Criss Cross Read online

“I went down, but I wasn’t completely out,” Forbes had said. “It was like I was paralyzed and looking at him in a nightmare as he dragged me up onto the bed and put an IV in my arm. Then I really went out. For good, and for four days.”

  “Four days?” I said. “No one found you in that motel room?”

  “All I know is that when I woke up, I had a splitting headache, it was the afternoon four days later, and the money was gone.”

  “But you didn’t report it to the police?”

  He looked down and shook his head. “I should have, I know that now, but I was too embarrassed at the time. Here I’d gone off on a rogue investigation and I’d been played by a con artist.”

  “One who took your money and set you up to take the fall for killing six people.”

  He looked up angrily. “I didn’t know that then. I was so disgusted with myself, I decided to just get in my car and drive back to West Virginia. I got there a day later and started to work on the book again. Two days after that, agents were at my door.”

  I thought about that for several minutes. “Did you have the forty-caliber pistol with you when you went to Florida?”

  “No, I took my nine-millimeter, but I know what you’re thinking: How did they get the forty? The guy who knocked me out or someone working with him must have broken into the cabin and found it. That’s my only explanation.”

  “Except there were no prints on the gun other than yours,” I said. “And they found hairs and skin cells matching your DNA on the yacht.”

  “He put that there to frame me!” Forbes said. “M or whoever he was.”

  “You told the Bureau all this?”

  “Every bit of it, but they don’t believe a word.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The overwhelming evidence against me,” he said in a bitter voice. “And who I said I thought M was.”

  “Okay?”

  “You won’t believe it either, Alex. I know I still don’t. But I saw his face when I was in that cloudy nightmare state after the chloroform while he was working to get the IV in me.”

  I saw where this was going. “Are you saying you recognized him?”

  Forbes chewed his lip, looked away, and nodded so slightly that I knew he was doubting his own thoughts.

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath and gave me an even gaze.

  “An old friend of yours,” he said. “Kyle Craig.”

  Chapter

  12

  In our bedroom, after I’d recounted the entire interview, Bree stared at me.

  “Craig? That’s impossible. Craig’s been dead for years, Alex. You saw him die.”

  I nodded. “I did. Right in front of me. On our honeymoon.”

  Kyle Craig was dead. My nastiest opponent was long gone.

  I’d wounded him, and rather than go back to prison, Craig had shot an oxygen tank, which blew up and burned him to bone and ash.

  Sitting there on our bed, I tried not to see Craig die, but it was almost tattooed on my brain. All I had to do was close my eyes to see it.

  “I figure Forbes was hallucinating,” I said. “The effects of the chloroform triggering some deep memory of Craig.”

  “Or Dirty Marty made the whole story up,” Bree said. “He somehow got wind of M and is now playing on your obsession with Kyle Craig.”

  I thought about that.

  Marty Forbes had to have known how fixated I’d been on the FBI agent gone evil. Kyle Craig was a sadistic serial murderer who’d killed Betsey Cavalierre, my girlfriend at the time.

  Bree came around and got into bed.

  I climbed in beside her. “He could have been playing me. But for what? So I could help him get out of prison by convincing federal prosecutors that the man incinerated in front of me had risen from the dead and was now going around calling himself M?”

  “Guilty men have come up with stranger stories,” she said.

  I turned off the light, thinking, Then again, Craig used the alias Mastermind for a time, didn’t he? Is he now M? Could he possibly have survived that blast?

  My rational mind said, No. Absolutely not.

  After a few minutes, Bree was snoring gently. I started to drift off…

  That dog began to bark again, and I snapped wide awake. I was about to get dressed and go have it out with the owner at last when I heard tapping against the window and realized it had started to rain. I figured that would end the barking.

  I was wrong. Twenty minutes later, I was still awake, and the dog was still barking in that damn repeating pattern.

  Finally, I got up and climbed the stairs to my attic office. I closed the window behind my desk, turned on the light, and looked at the boxes stacked waist-high by seven bulging upright filing cabinets. Evidence of old cases, some solved, others not.

