Cross - James Patterson [55]
We spent the next hour inside, using crime-scene photos and the bloodstains still in the carpet to re-create what might have happened. It didn’t give us any concrete connection to the other attacks, but it was a start.
When we left, we rode southwest into Georgetown, taking the most logical route to Lisa Brandt’s neighborhood. By now, it was around midnight. Neither of us felt like stopping yet, so we did a full tour of the case, riding by each of the known rape sites in chronological order. They weren’t that far apart.
At 2:30 a.m. we were in a booth at an all-night coffee shop. We had crime files spread out on the table and were reading them over, too revved up to stop, too tired to go home.
This was my first chance to really get into the Benny Fontana file. I had read the police and ME’s reports several times. Now I was looking over the list of items taken from the apartment. On my fourth or fifth time through, my eyes stopped on one item in particular: a torn-off corner of a white foil-lined envelope. It had been found under the sofa, only a few feet from Fontana’s body. Speaking of feet, or a lack of them.
I sat up. These are the moments you hope for in an unsolved case.
“We have to go somewhere.”
“You’re right. We have to go home,” Sampson said.
I called to the waitress, who was half-asleep at the counter. “Is there a twenty-four-hour drugstore somewhere around here? It’s important.”
Sampson was too tired to argue. He followed me out of the coffee shop and around the corner, up a few blocks to a brightly lit Walgreens. A quick scan of the aisles inside and I found what I was looking for.
“Mena Sunderland said the pictures she saw were Polaroids.” I ripped open a box of film.
“You have to pay for that first,” a clerk called from the front. I ignored him.
Sampson was shaking his head. “Alex, what the hell are you doing?”
“The evidence list from the Fontana murder scene,” I said. “There was a white foil-lined envelope. A piece of one anyway.”
I pulled the new envelope out of the box, tore off a corner, and held it up. “Just like this.”
Sampson started to smile.
“He took pictures of Benny Fontana after he cut him up. It’s the same guy, John.”
Chapter 73
I WORKED A LONG, LONG DAY, but the next night, I was grounded.
Nana had a weekly reading class she was teaching at the First Baptist-run shelter on Fourth Street, and I stayed home with the kids. When I’m with them, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. The problem, sometimes, is just getting me there.
I played chef for the night. I made my and the kids’ favorite, white-bean soup, along with a chopped Cobb salad, and I’d brought home some nice fresh cheddar bread from the bakery next to my office. The soup tasted almost as good as Nana’s. Sometimes I think she has two versions of every recipe—the one in her head and the one she shares with me, minus some key secret ingredient. It’s her mystique, and I doubt it has changed much in the last half century.
Then the kids and I had a long-overdue session with the punching bag downstairs. Jannie and Damon took turns pummeling leather, while Ali ran his trucks around and around the basement floor, which he declared was I-95!
Afterward we migrated upstairs for a swimming lesson with little brother. Yes, swimming. It was Jannie’s concoction, inspired by Ali’s reluctance to get into the bathtub. Never mind that it was even harder to get him out of the bath once he got started. That distinction was lost on him, and he fussed every single time, as if he were allergic to clean. I was skeptical about Jannie’s idea until I saw how it worked.
“Breathe, Ali!” she coached him from the side. “Let’s see you breathe, puppy.”
Damon kept his hands under Ali’s belly while Ali lay facedown on top of the water, mostly blowing bubbles and splashing around. It was hilarious, but I didn’t dare laugh, for Jannie’s sake. I sat at a