Cross

that, mister. I think you better lookin’ than Sonny Bono. He’s dead, you know?”
    “Whatever,” said Sullivan, and paid his tab, gave the barber a tip, and got the hell out of there.
    Next, he drove over to the Capitol Hill neighborhood in DC.
    He’d always liked the area, found it a turn-on. Most people’s image of the Capitol was the graceful steps and terraces of the west facade. But on the
east
side, behind the Capitol and the Supreme Court and Library of Congress buildings, was a bustling residential neighborhood that he knew fairly well.
I’ve passed this way before.
    The Butcher walked through Lincoln Park, which had an exceptional view of the Capitol dome now that the leaves were falling away.
    He smoked a cigarette and reviewed his plan in front of the somewhat bizarre Emancipation Memorial, which featured a slave breaking out of chains while Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation.
    Lincoln, a good man by most accounts. Myself, a very bad man. Wonder how that happens? he wondered.
    A few minutes later, he was breaking in to a house on C Street. He just knew this was the bitch who had talked about him. He felt it in his bones, in his blood. And soon, he’d know for sure.
    He found Mena Sunderland tucked away in her adorable little kitchen. She was dressed in jeans, an immaculate white tee, scuffed-up clogs, making pasta for one while she sipped a glass of red wine. Cute as a button, he thought to himself.
    “Did you miss me, Mena? I missed you. And you know what? I almost forgot how pretty you are.”
    But I won’t forget you again, darling girl. I brought a camera to take your picture this time. You’re going to be in my prize photo collection after all. Oh, yes you are!
    And he gave her the first cut with his scalpel.

Chapter 81
    I WAS STILL INSIDE THE CHURCH when my cell phone went off, and it was trouble near the Capitol. I said a quick prayer for whoever was in jeopardy, and a prayer that we would catch the killer-rapist soon. Then I left St. Anthony’s on the run.
    Sampson and I rushed to the neighborhood behind the Capitol building in his car with the siren blaring, lights flashing on the rooftop. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung up everywhere by the time we arrived. The scene, the backdrop of important government buildings, couldn’t have been more dramatic, I thought, as Sampson and I hurried up the four stone front steps of a brownstone.
    Is he putting on a show for us? Is he doing it on purpose? Or did it just happen this way?
    I heard a car alarm whining and glanced back toward the street. What a strange, curious sight: police, news reporters, a growing crowd of looky-loos.
    Fear was plainly stamped on many of the faces, and I couldn’t help thinking that this was a familiar tableau of the age, this look of fear, this terrible state of fear that the whole country seemed to be caught up in—maybe the entire world was afraid right now.
    Unfortunately, it was even worse inside the brownstone. The crime scene was already being tightly controlled by somber-faced homicide detectives and techies, but Sampson was let inside. He overrode a sergeant’s objections and brought me along.
    Into the kitchen we went.
    The unthinkable murder scene.
    The killer’s workshop.
    I saw poor Mena Sunderland where she lay on the reddish-brown tile floor. Her eyes were rolled back to the whites, and they seemed pinned to a point on the ceiling. But Mena’s eyes weren’t the first thing I noticed. Oh, what a bastard this killer was.
    A carving knife was stuck in her throat, poised like a deadly stake. There were multiple wounds on the face, deep, unnecessarily vicious cuts. Her top, a white tee, had been torn away. Her jeans and panties had been pulled down around the ankles but hadn’t been stripped off. One of her shoes was on, one off, a pale-blue clog lying on its side in blood.
    Sampson looked at me. “Alex, what are you getting? Tell me.”
    “Not much. Not so far. I don’t think he bothered to rape her,” I said.
    “Why? He pulled down her pants.”
    I knelt over Mena’s body. “Nature of the wounds. All this blood. The disfigurement. He was too angry at her. He told her not to talk to us, and she disobeyed him. That’s what this is about. I think so. We might have gotten her killed, John.”
    Sampson reacted angrily. “Alex, we told her not to come back here yet. We offered her surveillance, protection. What more could we do?”
    I shook my head. “Left her alone maybe. Caught