Difficult Run (10 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

S
HE WENT RUNNING THE NEXT MORNING.
 
As usual, Lola was ready with her leash and Doc was ready with a cup of coffee.

“How are things going?” Doc asked.

“OK, I guess,” M.J. replied.
 
“Thought I had a good suspect yesterday, a guy that matched the description we’re looking for and was acting strangely.
 
It turned out to be a Marine with PTSD and an iron-clad alibi—he was in Afghanistan when the murders occurred.”

“Well, I know about Marines and I know about PTSD,” Doc said.
 
“Those kids fighting in these wars now, they’re all coming back with PTSD, not to mention those that come back with limbs missing, their brains scrambled .
 
. . or their bodies come back in a box.
 
At least now they know what PTSD is and hopefully they can treat it.
 
Didn’t know anything about it when I came back from Vietnam; didn’t even give it a name.”

“Did you have PTSD Doc?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” he replied.
 
“I was a Navy corpsman assigned to a Marine unit.
 
It would’ve been hard not to have it.
 
Problem is, none of us knew what it was and didn’t understand what the effects were.
 
It took all of us a long time to realize that a lot of the things we were feeling and doing were caused by it.
 
A lot of guys from that era still suffer from the effects and still don’t even know it.
 
I was lucky.
 
While I was hospitalized, I got the chance to talk to other vets and we kind of did some informal group therapy.
 
If it hadn’t been for that, I would have been more screwed up than I am. I still drank too much for twenty years, but I realized one day that that was no way to live so I started going to AA meetings and haven’t had a drink since.
 
Of course”—he laughed—“I
am
living in the woods with a dog.

“But enough about all that.
 
Is this Marine doing OK?” he asked.

“Well, I hope so,” M.J. replied.
 
“He’s having flashbacks and drew my attention out there on the trail because he completely broke down and started sobbing.”

“I’ll bet he wanted to make sure you wouldn’t tell his commanding officer about it, didn’t he?” Doc asked.

“Actually, he did,” she said.
 
“What was that about?”

“Real simple, M.J. Marines don’t cry, or at least they don’t want anybody to know that they do.
 
It’s part of the creed,” Doc explained.

“Well, I feel sorry for him,” she said.
 
“Hell, I feel bad about even questioning him, but that’s my job.”

“Don’t worry about it, M.J.
 
It had to be done,” Doc said.

She and Lola left on their run and came back about an hour later.

“I may not see you guys for a few days,” M.J. said when they returned.
 
“We’re coming up on the Fourth of July and I imagine I’ll pull some duty down on the Mall.”

“Well, we’ll see you whenever.
 
Be careful,” Doc said.

M.J. scratched Lola behind the ears and, at the dog’s insistence, gave her another treat.

She drove back to Anacostia Station where the assignments for the Fourth of July were just being posted.
 
As she anticipated, she and Jake had been assigned to security on the National Mall beginning the next day and continuing through the following Monday, the Fourth.

They dressed like tourists and spent a lot of time sitting on benches watching for suspicious characters.
 
By the weekend, the Mall was already filling up with people and by Monday the crowd was estimated at well over six hundred thousand.
 
By the time the fireworks display ended and the crowds had dispersed, it was approaching midnight.
 
They were both exhausted.

They picked up a bottle of wine and some take-out at a late-night deli and went back to M.J.’s apartment.
 
After they ate, they both collapsed on her bed and fell sound asleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

M
.J. GOT TO ANACOSTIA STATION at about 7:00 a.m. with the idea of finishing some paper work before she went to Great Falls Park. Around 8:30 a.m., her phone rang.
 
It was Dispatch.
 
A call had come in on the TipLine at 8:27 a.m..

M.J. went to the communications room and asked one of the dispatchers to play the recorded message.
 
It was a man with no discernible accent:

If you want to know about the boys’ killing, look to the Bible and read Deuteronomy 21:1-8.

There was nothing else.
 
M.J. had the dispatcher make a CD of the recording.
 
Although they didn’t advertise it, the TipLine also had caller ID and she wrote down the number.

She figured there weren’t many Bibles in the building, so she went back to her desk and looked up the passage online.
 
There were several different versions, but the English Standard translation appeared under the heading “Atonement for Unsolved Murders”:

If in the land that the
Lord
your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities. And the elders of the city that is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer that has never been worked and that has not pulled in a yoke. And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley. Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the
Lord
your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the
Lord
, and by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled. And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. Accept atonement, O
Lord
, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.’

Creepy, she thought, but the phrase
bring the heifer down to a valley with running water . . . and . . . break the heifer's neck there in the valley
certainly caught her attention.
 