  Though I did not want to, I knew where I needed to go—back to the beginning, back to the hunt for Mikey Edgerton, long before M had come into the picture.

  I found what I was looking for in a box labeled KISSY at the bottom of the stack in the right corner of my office, where I thought I’d put it to rest forever. I set the box on the desk but hesitated to open it, wondering if I was wise to dig into this part of my past. A smart part of me said that it was wiser than not digging into it.

  I pulled off the box cover, took out the first file, and almost immediately fell back in time.

  Chapter

  13

  Twelve years before

  In a driving rain on a late May afternoon, John Sampson and I hurried north on Wisconsin Avenue toward La Cravate, an upscale men’s-necktie store that catered to the rich and powerful in Washington, DC.

  I carried a tie in a plastic evidence bag. The tie was silk and in a blue-and-red-paisley print, the kind you might see on a high-powered lobbyist on K Street. At least, that was the impression I got seeing it, brilliantly colored, crisp along the edges, and the knot near perfect around the neck of throttled twenty-six-year-old Cassandra “Kissy” Raider.

  Two homeless men looking for a place to crash for the night had found Ms. Raider’s corpse in a stolen and abandoned panel van in Southeast DC. She had been naked and spread-eagled on the floor, her wrists and ankles lashed with half-inch nylon webbing through eyebolts turned into the walls of the van, which reeked of bleach.

  An autopsy found the killer had drenched Raider’s body in a diluted bleach solution, which had destroyed any DNA evidence that might have been left after she was savagely and repeatedly beaten and raped prior to her strangulation.

  At first, we treated the rape and murder as a one-off, and in the crucial first forty-eight hours, we focused on Raider’s work at the Stallion Club, a strip joint in suburban Maryland, and on her ex-boyfriend, a biker from Roanoke, Virginia, who’d been convicted of some minor crimes in the past.

  But when we ran the basic facts about the Raider case through the FBI’s files, we got seven hits, including one in Boca Raton, Florida, and another in Newport Beach, California.

  Like Kissy Raider, both victims had been petite, buxom blondes and single moms of young children. And like Kissy Raider, both women had been raped, beaten, and then throttled with a fine silk tie.

  None of the ties carried a manufacturer’s mark, which had us stymied for almost a week. But then Sampson started researching shops that specialized in high-end ties, and that was what led us to the Georgetown boutique.

  We went inside and were greeted with the scent of some kind of essential oils misting the air, cedar and something I couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it seemed to put me in a better mood, although that could have been due to just getting out of the pouring rain.

  A fit, balding man in his forties with tan skin stood behind the counter. A second man was stocking the racks upon racks of men’s neckties. He was as tall as the other guy but must have weighed close to three hundred pounds. But you wouldn’t have known that at first glance; the tailoring of his suit hid it until he started moving.

  The one behind the counter fixed us with a What are you two doing in an upscale place like this? stare and said in an English accent, “We take deliveries around back.”

  Sampson pulled himself up to his full height—well over six feet—and shot the man a surly look. Then he dug out his badge and ID while I did the same.

  “We’re not here to make a delivery, Chatsworth,” Sampson said.

  I said, “We’re homicide investigators with Metro PD.”

  The man behind the counter looked indignant and then sputtered, “My name is not Chatsworth, it’s Bernard Mountebank, and we know nothing about any murder.”

  “Nothing at all,” the other man said in a mild Southern accent. He was Nathan Daniels, he told us, and he and Bernard owned the shop.

  “We didn’t say we thought you were involved in a murder,” Sampson growled. “We need your help.”

  “We hoped you could help identify this tie, gentlemen,” I said, holding out the evidence bag. “The manufacturer, anything at all you can tell us.”

  That seemed to somewhat mollify Daniels, but Mountebank still seemed insulted by Sampson having called him Chatsworth. I thought it was kind of funny as well as justified, given that he’d taken us for deliverymen.

