CHAPTER 16

YOU COULDN’T ARGUE WITH the logic or the fact that Papillon was very sharp. His English was good enough that he had all but copped to loaning Pearson the money without coming right out and saying it.

And his reasoning was spot-on. Why would anyone who was owed a lot of money kill the person consistently making payments on the debt?

“It would be like a bank manager deciding to kill a mortgage holder,” Mahoney said after we’d both sat for interviews with the supervising special agent in charge of the Bureau’s Baltimore office.

It turned out that twenty-nine-year-old Luis Hernandez, the deceased, had already done five years of hard time in a federal lockup for trying to rob an armory while he was still in the U.S. Navy. According to the multiple warrants out against him, he was also a wife-beater who ran a protection racket for a local gang.

“We went in to talk,” I said in my interview. “Mr. Mahoney clearly identified himself and displayed his credentials plainly. Hernandez just didn’t want to go back to jail. Without a doubt, it was a righteous shoot.”

It did not matter that Papillon and the other five men in the café at the time of the shooting were all known members of organized crime groups. None were armed, and the AA affiliation was real. The meeting was even listed on the local AA website.

It was after dark when we finally finished our statements and started the drive home. Nearing Bowie, Maryland, I realized something. “Aldo Pearson never mentioned his estranged wife’s debt.”

“No, he didn’t,” Mahoney said, taking the exit. “But to hear him tell it, they were in the process of dividing assets. He had to have known about it.”

“Exactly,” I said.

We drove to the address Aldo Pearson had given us. As he’d described, he lived in a small apartment above the garage of a sprawling ranch house about six miles from the home he’d once shared with Agnes.

The big ranch was on a heavily treed lot set well back from the road, ensuring privacy. As we climbed the stairs to the garage apartment, we heard rock music playing—Pearl Jam.

We knocked on the door. There was no answer, so we knocked louder.

“Supervising special agent Mahoney, FBI, Pearson,” he yelled.

Still no answer. He tried the doorknob, which turned. Ned pushed the door open, hand on his pistol, took a look, and froze. “Jesus.”

I stepped in behind him and saw what had stopped him.

Aldo Pearson must have put up a hell of a fight. The place was destroyed: Furniture turned over. Television with a big hole in the screen. Glass coffee table shattered. Cupboards in the kitchen open, the contents smashed on the floor. The sofa cushions slashed and flung aside.

Pearson was bare-chested and strapped to a ladderback chair. He had been tortured and then strangled with wire. His bug eyes stared at us.

“We’re backing out of here,” Mahoney said. “We’re still under review.”

“I agree,” I said. We did, and he pulled the door shut.

We called in the Montgomery County sheriff’s department and the Maryland state police, told them what we knew, and left the scene to their detectives around eight o’clock that evening with the understanding that we would brief them the following day on our interactions with the murdered husband of the murdered driver of the murdered federal judge.

Mahoney finally dropped me off around eight thirty that night. I felt wrung out. I wished him well, exited the car, and saw a wreath on the front door.

It surprised me until I realized it was December 20, only five more days until Christmas and I hadn’t even started to look for presents. In the house, I heard Burl Ives singing “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”

Then other voices started singing it too. I looked into the front room and saw my entire family, including my older son, Damon, back from college for the holidays, sitting around watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and singing along with Burl. Sampson was there too, singing along with his daughter, Willow, on his lap.

Despite the strange and deadly day that I’d had, I got tears in my eyes, more proof I was getting weirdly sentimental as the years passed. I joined in on the last chorus, holding Bree’s hand, then greeted everyone and hugged Damon.

“You tower over me now,” I said.

“Coach said I grew another inch,” Damon said, grinning. “I’m officially on the roster as six foot six and a half inches. Two hundred seventeen.”

Jannie said, “I don’t know how he runs being that heavy.”

Damon said, “I’m just up and down the court hustling—I’m not a world-class four-hundred runner.”

“I’m not world-class yet,” she said.

“I don’t know what else you’d call yourself. Anyway, big as I am, I know I’m never going to the NBA, and I’m cool with that.”

“Never say never,” Nana Mama said.

I learned that there’d been a gas leak at Sampson’s house, so they were staying with us for the next few days while it was being fixed. Willow would sleep in Jannie’s room, John down on the sofa.

“Nana Mama?” Willow said. “Can I get one more Christmas cookie before we finish Rudolph ?”

“It is the Christmas season,” my grandmother said. “Go on. But only one.”

Willow let out a whoop, launched herself off Sampson’s lap, and took off toward the kitchen with all of us laughing.

“She run around like that at Disney World?” Bree asked.

“Constantly,” he said. “Every time she saw a character, she’d go straight over to get her picture taken.”

“Miracle you didn’t lose her. Wasn’t the park packed?”

“Near capacity. But I always knew where she was.”

“How’s that?”

Sampson got up and picked up Willow’s pack, the one he’d had made for her after a terrorist threat in DC; it had special Kevlar inserts that might deflect a bullet or bomb fragment. He unzipped a side pocket and got out what looked like a small, pink car-ignition fob.

He showed it to us. “A company called Jiobit makes it.”

Ali said, “It’s a tracking device.”

“A fairly amazing one,” John said. “It talks to an app on my phone.”

“What’s its range?”

“It will talk to any satellite on earth. Has a three-week charge. She doesn’t even know it’s there and that pack never left her back unless I was holding it.”

“What if she lost the pack?”

“She knows better, and anyway we have two tags.”

Willow returned, munching on a cookie. “What’s next?”

“Bed,” Sampson said firmly.

His little girl looked ready to argue, then nodded. “I’m tired.”

I went in the kitchen and found some leftover fried pork chops with onion-and-sriracha applesauce, a concoction of Nana Mama’s that deserved a place in the recipe hall of fame. Bree followed me in.

“I’m beat,” she said, and yawned. “How’d your day go?”

When I told her, she got angry. “You didn’t think to call and tell me you’d been in a shooting with Haitian gangsters? When I have history with guys like that?”

“I apologize. But they were totally different guys. From Baltimore. And we were fine. It just got crazy there for a minute.”

She came over and hugged me tight. “In the future, promise you’ll call me if you’re involved in a shooting.”

“I hope there isn’t another shooting in my future, but I promise. And how was your day?”

Bree described finding out that two real estate attorneys were murdered after representing the cattle companies in the purchase of large ranches in Colorado and Nevada.

“That’s no coincidence, especially when the two companies are around the corner from each other in Brazil,” I said.

“That’s our thinking,” Bree said. “John and me. But we can’t seem to find anything about them other than the addresses in Brazil.”

I thought about that as I chewed the first delicious bite of my dinner, a little sweet, a lot spicy. I groaned a little.

“It’s my favorite of her creations too,” Bree said. “Any advice on where to go next?”

“I’ll talk to Ned tomorrow, see if we can contact our counterparts down in Brazil and have them take a look into the mysterious cattle companies of Belo Horizonte.”