digging into his past.
When we were able to place him in the vicinity of six of the eight victims around the times of their deaths, a judge granted us a search warrant. Which had led us to Edgerton’s apartment that day.
“I’m not seeing any trophies,” Sampson said.
“I know,” I said. “But he is our man. I know it in my gut.”
“I think so too. But he’s not keeping his trophies here.”
“Probably not,” I said and went into the bathroom.
The place was spotless for a man living alone. On the wall hung a photograph showing a younger Edgerton and his family on a sailboat, all of them beaming.
The whole family knew Mikey was a psycho even when he was that age, I thought. Mom and Dad had already bought off three young women by the time this picture was taken.
It made me angry to think that unless we found some evidence, and soon, this guy would get away with rape and murder again. At the very least, if we didn’t find something, it would be more difficult to obtain search warrants for other places he might have used to store evidence of his cruelty.
Before I knew exactly what I was doing, I pulled out a small plastic bag. In it was a single strand of Kissy Raider’s hair. I was drawing it out of the bag when Sampson came into the bathroom. He looked at the bag and the strand of hair.
“He’s hidden the trophies somewhere else,” I said, and I let the hair fall.
John didn’t say anything for several long moments. Then he said, “I’ll have forensics work in here next.”
CHAPTER 63
Present day
IN MY ATTIC OFFICE THAT morning, I stared without emotion at an old copy of the lab report stating that the hair I’d dropped matched Kissy Raider’s. I closed the file and opened another that contained a copy of that same lab report as supporting evidence for search warrants at all homes and businesses owned by Mikey Edgerton’s family.
I found an evidence log noting various items discovered beneath the floorboards of Mikey’s room in a vacation home the Edgerton family maintained at a lake in western Maryland. I scanned the list until I saw:
Eight (8) locks of blond hair in specimen bags.
Eight photographs, Polaroid, of eight women, all blond.
The actual photographs weren’t in my files, but I remembered them as clearly as if I’d seen them yesterday. In every one, including the picture that showed Kissy Raider, each doomed woman was alive, bound, gagged, and terrified.
I shut the file and then the box, not needing to look further, not needing to see the DNA results that linked the eight locks of hair to Edgerton’s eight victims.
And the strand of hair I dropped? I had not lost a wink of sleep over it. Ever.
Mikey Edgerton raped and killed those women. Of that there was no doubt.
You might ask if I believed the ends justified the means, and I’d answer that in this case, yes. The families of Kissy Raider and Edgerton’s other victims got justice when he was convicted, and they got more justice when he opted for the electric chair. And the world, in my opinion, was made a safer place.
I’d picked up a burn phone the day before. A text came in over it from Sampson.
Wake the chief. She’s not answering. Bring her and meet me at Seventeenth and R Southeast. She’s going to want to see this.
CHAPTER 64
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, BREE AND I left her car and walked toward two patrol cars and barriers set up at Seventeenth and R in Southeast DC.
Sampson hurried over to us.
“How many victims?” Bree asked. The sidewalks were empty, but people, many still in their pajamas and robes, were looking out their windows at us.
“Six,” Sampson said. “And we haven’t brought in the dogs yet to look for more.”
I saw Bree’s shoulders adjust to the weight of that. Six victims. Sampson led us to a brick building midway down the block, once a small job-printing facility but now abandoned and condemned, with a chain-link fence around it. The windows were all gone, replaced by plywood that had been spray-painted with graffiti.
Two-by-fours had been pried off the double front doors, which sagged open. We went inside and were hit by the smell of stale urine, feces, and body odor.
The place was trashed. John seemed uninterested in anything inside. He went straight through the building and out the back onto a parking lot of cracked pavement.
On the far side of the lot,