The Devils Teardrop

Cemetery took up a huge area on the west side of the Potomac. The area around it must be saturated with granite dust.
    But Parker pointed out: “It’s not near any industrial sites. Nothing with significant pollution.”
    Then Lukas saw it. “There!” She pointed a finger, tipped with an unpolished but perfectly filed nail. “Gravesend.”
    Tobe Geller highlighted the area on the map, enlarged it.
    Gravesend . . .
    The neighborhood was a part of the District of Columbia’s Southeast quadrant. Parker had a vague knowledge of the place. It was a decrepit crescent of tenements, factories and vacant lots around Memorial Cemetery, which had been a slave graveyard dating back to the early 1800s. Parker pointed to another part of Gravesend. “Metro stop right here. The unsub could’ve taken the train directly to Judiciary Square—City Hall. There’s a bus route nearby too.”
    Lukas considered it. “I know the neighborhood—I’ve collared perps there. There’s a lot of demolition and construction going on. It’s anonymous too. Nobody asks any questions about anybody else. And a lot of people pay cash for rent without raising suspicion. It’d be the perfect place for a safe house.”
    A young technician near them took a phone call and handed the receiver to Tobe Geller. As the agent listened to the caller his young face broke into an enthusiastic smile. “Good,” he said into the phone. “Get it to the document lab ASAP.” He hung up. “Get this . . . Somebody got a videotape from the Mason Theater shooting.”
    “A tape of the Digger?” Cage asked enthusiastically.
    “They don’t know what it’s of exactly. Sounds like the quality’s pretty bad. I want to start the analysis right away. Are you going to Gravesend?”
    “Yep,” Parker said. Looked at his watch. Two and a half hours until the next attack.
    “MCP?” Geller asked Lukas.
    “Yeah. Order one.”
    Parker recalled: a mobile command post. A camper outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance equipment. He’d worked in one several times, analyzing documents at crime scenes.
    “I’ll have a video data analyzer installed,” Geller said, “and get going on the tape. Where will you be?”
    Lukas and Parker said simultaneously, “There.” They found they were pointing at the same vacant lot near the cemetery.
    “Not many apartments around there,” Cage pointed out.
    Parker said, “But it’s close to the stores and restaurants.”
    Lukas glanced at him and nodded. “We should narrow down the search by canvassing those places first. They’ll have the most contact with locals. Tobe, pick up C. P. and Hardy and bring ’em with you in the command post.”
    The agent hesitated, a dubious look on his face. “Hardy? We really need him?”
    Parker had been wondering the same thing. Hardy seemed like a nice enough guy, a pretty good cop. But he was way out of his depth in this case and that meant he, or somebody else, might get hurt.
    But Lukas said, “If it’s not him the District’ll just put somebody else on board. At least we can control Hardy. He doesn’t seem to mind sitting in the back seat.”
    “Politics suck,” Cage muttered.
    As Geller pulled on his jacket Lukas said, “And that shrink? The guy from Georgetown? If he’s not at headquarters yet have somebody drive him over to Gravesend.”
    “Will do.” Geller ran for the elevator, where he was, as he’d predicted, thoroughly searched.
    Lukas stared at the map of Gravesend. “It’s so damn big.”
    “I’ve got another thought,” Parker said. He was thinking back to what he’d learned about the unsub from the note. He said, “We think he probably spent time on a computer, remember?”
    “Right,” Lukas said.
    “Let’s get a list of everybody in Gravesend who subscribes to an online service.”
    Cage protested, “There could be thousands of ’em.”
    But Lukas pointed out, “No, I doubt it. It’s one of the poorest parts of the city. Computers’d be the last thing people’d spend money on.”
    Cage said, “True. Okay, I’ll have Com-Tech get us a list.”
    “There’ll still be a lot of territory to cover,” Lukas muttered.
    “I’ve got a few other ideas,” Parker said. And walked to the elevator door, where he too was diligently searched like a suspected shoplifter by the humorless guards.
    * * *
    Kennedy paced in a slow circle around the dark green carpet in his office.
    Jefferies was on his cell phone. He clicked it