  Mountebank didn’t move, but Daniels ambled over to us. The fabric of his suit made swishing sounds as he came closer, interested now.

  I handed him the evidence bag. He looked at the tie, then flipped the bag over.

  “Can I remove it?” he asked.

  “Only if you wear gloves,” Sampson said, holding out a pair of disposables.

  I made a note on the bag that we were opening it, put on my own gloves, pulled back the zipper closure, and handed him the tie, which was still knotted.

  “Hmmmm,” Daniels said,
peering at the tie. He dug out his reading glasses so he could look closer. “Jacquard and Italian, for certain. Very nice indeed. Bernard, I believe this is a Stefano Ricci.”

  Mountebank seemed piqued when he said, “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m not,” Daniels said. “You have a better eye for this kind of thing.”

  That seemed to please Mountebank no end and he quickly came over, giving Sampson a harsh glance as he passed. He donned gloves, studied the tie in some detail, noting the stitching and the weave.

  “It would be easy to think this is a Ricci, but it’s not,” Mountebank said at last. “This is a limited-edition tie from Kiton in Naples, Italy. Very nice. Two, maybe three hundred, retail.”

  “For a tie?” Sampson said.

  “If fashion were your thing, Detective, you would understand.” He sniffed and returned the tie to me.

  “Sell a lot of limited-edition Kitons?” I asked.

  Daniels laughed. “That’s a rather niche market.”

  “Did you carry this specific tie?”

  Mountebank thought about that, then said, “You know, I believe we did. Last year. Sold it to one of our best customers.”

  “Who was that?” Sampson asked.

  “Oh, I’m not at liberty to say. He’s someone who values his privacy.”

  Sampson looked ready to swat the twit but said, “This is a murder investigation. We can come back with a warrant to tear this place apart and seize your computers.”

  Mountebank blanched. “Oh my. Well, Perry Singer, then.”

  His partner looked confused. “Perry?”

  “Most definitely,” Mountebank said, tilting his nose skyward. “He’s a tie fanatic. He just might be your man, Detectives.”

  Chapter

  14

  Nathan Daniels looked up Perry Singer’s address and reluctantly gave it to us. He lived on Cambridge Place in Georgetown, which was only eight blocks away. The rain had let up, so we decided to walk it.

  Mr. Singer lived in a beautiful old Georgian townhome. The sidewalk and stoop were brick, as was the facade of the house. There was no doorbell on the dark green door, just a polished brass knocker with a carving of a rising sun above it.

  Sampson struck the door with the knocker a few times.

  A maid soon opened the door. We told her that we wished to speak with Mr. Singer, and she said he’d just stepped out and that we were lucky that he was in Washington at all rather than Palm Beach or La Jolla, where he also had homes.

  Given that the two other rape-and-murder victims had been found a short distance from those two cities, we were now very interested in talking to Mr. Singer.

  His housekeeper said he’d decided to take a walk after the rain let up and had headed to Georgetown Cupcake on M Street.

  We hustled south and then west to the shop, which was full of kids just out of school and moms with younger children, all of them eager for cupcakes. There were only two men besides us in the establishment, each sitting at a table. One was in his thirties, wearing a gray suit that didn’t fit him very well and a tie that looked like it might have been a clip-on. The other, who had his back to us, wore a sharply tailored blue sport jacket, khaki pants, and blue socks with white polka dots. His hair was jet-black and slicked back with some kind of pomade. This had to be Perry Singer.

  When we got around the table, we discovered a man in his late eighties sipping an espresso and nibbling at a chocolate cupcake he held with shaky hands. He wore a starched white shirt and a bow tie that matched his socks. A fancy cane rested against his thigh.

  He didn’t seem to notice us even when Sampson muttered, “This is supposed to be our suspect? I’ve taken an intense dislike to Bernard Mountebank.”

  “The British have an odd sense of humor,” I said. “Mr. Singer? Perry Singer?”

