He tucked it under his arm and left.
“He definitely could have done it, right there,” Mahoney said. “Why else put something so small in a locker that big?”
“I agree, but let’s look when he puts the computer in there,” I said.
Prince ran the feed backward until finding the same guy at 6:48 a.m. He carried a large, heavy messenger-style bag then, and he put it in C-2.
Before locking it, however, he apparently reconsidered and then reached back inside the locker for the bag. From it, he took the computer in the sleeve and put it deeper into the box. Then he locked it and left with the messenger bag under one arm.
“Both times he could have done it,” Sampson said.
“He’s our guy,” Bree agreed.
“I think so too,” Mahoney said.
My phone buzzed a second time, then a third and a fourth.
Exasperated, I dug it out, and looked at the screen, seeing two texts from Jannie and three from Nana Mama. All of them said the same thing: Call! Now! It’s important!
I said, “I have to take this.”
I crossed the room and called home. My grandmother answered on the first ring.
“I just want you to tell me things will be fine,” she said in a tense, trembling voice.
“What’s going on, Nana?”
“It’s probably nothing, but Ali’s an hour late for dinner, and he told me this morning he was coming home to study for a geography test. We’ve tried his cell phone, and he won’t answer or he doesn’t have it with him or he forgot to charge it again.”
My stomach felt slightly hollow, but I said, “Did you check the shed, see if his mountain bike’s there?”
