“Okay. And the female mind?”
“Women are amazing!”
I grinned. “I’ll agree with that wholeheartedly. But why?” She used her index finger to draw imaginary circles around her head. “The female mind can focus on many things at once. My teacher said it’s like juggling. Where men tune out everything but the one thing they’re working on, women can hear it all, smell it all, and see it all. And get it all done!”
“Except when they’re sleeping.”
She laughed. “Okay, except when they’re sleeping.”
“I’ll admit, you know your stuff. If you see your brother trying to multitask, please tell him about the male brain and stop him. Okay?”
“You think he’ll listen?”
“Probably not,” I said. I leaned over to hug her. “I missed you, baby.”
“Missed you too, Dad,” she said, and she yawned. “I don’t know why I feel so tired.”
“Get to sleep early tonight.”
She nodded but seemed concerned about something.
As I was leaving the room, she called after me, “My first out-door meet’s Tuesday afternoon.”
“Already in the calendar of absolutely must-dos,” I said, heading into the kitchen.
My ninety-something grandmother, an avid foodie, was stirring something in a deep pan on the kitchen stove.
“I don’t know what it is, but it smells awful good in here.”
“New chicken recipe,” she said, tapping the spoon on the side of the pan.
“Dad!” Ali called from the room beyond the kitchen. “Check this out.”
Nana said, “He’s been dying to show you some mountain-bike video, and you won’t eat until he does.”
I held up both hands in understanding. My youngest child, Ali, was ten, smart as a whip, and always into something new. And when he got into something new, he was like a terrier — he wouldn’t let go.
Ali’s latest interest was mountain biking. It had actually begun last year when a friend had lent him one, and he’d asked for a bike for Christmas.
We made sure he got one because, unlike his older sister, Ali had never been known to exert himself physically if he didn’t have to. But something about the bike had captured his imagination, and he rode it all the time now, even in the cold and snow.
Ali was on the floor, stretched out in front of his laptop, when I walked in.
“You’re late,” he said, sounding put out.
I held up my hands. “Beyond my control. You ride today?”
He nodded. “The usual way by the Tidal Basin.”
Bree and I often ran that route. It was safe and well traveled. I’d okayed him to use it if he wanted to go out for a ride on his own as long as he got permission first and it wasn’t too early or too late. “You wanted to show me something?”
He hit a key on his laptop. The screen came to life, showing the helmet-camera feed of a mountain biker poised high above a sprawling city.
“Where is this?” I asked.
“Lima, Peru,” he said. “You won’t believe it.”
The guy riding the bike took off and immediately went down an impossibly steep, covered staircase. Then he shot out into sunlight and he was on a wall about two feet wide with a big drop on either side.
Crowds of people watched the rider skim along the wall to the end and launch into the air. He dropped a good twenty feet and landed on a dirt path on a hill so steep, I thought he was going to go over the handlebars and tumble to his death. But he punched the landing, cut left, crossed a narrow wooden bridge, hit another bump, soared again, and landed on another staircase. The insanity went on for a good four minutes before the rider pulled over and started laughing. The video stopped.
“Wasn’t that amazing?” Ali asked.
“What was that?”
“Urban-downhill mountain biking!”
“Wow,” I said. “A new sport every day.”
“I’m going to do that someday,” he vowed.
“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Nana said from the kitchen. “Alex, your dinner’s ready.”
Chapter 5
Instead of focusing on Edgerton’s execution, the strangulation of Mrs. Nixon, or the latest message from M, I savored Nana’s fantastic pesto and chicken on black-bean pasta, a dish that I told her had to be a multiple repeat.
Ali wandered through, his laptop under his arm.
“Bed?” I asked.
He yawned and nodded. “Dad, do you have Wickr?”
“Uhh, I don’t think so.”
“It’s this cool messaging app for, like, spies.”
“Okay?”
“It has military-grade encryption,” he said earnestly. “We could text each other and no one would know because it has this self-destruct feature.”
“The phone self-destructs?”
“No,” he said, his nose wrinkling. “The message. Or telegram, they call it. They vanish after a couple of minutes. Real good for spying, right?”
“If you’re on your phone when you’re spying, I would think so.”
“You want me to put it on your phone? It’s easy, and we could, you know—”
“Talk like spies?”
He grinned and nodded.
“Let me think about it,” I said, and I kissed him good night.
“Dad? If urban-downhill became an Olympic sport, I think I’d be good at it.”
I smiled at the way his mind swung from one obsession to the next. “I think you’ll be good at whatever you love to do.”
After Nana went to bed, I cleaned up and went into the front room. Jannie was long gone. I tried to watch a basketball game. When I went upstairs, it was almost midnight.
Bree was already dead asleep when I slipped between the sheets. Despite everything that had happened that day, sleep came for me.
But just as I was dozing off, I heard a dog barking in an irritating pattern: three deep barks, a pause, and then two or four barks of higher pitch. The window was open. I got up, closed it, and latched it, but that only muffled the barking.
This had been going on for almost a month now, but I hadn’t had the time to find the owners and complain. And I was in no mood to do it that night either. I put in earplugs and turned on a white-noise app on my phone.
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want it to, but my mind swung toward M and what I knew of him, all of it scanty and contradictory.
There was only one indisputable fact about M, I thought as I fell asleep — the note he’d left with the strangled corpse of Mrs. Nixon was not the first time he had directly taunted me.
It was the fourth time.
In twelve years.
Chapter 6
Ali cross slipped into his father’s bedroom around seven the next morning, a Saturday. Bree was already up and downstairs.
Ali went over to where his father lay snoring and shook his shoulder lightly. Alex startled and sat up, confused.
“Want to go for a run?” Ali asked. “I’ll ride my mountain bike.”
His father lay back on his pillow and groaned. “I hardly slept, pal. I don’t think my body’s going to be up for that this morning.”
Ali was disappointed, but he kissed his dad on the cheek and said, “Get some sleep. We’ll go next Saturday.”
Alex smiled, and his eyes drifted shut.
Ali found Bree downstairs, drinking a coffee and dressed for work.
“You don’t want to run either?” he asked.
“Not today,” she said. “I have a desk to clear.”
“I’m going to ride the usual route, okay? And I’ll take my cell phone.”
“Did you ask your dad?”
“He’s in a coma.”
Bree smiled in spite of herself. “I’ll tell Nana where you are when she gets up.”
Ali grinned. He hadn’t expected to get approval so easily.
But then again, he was ten, almost eleven, wasn’t he? And in the sixth grade, a full grade ahead of most kids his age. He knew how to take care of himself.