  The old man started. “Do I know you?” he asked in a soft Southern accent.

  We showed him our badges and IDs and told him we were working on a homicide investigation.

  “Just tying up some loose ends,” Sampson said. “Nothing to be alarmed about.”

  Mr. Singer shrugged. “Okay. How can I help?”

  After showing him the tie in the evidence bag, I said, “Do you own one of these ties? It’s a Kiton, the kind they sell at La Cravate.”

  He fumbled in his breast pocket, found glasses, and put them on. The old man studied the tie and then nodded. “I do own one. Or did. I haven’t seen it in a while. Besides, this style of tie is almost out of fashion these days.”

  “But you said you haven’t seen the tie in a while?” Sampson asked.

  Mr. Singer seemed to find that confusing and then amusing.

  “That’s right, but who knows, it might be in my closet here or in Palm Beach or La Jolla. I have at least four thousand ties in my collection.”

  “So this could be your tie?” I asked.

  “Well, I suppose it could have been stolen from me. But I most certainly did not tie that knot. It’s a four-in-hand, and I’ve always preferred a Pratt or, if I’m feeling particularly jaunty, a Van Wijk.”

  Before I could reply, I happened to glance up to see FBI special agent Kyle Craig coming through the door. He spotted me and appeared taken aback.

  I excused myself and went over. “Kyle?”

  “What are you doing here, Alex?”

  “Interviewing an octogenarian about his ties.”

  Craig curled his lip. “Perry Singer?”

  That surprised me. “Yes.”

  “You sent over by the British guy?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t like that one, that Bernard.”

  “Neither does John. How are you involved?”

  “Behavioral picked up the case now that there are three,” he said quickly. “I was looking at pics of the ties and decided to go to the only tie store that was local.”

  “Great minds think alike.”

  “There anything to him being involved?”

  I shook my head. “Mr. Singer owns a tie that matches the one used to kill Kissy Raider but says he hasn’t seen it in a while. Although that doesn’t mean anything; he evidently has four thousand ties spread across closets in three homes.” I also told him about the knots. “Are the other knots four-in-hand?”

  Craig shrugged. “I don’t know the difference. I just do the one my dad taught me.”

  “The one Nana Mama taught me is a Windsor knot, I think.”

  “Dead end, then?”

  I glanced over at Sampson and saw him shake Mr. Singer’s feeble hand and then pick up the evidence bag.

  “Sure looks that way,” I said.

  Chapter

  15

  We were stalled in the Kissy Raider investigation for another week, and then files and reports came back from labs and in response to requests we’d made to the FBI and various law enforcement agencies in Florida and California. I sat at my desk and read.

  It was interesting to me that each of the three victims had had a bad relationship with the father of her child. Each woman had decided to go off on her own with her young son.

  Althea Marks, the woman found in Newport Beach, had a six-year-old son. Samantha Bell, the victim found in Boca Raton, had a five-year-old boy. Kissy Raider’s son, Max, was five when his mother was strangled to death.

  Kissy’s sister, Crystal, had come north almost immediately to claim her nephew. Crystal had been as forthcoming with information as she could be, given that her sister had run away from home at sixteen to be with Ricco, her biker boyfriend, who’d “treated her like crap and knocked her up.”

  Crystal said that once her sister had seen Ricco’s true colors, she’d walked out on him and gone to a shelter to start a new life. And she was proud of it, even if she’d had to work in places like the Stallion Club to support her son.

  I checked to see if the other two women had worked in strip joints, but they hadn’t. Althea Marks had been a waitress in various restaurants for years; her last stint was at a burger joint in Laguna Niguel, California.

  Samantha Bell had worked in everything from retail to construction to bartending at a Hooters.

  To my surprise, the Hooters was in Laurel, Maryland. According to a report I got from the Florida detectives working the case, Ms. Bell had been in the Washington, DC, area three years before. She’d left the job at Hooters ten weeks prior to her strangulation.