Another image appeared. A pretty young Vietnamese girl.
“Police are also looking for Cam Nguyen, a missing George Washington University student, in connection with the murder of Mad Man Francones at a notorious District massage parlor earlier this week.”
That interested Sunday, and he kept listening as he got an envelope, addressed it, and stuffed the letter inside. He wet the glue and the stamp with a sponge and decided to mail it straightaway.
But it was raining outside, and before he could get his coat on, he heard keys in the lock. The front door swung open.
Acadia came in all wired, like she’d been up all night partying on speed or cocaine. She carried a flashlight and a stout cut branch. When she saw Sunday, her nostrils flared and she kicked shut the door with the heel of her shoe.
She tossed the length of wood and the flashlight on the sofa and came at him, feverishly unbuttoning her blouse. He smelled her as she attacked him and knew all too well that particular odor oozing from her pores.
Acadia had killed again.
He knew it as surely as if he’d done the deed himself.
Part Three
April Is? the Cruelest Month
Chapter
46
I left work around six that Tuesday evening with little to show for ten hours of work. It was as if we’d come to a standstill on every case on our desk. At least there had been no new murders in DC that day, and I gave weary thanks for that as I got into my car to head home.
My cell rang halfway down Pennsylvania Avenue. A miracle. Damon was calling in for the second day in a row.
“Dad?” Damon said in an agitated voice.
“Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”
“One of the school security guards, Dad, he got killed out in the woods behind my dorm last night.”
“Killed?” I said, shocked. The Kraft School was an idyllic place in the middle of nowhere. It was part of why we’d sent him to school there, far away from the street influences that can take a boy down before he’s even started. “How?”
“I don’t know,” Damon said. “Some of the cross-country kids found his body. They said his head was, like, bashed in.”
“Police there?”
“All sorts of them. They’re talking to everyone in the dorm, you know, asking did we hear or see anything.”
“Did you?”
There was a pause before he replied, “Not really. I mean, I thought I heard, like, someone yelling ‘Hey, D-top,’ but I thought it was in my dreams.”
“Hey, D-top?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Damon said, sounding miserable.
“Male? Female?”
He thought about that. “Male, I guess. I just woke up for a bit.”
A murder on the Kraft campus and my son might or might not have heard a male yell “Hey, D-top.” My initial impulse was to go straight there, but I couldn’t. I had no jurisdiction, and my own murder caseload was overwhelming.
I said, “You want me to put in a call to the police up there?”
“No. It’s not like that or anything. It’s just that…”