Muttering profanities under my breath, I pulled my jacket over my head and ran out into the pouring rain.
FOURTEEN
I drove home with the heat on full-blast. By the time I got to Annapolis my hair was dry, but my wool jacket smelled like wet dog. It would need a couple of trips to the dry cleaner before it could be restored to anything resembling its former glory.
A quick look in the hall mirror only confirmed what I suspected: I not only smelled like wet dog, I looked like a chew toy the dog had been gnawing on for a while.
Paul was in the basement office, grading papers. By the time he’d laid down his red pencil and come upstairs to the kitchen to join me in a glass of wine, I’d brushed the tangles out of my hair and fluffed it up at bit so I didn’t feel like such a freak.
‘What did you get up to today?’ I asked as I handed him a glass of Chablis.
‘Oh, nothing.’ The man was positively twinkling.
‘Liar!’
‘A guy showed up today, asking for you.’
‘Oh?’ I grabbed a pretzel out of a bag I’d left open on the table and took a bite.
‘He said he understood you had found a package on the Metro that belonged to him.’
I stopped in mid-nibble. ‘He what?’
‘I told him you weren’t home.’
I pointed at the kitchen table with the pretzel. ‘Sit.’ When we were both sitting down, I asked, ‘Do you think it was Skip?’
‘No. He introduced himself as Jim Hoffner.’
‘Hoffner, Hoffner. Why does that name sound familiar? Do we know any Hoffners?’ I took a bite of pretzel, chased it with a gulp of wine. ‘Please don’t tell me that you gave him Lilith’s box!’
Paul reached out and stroked my arm. ‘Of course not. Mostly because he didn’t look at all like the guy on the train as you described him to me. So, I told Hoffner, sorry, you weren’t home, and that I didn’t know where you’d put the package. Which is perfectly true.’
‘Was he in a wheelchair? On crutches? Limping?’
‘No, and I found that most peculiar, Watson. The way he sashayed down the steps was just a tad too spry for someone who less than a month ago had his lower body pinned under a couple of tons of twisted steel.’
‘Can you describe the guy for me?’
‘Better than that. I managed to snap a picture of him with my cell phone.’
‘Clever boy! How did you do that?’
‘Pure dumb luck. I’d just finished checking in with Emily when the doorbell rang, so I had the phone in my hand. When Hoffner left, I knew he’d have to turn one way or the other on the sidewalk, so when he headed up toward Maryland Avenue, I was able to get off a couple of shots through the living-room window.’
Paul slipped his iPhone out of the breast pocket of his shirt and thumbed the screen on. A few taps later, he turned the screen in my direction. There, in profile, was a guy I’d never laid eyes on before.
He was tall, at least six feet, big-boned, but not heavy. He kept his dark hair closely trimmed and was already working on a five o’clock shadow. ‘What color were his eyes?’ I asked my husband.
‘You think I gaze deeply into the eyes of other men?’
‘Paul!’
‘They were brown.’
‘Hmmm,’ I mused. ‘Brown hair, brown eyes, khaki pants and a brown jacket. I’ll bet his shoes and socks are brown, too. What we have here is Mysterious Mocha Man.’
Using my thumb and forefinger, I flicked the image to enlarge it. Whoever this man was, he was not the man whose hand I had held on the doomed train. ‘This guy is definitely not Skip.’
‘I didn’t think he was. The absence of a full-body cast was a bit of a clue.’
‘But why would he claim to be the guy I helped on the train when he wasn’t? Whoever he is, he’d have to know that I’d realize he wasn’t Skip.’
‘Ah yes,’ Paul said. ‘But once I told him you weren’t home, the danger of being recognized was past. Maybe he thought I’d simply hand over the bag and he could leave, and you’d never be the wiser.’
‘Maybe.’ I studied the image again, flicked it until the subject’s face filled the screen. Something clicked. ‘I know why this guy looks vaguely familiar!’ I turned the screen in Paul’s direction, hooting in triumph. ‘He’s that guy on late-night TV.’ I waggled my fingers and made mysterious woo-woo noises. ‘Dark, rain-soaked highways and cars careening out of control. Kee-runch! Got a telephone? Got a lawyer!’
Paul slipped the phone out of my fingers. Illuminated by the light from the screen, I watched his eyes widen. ‘By golly, I think you’re right. Hoffner’s one of those ambulance chasers.’
‘Do you think he’s working for Skip?’ I wondered.
Paul turned his iPhone face down on the table. ‘Could be, but why didn’t he say so, then?’
‘I don’t know.’ I lowered my head, resting my forehead against the tabletop. ‘God, I’m tired.’
Paul got up from his chair and began to massage the tension out of my shoulders. ‘Let’s rustle up some dinner then, cowgirl, and talk about it in the morning.’
‘Did the guy leave a card?’ I mumbled as Paul worked his magic on the muscles in my neck.
‘No, he said he’d call again. But I know how you can reach him, if you want.’
‘How?’
‘One-eight-hundred-GOTALAW. If you’ve got a telephone, Hannah, you’ve got a lawyer.
FIFTEEN
The next morning, around ten, I telephoned the Ellicott City offices of Hoffner, Smith and Gallagher – world headquarters of the Got a Telephone? Got a Lawyer! guys – and asked to speak to James Hoffner. A secretary took my number and promised she’d have him call me back.
While I waited, I poured a cup of coffee and flipped on the TV where I learned from CNN, to my horror, that the body of another young woman had just been discovered.
Earlier the previous morning, a young man walking his dog on the Mount Vernon Trail north of Reagan Airport near Gravelly Point had found Juliet Henderson’s body behind the Porta-Potties. Like Meredith Logan, the twenty-four-year-old pharmacy technician had been strangled. Furthermore, the reporter said, another woman had been attacked a day earlier on a jogging trail in Rock Creek Park, but had beaten off her attacker using her aluminum water bottle. Police were hoping the Rock Creek victim could identify her assailant.
A police sketch of a ‘person of interest’ filled the screen. Clean-shaven, the suspect wore a ball cap pulled low over his forehead; a pair of dark glasses hid his eyes. He could have been anybody: the guy ahead of me in line at the gas station, the ticket taker at Orioles Park, even my nattily dressed son-in-law, Dante, when he was slumming.
Speculation was mounting that the three crimes were linked, the work of a serial killer.
The two murders and the attempted murder resurrected the media frenzy surrounding the Chandra Levy case. Levy, a twenty-four-year-old intern for California congressman Gary Condit, disappeared on May 1, 2001, while jogging in DC’s Rock Creek Park. The young woman’s body wasn’t discovered until more than a year later. Now, as then, the public was demanding action, and the press was stirring the pot.
When Paul came home for lunch, I was still sprawled on the sofa in front of the TV with the remote balanced on my chest. ‘Another murder, Paul. It’s really distressing. They’re saying the girls had been clotheslined and dragged into the bushes. What the hell does that mean – clotheslined?’
‘It’s a wrestling move,’ he explained. ‘You come running at someone with your arm straight out at your side. If your opponent is running, too, you can knock them for a loop.’
I shivered. ‘Ideal mugging technique for a jogging trail, then, isn’t it?’