“The man driving that car looked just like Kyle Craig.”
“Oh, c’mon, Alex,” Mahoney said, groaning. “Get over it. The man is dead.”
Sampson said, “You killed him, Alex.”
“I know! I know! At the very least, whoever was driving that BMW had an uncanny resemblance to what I imagine Craig might have looked like... had he...”
They both reacted with squints.
“Come again?” Sampson said.
“That’s it,” I said. “That guy looked like a pre-op Kyle Craig who’d aged. You know, like when we take photographs of people and have computers age them? But think about it. The real Craig had his face completely rebuilt by that plastic surgeon in Florida so he could impersonate an FBI agent before I figured it out and killed him.”
They were quiet for a moment.
Then Mahoney said, “Unless that wasn’t the real Craig you killed.”
“My head aches,” Sampson said. “Is that even possible?”
“No,” I said. “It was Kyle Craig who died that night. The guy I saw could have been him before the facial work. Even his voice sounded like Craig’s.”
“What, you had a chat during a car chase?” Mahoney said.
“He yelled out the window so loud, it could have been amplified: ‘M said you’d never learn, Cross!’ He had the same kind of drawl Craig used.”
“And then he threw the blood balloon at you?” Sampson said.
“Correct.”
“What the hell is this sick bastard up to?” Mahoney said.
“Sick bastards, plural,” Sampson said. “If Pseudo-Craig is to be believed, then M told him you would never learn.”
“Pseudo-Craig,” I said, and I smiled. “I like that. And correct.”
To my relief, John smiled back.
The forensics team showed up and peeled off and bagged several strips of blood before giving us the go-ahead to turn on Sampson’s hose and wash off the rest.
“You don’t think I’m nuts, do you?” I asked Mahoney.
“About seeing Craig? Nah. You say you saw someone who could have been his pre-op older brother, I believe you. Now I have to go home and get some sleep.”
“I appreciate it, Ned.”
“Anytime, my friend.”
We watched him go.
Sampson said, “Beer?”
“Definitely.”
He went to a fridge in his garage, got two bottles, and handed me one. I took a long draw off it, loving the cold pouring down my throat.
Lowering the bottle, I said, “I was on my way here to see you when Pseudo-Craig splattered me.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. I was upset and wanted to apologize again in person. I don’t take our friendship or brotherhood for granted. It will never happen again.”
Sampson’s head bobbed before he looked me in the eyes. “We’re good.”
“Thank you,” I said, holding out my beer. “I need everything about you in my life, John, now more than ever.”
He clinked it, said, “Ditto, Alex.”
Chapter 57
Around one the next afternoon, I hurried into security at the visitors’ entrance of the Alexandria detention center. Fairfax sheriff’s deputy Estella Maines was on duty.
“Dirty Marty again?”
“Mr. Forbes, yes, please.”
“Popular. You’re the third visitor he’s had today.”
She buzzed open the steel door. Another deputy led me to a booth, where I waited a good ten minutes before the disgraced FBI agent shuffled in. He had two days’ growth of beard and was shakier than I remembered, almost frail in the way he sat down opposite me.
Forbes stared at me for a long moment. “Thank you for coming,” he said finally in a strained, hoarse voice.
“I wish we could have done this on the phone.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“Marty, I’ve got fifteen minutes.”
He sat forward, hands clasped as if in prayer, his expression intense. “Guess who paid me a visit this morning.”
“I heard you had two visitors this morning.”
He nodded. “My lawyer, then an old friend of ours.”
“Who was that?”
“Kyle Craig.”
My stomach soured. “He’s dead.”
“Then he’s risen. Like Lazarus. I’m telling you, Cross, the son of a bitch was sitting right there where you are not four hours ago.”
My skin crawled, and I shivered. I said, “It’s not Craig. He’s dead.”
Forbes got upset. “Cross, you’ve got to listen to—”
“Did he look exactly like he did the last time you saw him?”
He settled down. “No. He was older than I remembered, but we all are.”
“He told you he was Kyle Craig?”
“He didn’t have to. He just smiled at my reaction to him being there, then he pulled out a handkerchief and used it to pick up the phone. And easy as can be in that drawl of his, he said, ‘Been a long time, Marty.’ ” Forbes said he was dumbstruck because this was no ghost. The man was real, the appropriate age, and amused.
“Did you call him by that name? Craig?”
“I called him Kyle. I think I gasped and said it out loud.”
“What did he do?”
“He just kept smiling at me, and then he laughed a bit like he was hearing a joke in his head. I don’t understand how it could be him. After all these years.”
“It is not Craig,” I said. “What did this guy — let’s call him Pseudo-Craig — want?”
“He wanted to give me and you a message.”
“The two of us?”
“That’s right. A message from M.”
I sat up straighter. “What’s the message?”
“ ‘You’ll never learn.’ ”
“That’s it?”
“That’s exactly what I said. But he smiled at me, hung up, and walked out.”
I stared at him. “ ‘You’ll never learn’?”
“I don’t know what he meant. You believe me, don’t you, Cross?”
I thought of the blood balloon hitting my windshield right after that amplified voice had boomed out a similar message.
“Cross?”
I stood up. “I believe you, Marty. I just need to check on a few things.”
Chapter 58
I found Mahoney and Sampson eating cheeseburgers in a booth at Ned’s favorite saloon on Capitol Hill. I slid a manila envelope to the center of the table.
“Pseudo-Craig paid a visit to Marty Forbes at the Alexandria detention center earlier. A deputy there helped me get some stills from the security footage.”
“Really? Why Forbes?” Ned asked as he drew out the pictures. He put on his reading glasses and studied the stills, his eyebrows rising, then handed two of them to Sampson. “Jesus, you weren’t kidding, Alex,” Mahoney said, shaking his head. “This guy looks exactly like an older Kyle Craig. Same sandy-blond hair, same haircut.”
“Uncanny,” John said.
“Check out the last page. There’s a copy of his ID.”
Mahoney flipped ahead and peered at the Pennsylvania driver’s license.
“Gordon Harris, twenty-seven Flintlock Lane, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Looks legit.”
“Almost legit. There was a Gordon Harris who lived at twenty-seven Flintlock Lane in Lancaster until he was found strangled to death in his garage five months ago.”
“With a tie?” Sampson asked.
“Piano wire. I haven’t talked to the homicide investigators up there yet, but I’m assuming his driver’s license was missing.”
Mahoney thought about that. “Why did you visit Forbes?”
I explained the message from M, and Forbes’s contention that someone with the same initial had set him up for the deaths of the sex traffickers off the coast of Florida.
“You never told me that,” Mahoney said.