Chapter 16
CHAPTER
I tried to follow Maria’s suggestion about looking at my work from a different perspective, spending time with the cold hard facts, the proven clues, then trying to extrapolate possibilities from them.
We also searched for evidence from other sources, including the FBI. From my research days, I knew a special agent over there, Ellen Bovers, whom I had interviewed several times.
I called Ellen and asked if there was a security camera overlooking the intersection where the Chain Bridge met the Canal Road. She checked, said there were CCTV cameras on both ends of the bridge and indeed on all the other bridges connecting the District to Virginia and Maryland.
I gave her a six-hour time frame and asked if she could get me video footage from the Chain Bridge camera on the Washington side. Bovers told me she’d try.
Despite that effort and others, it wasn’t until six days after Conrad Talbot’s body was found that we started to break through. That morning, Abby Howard’s doctors gave me and Sampson the okay to ask her a few questions.
Her mother, Lisa, and her father, U.S. Marine colonel and judge advocate general Marc Howard, met us in the visitors’ area at the hospital. They had told Abby about Conrad’s death the day before, and it had not gone well.
“We should have waited,” Colonel Howard said, sighing. “That’s on me. But I didn’t want her to find out from anyone but us, you know?”
“I can appreciate that,” I said.
“Either of you detectives have kids?”
“I do,” I said. “A toddler and another one on the way. I promise we will be extra-sensitive with your daughter.”
We found Abby on her side, her back to the door, monitors beeping, her head wrapped up like a swami’s.
“Abby?” I said when I reached the foot of her bed.
“Go ’way,” she said, her voice slightly slurred due to the painkillers.
“Abby, I’m with the police. Detective Alex Cross. I’m here with Detective John Sampson. We’re trying to find whoever shot you and Conrad.”
She shrugged. “Done, no matter who did it.”
Sampson said, “You loved Conrad.”
Abby nodded, then began weeping.
I waited until her crying eased before I said, “Abby, we were the ones who found you.”
“Should have left me to die.”
I said, “In my view, you lived for a reason. I think you lived in part to help us find Conrad’s killer. You loved him—don’t you owe it to his memory to help us find out who killed him and why?”
She rolled over and glared at us. “If I could, I would. I have no idea who killed Conrad. I don’t know who would even think of it. Everyone loved Conrad. Even my dad!”
“I know they did, Abby,” Sampson said. “Conrad was one of a kind. But what we’re interested in today is what you remember from the night you were both shot.”
She shrugged, closed her eyes. “Bronco.”
“Conrad’s brother’s Bronco.”
“C loved that thing. Kept talking about it. All night.”
“And not paying attention to you?”
Abby opened her eyes, stared at me. “That’s right. How did you know that?”
“I get people,” I said. “He kept talking about the Bronco?”
“Until we, like, parked by that canal and… I don’t know.”
“Close your eyes again, Abby. Try to see yourself in the Bronco with Conrad.”
She shut her eyes, lay still for several moments, then got tense.
I’d anticipated that. “We are not here to judge you, Abby. We do not care what you and Conrad were doing. We just want to know if you saw or heard anything by the canal.”
Eyes still closed, she said, “All I can see is Conrad.”
Before I could respond, she said, “Wait. There’s a… like… a shadow.”
“Where are you seeing the shadow?”
“Out of the corner of my left eye, like, to the side.”
“In your peripheral vision?”
She nodded slightly.
“The shadow’s at the back of the SUV?” I asked.
“No, like, back left along the—”
She breathed in sharply, her face gripped by terror. “He was there,” she whispered. “I saw him there. Right by Conrad’s window.”
I glanced at Sampson. He drew circles in the air: Keep her talking. “What else, Abby?”
“I’m not believing he’s there. And then he takes another step and he’s got some kind of hood or mask on, and his arm is coming up.
He has a pistol. I can see it in the moonlight.
I want to scream. I open my mouth to scream and then, like…
nothing.” Abby opened her eyes. “I still feel like that. Nothing. No reason to go on.”
“That’s understandable, Abby,” I said. “But you believe that Conrad loved you, correct?”
“I know Conrad loved me.”
“Good. Good. For today and tomorrow and for the next week or so, I want you to get through your day by remembering Conrad and letting his love for you fill you up. I want you to use his love to give you the strength to start getting better. Just for the next week. Okay?”
She gazed at me, tears seeping from her eyes, and nodded.
“We’ll see you soon, Abby,” I said, and we left. We thanked her parents and told them she’d been a big help.
In the elevator, Sampson said, “Where’d you get all that stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“Telling her to rely on Conrad’s love—that stuff. That from psychology school?”
I thought about it. “Not really. It just felt like the right thing to say at the time.”
I looked over and found my oldest friend studying me. “What?”
He laughed. “I’ve known you since we were nine, Alex Cross, and you’re still showing me sides of you I’ve never seen.”
“It’s called evolution, man.”
“I’ve heard of that concept,” he said as the elevator door opened. “Guess I’m one of the less evolved.”
“And judging from your tone, being one of the less evolved makes you happy.”
Sampson thought about that, then grinned. “Yeah, I guess it does. All warm and happy.”