Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,53

thirteen minutes when Mayday walked south out of its view and then returned and packed up his gear to leave was someone renting the city block from Mayday.

It’s him. The man I’ve been tracking. I can feel it like I’ve never felt anything.

“You said the man who rented from Mayday was…a white-boy astronaut?” I ask.

Sperry waves a hand. “Tha’s just us playin’, girl, know’m sayin’.”

“You were joking?” Ciomek asks. “But—I don’t get the joke. Why an astronaut?”

“’Cause of what he said,” says Sperry. “Says he got his self a rental. Says the man got a moon on his face.”

51

BONITA SEXTON, looking slightly like a cartoon character through our Skype transmission, tilts her head as she takes in what I’ve just told her.

“What does that mean, a moon on his face?”

“We don’t know any more than that,” says Elizabeth Ashland, who’s standing next to me and Officer Ciomek inside the old bakery that’s our command center. “It could be a tattoo of a moon. It could be a skin discoloration or a scar.” She shrugs. “It could be a circle, a half-circle, even a crescent shape. Any of those could describe a moon.”

“Run through everything, Rabbit,” I tell Bonita. “Every driver’s-license photo from every license plate we tag from CCTV and tollway cameras. Every image at the airports. Every image captured by local CCTV. Every bit of facial-rec we can get.”

“I’m on it.” Rabbit kills the transmission.

Ashland blows out a sigh. “What are the odds this is a real lead? This is hearsay, from one homeless person to another.” She turns to Officer Ciomek for the answer.

“The part about the moon on his face—I don’t know,” says Ciomek. “But I do know that Mayday owned that part of Broadway. It was his block. He didn’t let anyone else work it. And that surveillance footage tells us that the day before the bombing, he left his spot much earlier than usual. That’s real.”

“And now he’s dead,” I add. “Not from the bomb. That’s also real. And a pretty big coincidence.”

“We can’t confirm that he took cash from someone to rent the spot,” says Ciomek. “But it would have taken something to make Mayday leave his post. He wouldn’t have just surrendered it. And I can’t imagine why Sperry would lie to me about what Mayday told him.”

Ashland peers over our heads, thinking it over. “Why would anyone pay him for that spot?” Ashland asks rhetorically. She looks at me. “It’s our man, isn’t it? Has to be. Surveilling the payday-loan store before he plants the bomb.”

“He paid Mayday for the spot,” I say. “He staked out the place, made his plan, planted the bomb. And he killed Mayday so he couldn’t identify him later.”

I don’t continue. Ashland needs to reach the conclusion herself. It needs to be her idea. If I jump in with my theory that this bombing wasn’t the work of Citizen David, that it was the Darwinian killer I’ve been tracking on my own, I’ll lose all the momentum I’ve gained with her. If I so much as mention my side work, it’s over.

“We can’t confirm his death was a murder,” Ashland says.

You’re getting warm, Elizabeth…

“Not yet, no,” I say.

“I’ll go to the morgue and get Mayday’s belongings, whatever was on him when he died,” says Ciomek.

Ashland nods.

C’mon, Elizabeth, get there.

“We’ll need an autopsy of Mayday,” she says.

Boom.

Finally. At long last, we’ll be able to probe one of his victims, see how he’s killing them, find out what he’s injecting in them.

“That’s a great idea,” I say.

Ashland glances at me, her lips slightly upturned. I may have oversold it with the compliment. She seems to recognize she was being steered. She didn’t get where she is at the Bureau by being dim. I’ll have to keep reminding myself of that.

But for right now, it doesn’t matter. She’s just been roped and tied. I’ve got my autopsy. I’ve got the Bureau officially investigating my killer.

Whether the Bureau knows it or not.

52

ON THE flight back to DC on Wednesday morning, Elizabeth Ashland and I are quiet. We are decompressing, in our own ways, from the carnage we just witnessed. Neither one of us would say it, but there is a certain relief in getting some distance from the mass graveyard, the stench of human death, the anguish on the faces of the rescue workers and the families. There is also guilt at feeling relieved.

But we have done what we needed to do at the crime scene. It’s time for me to