It sounded a lot like Difficult Run, not to mention the reference to neck breaking.

She did a reverse number lookup from the caller ID.
 
It came back as a pay phone at a convenience store in Sterling, Virginia.
 
She went to her car and started driving.

The voice on the TipLine could be that of the killer, she thought, and the biblical reference could be the motive she had been looking for.
 
Perhaps this was a psychopath who felt his actions were directed by God.
 
Worse yet, it could be some kind of religious cult that performed ritual killings.
 
Of course, it could also just be some religious nut.

The pay phone at the convenience store was outside and there was no security camera in view.
 
There was one inside, however, and she persuaded the manager to let her replay the tape from earlier that morning.
 
She watched the customers from thirty minutes before the call until thirty minutes after.
 
There were lots of Hispanic landscape workers, a few harried commuters grabbing coffee or cigarettes, but no one who came even close to the description of the killer.
 
She asked the two clerks who had been behind the counter during that time period if they had seen anyone acting strangely, particularly a tall person with bulging muscles.
 
They said they had been very busy during that time but didn’t remember anyone like that.

M.J. went back to her car.
 
She looked at the biblical quotation again:
. . . someone is found slain . . . and it is not known who killed him.
 
In other words, she thought, an unsolved murder.
 
She took out her cell phone and called Fairfax County Police Headquarters.
 
She was put through to Ted Sommers, a detective she had worked with in the past.

“Hello, Ted, this is M.J. Powers from the Park Police.
 
Are you going to be around long enough for me to stop by, say in thirty minutes?” she asked.

“No sweat, M.J.,” he said.
 
“See you when you get here.”

She drove to the Judicial Center in Fairfax and parked outside Police Headquarters.
 
Ted met her in the lobby.
 
He was short with a smiling face and wore his hair in a badly designed comb-over to hide his baldness.
 
He was also developing a paunch, probably from sitting at his desk or riding in cars all day.

“C’mon, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he said, and led her across a courtyard to a cafeteria.
 
They went through the line and then sat down at a table near a window.

“So what’s up?” he asked.
 
“I haven’t seen you since we worked that assault case, maybe a year ago.”

“Well, I’m working on the investigation involving the murder of those two boys in Great Falls Park,” she said.

“How’s that coming?” he asked.

“Slowly, very slowly,” she replied, “but we got an anonymous call on our TipLine this morning from a guy who said we should look at a passage in the Bible.
 
I checked it out and it refers to atoning for unsolved murders.
 
Thing that’s interesting, though, is that the passage refers to a scene that’s really similar to the location of the murders and also refers to the way the boys were killed.
 
We’ve been withholding that information and it struck me as worth following up.
 
How many unsolved murders do you guys have, anyway?”

“Recent history, probably 30; ancient history, another 70 or so,” he said. “By the way, we obviously withhold information in cases too, but it’s surprising how fast a lot of it becomes public knowledge.
 
I think it’s the Internet and all the social networks that are popping up.
 
I’d be willing to bet there’s stuff on Facebook about your case.”

“I haven’t checked, but you’re probably right,” M.J. said.
 
“What I’m looking for is an unsolved murder that might qualify for retribution.”

“You know, the stuff about a biblical passage rings a bell,” he said.
 
“Let’s go back to the office and talk to Dee Jessee.
 
She works a lot of homicide cases and I remember her saying something about some information like that coming in on our tip line.”

Dee was sitting at her desk and Ted pulled over two chairs after introducing her to M.J., who briefed her on the call.

“Let me guess,” Dee said, “the message started with ‘If you want to know about the murders, look to the Bible and read this passage.’”

“Pretty close,” M.J. said.

“Sounds like the same guy we hear from all the time.
 
Did the call come from a pay phone in Sterling?” Dee asked.

“Sure did,” M.J. replied.

“Yeah, probably the same guy,” Dee said.
 
“He calls in the same message with different biblical references on most of our homicide cases, although he also seems to chime in on deviant sexual behavior too.
 
We got one reference to the Book of Romans involving a guy who was flashing his privates to young boys.
 
The passage said something about ‘pederasty’ and I had to look that one up.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Ted asked.

“It means sex between men and boys,” Dee replied with a mischievous smile on her face.

Ted grimaced.

“So, do you have any idea who this guy is?” M.J. asked.

“We think he’s a retired minister with a lot of time on his hands,” Dee said.
 
“He lives in Sterling, not far from the pay phone.
 
We thought about going after him for filing false police reports but decided that’s pretty hard to do when all he’s making us do is read the Bible.”

“Yeah, I could see where that might be a problem,” M.J. said, laughing. “But thanks for the information.
 
You just saved me a lot of time.”