Cross

over several more transcripts and still found no IDs from the victims.
    Could it be a coincidence? I doubted it. I kept reading.
    Then I was stopped cold by a page in the police notes. A name and more information jumped out at me.
    Maria Cross.
    Social worker at Potomac Gardens.
    A Detective Alvin Hightower, whom I had vaguely known back then—I was pretty sure he was dead now—had written a workup on the rape of a college girl from George Washington University. The attack took place inside a bar on M Street.
    As I continued to read, I was having a hard time breathing. I was remembering a conversation that I’d had with Maria a couple of days before she died. It was about a case she was working on, about a girl who’d been raped.
    According to the detective’s report, the coed had given some kind of description of the rapist to a social worker—
Maria Cross.
He was a white male, a little over six foot, possibly from New York. When he had finished with the girl he had taken a little bow.
    My fingers shaking, I turned the page and checked the date of the initial report. And there it was—
the day before Maria was murdered.
    And the rapist?
    The Butcher.
The mob killer we’d been tracking. I remembered his rooftop bow, his unexplainable visit to my house.
    The Butcher.
    I would bet my life on it.

Chapter 84
    NANA PICKED UP THE PHONE in the kitchen, where the family had gathered to fix supper that night. We all had a task for the meal, from peeling potatoes to making a Caesar salad and setting the table with the good silver. I tensed whenever the phone rang though.
Now what? Had Sampson found something on the Butcher?
    Nana spoke into the receiver. “Hello, sweetheart, how are you? How are you feeling? Oh, that’s good, that’s so good to hear. Let me get him. Alex is right here chopping vegetables like he works at Benihana. Oh, yeah, he’s doing pretty good. He’ll be lots better when he hears your voice.”
    I knew it had to be Kayla, so I took the call out in the living room. Even as I did, I wondered when we had evolved into a family with telephones in just about every room, not to mention the cell phones that Damon and Jannie carried to school these days.
    “So, how
are
you, sweetheart?” I picked up and tried to imitate Nana’s dulcet tones. “I’ve got it. You can hang up in the kitchen,” I added for the peanut gallery listening in, cackling and giggling out there.
    “Hi, Kayla! Bye, Kayla!” chorused the kids.
    “Bye, Kayla,” added Nana. “We love you. Get better real soon.”
    She and I heard a
click,
and then Kayla said, “I’m doing just fine. The patient is doing beautifully. Almost healed and ready to kick some butt again.”
    I smiled and felt the warmth flow through me just hearing her voice, even long distance like this. “Well, it’s good to listen to your butt-kicking voice again.”
    “Yours too, Alex. And the kids and Nana. I’m sorry I didn’t call last week. My father has been under the weather, but he’s coming around now too. And you know me. I’ve been doing some pro bono work in the neighborhood. I just
hate
to get paid, you know.”
    There was a brief pause, but then I filled the space with inane questions about Kayla’s folks and life in North Carolina, where both of us had been born. By this time, I had calmed down some about the unexpected call from Kayla, and I was more myself.
    “So how
are
you?” I asked her. “You really okay? Almost recovered?”
    “I am. I’m clearer on certain things than I’ve been in a while. Had some time to process and reflect for a change. Alex, I’ve been thinking that . . . I might not be coming back to Washington. I wanted to talk to you about it before I told anyone else.”
    My stomach dropped like a runaway elevator in a skyscraper. I had suspected something like this might be coming, but I still buckled from the blow.
    Kayla continued to talk. “There’s so much to do down here. Lots of sick people, of course. And I’d forgotten how nice, how
sane,
this place is. I’m sorry, I’m not putting this . . . saying it very well.”
    I snuck in a light thought. “You’re not real verbal. That’s a problem with you scientists.”
    Kayla sighed deeply. “Alex, do you think I’m wrong about this? You know what I’m saying? Of course you do.”
    I wanted to tell Kayla she was dead wrong, that she should rush back here to DC, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
Why was that?
“All right, here’s the only