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“Right back to chugging along.”
“And her language?”
“Better, but still broken. ‘Telegraphic,’ as the therapist calls it.”
“Did she eat?”
“She had dinner about an hour ago and then went back to sleep. But she gave us orders to wake her up for a rerun of The Wire at eight.”
“She loves that show,” I said. “I think she’s seen every episode twice.”
“Then we’ll make sure she gets up for it,” Bobby said with a smile. He went back into the great room where the other nurse, Juanita Jones, was recording Nana’s vitals.
“Do we have leftovers?” I asked Bree.
“Enough for a high-school football team,” Bree said. “I’ll get you a plate and meet you in your office where we can talk normally. I want to hear more about the airport.”
I went up to our bedroom and changed into sweatpants and a hoodie. When I opened the door, Bree was coming up the stairs with a plate of chicken, salad, and pasta with pesto and two cold beers.
We climbed together to my attic office and cleared off the desk. I tore into the meal, which was incredible, even reheated. Between bites I described my day from the time John Sampson and I arrived at the airfield to Ned Mahoney’s men taking custody of Hawk around six thirty that evening.
“He’s claiming he was so high on mushrooms, he doesn’t remember blowing up a fuel tank and a plane and almost killing a dozen people?” Bree asked incredulously.
“Exactly,” I said. “Have fun explaining that to a jury.”
“Can you place him at the scene of any of the murders?”
“Not yet. But we will. And you? How’d your day go?”
Bree told me a little more about her conversation with her boss.
“And this Rosalynn thinks the developments are fronts for money laundering?” I asked.
“Among other things,” Bree said. “Those projects are certainly going to be huge sinkholes for cash for a long time. We know numbers can be monkeyed with. And they have already attracted wealthy investors with Russian accents.”
She described meeting Tatiana Volt and Egon Bijan with Jeffrey Frost at the condemned building near where the first body was discovered. I flashed again on the idea that it might have been my brother and felt shaken for a moment.
“So Rosalynn was right about Russian organized crime?” I said finally.
Bree shrugged. “They claim to represent a family business with an address in Wilmington, Delaware. They have no presence on social media, and I’ve found only one reference to Tatiana, two years ago as part of a group rehabbing a building in Philadelphia. Any chance you could run them?”
“I’ll do better,” I said. “I’ll have Ned run them. But honestly? Whatever Frost and Lear and these two are up to feels separate from the murders. I think Hawk’s our man as far as the killings are concerned.”
“I don’t know. There’s something off about them, Alex. I can feel it.”
“And I trust your instincts. I’ll send a note to Ned to run Frost, Lear, Bijan, and Volt before I crash tonight.”
75
MY PHONE STARTED BUZZING on my nightstand at five minutes to six Thursday morning. John Sampson.
I slid out of bed, took the phone into the bathroom, and shut the door. “John.”
“I woke up to a voicemail from Boog. He called me about forty-five minutes ago. Kid was hysterical with fear.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, quote: ‘It’s happened again. Below the bridge. I’m getting the kids out of here before they see—oh God, no!’ And then he hung up. And someone called in a dead body under the ghost ramp. They’ve got Winthrop and Hayes responding.”
