Page 46

The flared nostrils and curled lip returned. “It’s a nasty life, isn’t it?”

“When was she last here?”

Smoot hesitated.

“The girl was underage,” Sampson growled. “You looking to abet pedophiles after the fact?”

That shook the night manager up. She raised her bony hands in surrender. “I had no idea. She had an Ohio ID. Even had a watermark.”

“An excellent fake. When was she last here?”

“Few days ago. That night when there was all that thunder and lightning.”

Same time Hawk said he was here, Sampson thought. He asked to see security footage from the evening in question.

Smoot gestured at a camera high in the corner of the motel office and said it had died two weeks before and the owner had been balking at paying for a replacement.

The rest of the cameras, however, including one that showed the entire parking lot and the front of the motel, were working. She made a minor stink about showing him the footage without a warrant but finally pulled it up on a laptop.

The security video had a date and running time stamp. Corey McGovern had checked into room 105 on the lower level of the Fall Flower Motel at six fifteen the evening before the Audi went up in flames. She was wearing jeans and a blue rain jacket and pulling a roller overnight bag. Her hair wasn’t in pigtails; it was pulled back from her face, which was heavily made up. She could have passed as much older than she was, especially with a convincing ID.

At seven minutes after seven, Alejandro Rodriguez also arrived at the motel. The former Special Forces operator went to room 212 on the second floor at the far east end of the building and vanished inside.

At seven forty p.m., a dark-haired male wearing black pants, a black shirt, black dress shoes, and a dark ball cap pulled down low parked diagonally across the street, walked the length of the lot, and knocked on the door of room 105. Corey McGovern answered, wearing the black dress she would die in two days later.

Sampson took screenshots of McGovern greeting the man and then fast-forwarded the footage until he left about forty minutes later. The mystery man again had his cap pulled low over his eyes. Sampson watched as he crossed the parking lot and drove off.

Sampson studied the rear of the car in the image. He couldn’t see the license plate clearly because the light seemed to be off. But he peered closely at the video, trying to make out the symbol on the trunk lid. Is that a logo of interlocking circles?

He took a screenshot. He’d have the techs blow up the image, see what they could learn.

Once more Sampson fast-forwarded the footage. At nine p.m. sharp, just as the rain began to fall and the storm winds started to rustle the trees outside the manager’s office, another man ambled in off the street and crossed the parking lot to room 105.

He was a head taller than the first guy, pear-shaped, and wearing gray sweatpants, high-top sneakers, and a red windbreaker with the hood up. Sampson could not make out his face until he knocked on Corey McGovern’s door, stepped back, and tugged off his hood as she opened it.

Now he saw the guy clearly in profile. The girl’s second visitor of the night looked to be much younger than her first, with a baby face and curly sandy-colored hair.

Sampson’s detective instincts went on high alert. He could not see what the client was wearing beneath his windbreaker as he bent to greet Corey and then walked inside.

But Sampson knew in his gut exactly who he was looking at, and he pumped his fist.

“Got you,” he said.

42

DR. SYDNEY AMES HAD argued against Nana Mama leaving the hospital, but once she saw that we were set on taking her home that very evening and that we were not worried about the high cost of her private care, she stepped in and took control.

In a world that too often slowed down when speed was required, it helped to have someone well connected who could grease the wheels and make things happen. Within two hours, delivery trucks were outside our three-story white-shingled house on Fifth Street in Southeast DC.

To give the equipment more space, Damon, Ali, Bree, and I moved furniture around in the living room, so that the deliverymen could carry in a hospital bed and situate it with a view of the kitchen and the TV screen. Dr. Ames herself set up multiple pieces of medical equipment, and after the surgeon finished, two private home-health nurses she knew personally—Bobby Jain and Juanita Jones—arrived and began preparing for my grandmother.

Shortly before eight that evening, Nana Mama arrived from St. Anthony’s in an ambulance but without lights or sirens. She was very weak but in good spirits as she was wheeled into the house.

Aunt Connie Lou and Aunt Hattie were making a late dinner in the kitchen and fussed over her as we waited for the workmen and the aides to finish setting everything up.

“What cooking?” Nana asked in a soft voice.

Connie said, “Spiral ham, mashed sweet potatoes, and a sliced cucumber, avocado, and pepper salad.”