Ali nodded, already getting his bike up on his shoulder again. “Much better, sir.”
CHAPTER 7
I FINALLY WOKE UP AROUND nine on Saturday morning. After showering and dressing, I went downstairs and out onto the porch, looking for the morning paper. A van emblazoned with decals of men and women bicycling and the insignia of the U.S. Armed Forces pulled up in front of the house.
To my surprise, Ali jumped out. “Dad!”
A man in his early thirties climbed out the driver’s side. He was wearing a sweatshirt that said u.s. army over bike pants.
He and Ali climbed up the front steps as Ali said, “Captain Abrahamsen is almost on the U.S. Armed Forces bicycle-racing team! I got a flat. We couldn’t fix it, so he offered to drive me home.”
The captain smiled and stuck out his hand. “Arthur Abrahamsen, sir. You’ve got quite a boy there.”
I shook his hand and smiled. “He is that. Thanks for helping him out.”
“My pleasure,” Abrahamsen said, and he chuckled. “He taught me a lot about a lot of different subjects.”
“I hope he didn’t talk your ear off.”
“No, sir,” Abrahamsen said. “Both ears intact. Well, let me get his bike out. He’s going to need a new tire and tube, I’m afraid.”
“We both hit broken glass and got flats,” Ali said as Abrahamsen went over and opened up the rear of the van.
The van was filled with wheels, tires, and other equipment hanging off the walls.
“So, do you race full-time for the military?” I asked as he took out the bike.
“He trains with the team,” Ali said.
“And even that’s hardly full-time,” Abrahamsen said, closing the van doors. “I’m busy over at the Pentagon and up on the Hill, so I try to squeeze in my training rides when I can.” He brought the bike over.
“Well, thank you again,” I said, and we shook hands once more.
The captain smiled at Ali. “It’s always good to meet a fellow cavalryman.”
Ali looked at him, puzzled.
“I used to be in the U.S. Army Fourth Cavalry,” Abrahamsen explained. “Tanks. But I’ve always thought that in this day and age, cavalrymen should be on bikes instead.”
“Mountain bikes,” Ali said, smiling.
“Exactly! They’re more like horses,” Abrahamsen said, pointing at him and winking. “Take care, now. Nice meeting you, Mr. Cross.”
“You too, Captain,” I said.
Abrahamsen got into his van, waved, and pulled out into the street.
“He’s a really nice guy,” Ali said.
“Seems like it,” I said, lifting his bike up.
“Do you think I could be in the cavalry someday?” Ali said.
“In a tank or on a bike?”
“Bike.”
I paused and then said, “You can have anything your heart desires if you work for it.”
CHAPTER 8
FOR THREE DAYS, I IGNORED the media’s reports about Edgerton’s execution and the accusations from his family that Katrina Nixon’s murder was proof of Mikey’s innocence. On Tuesday morning, I checked into the federal detention center on Mill Street in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Courthouse.
The sheriff’s deputy returned my ID, said, “Dirty Marty know you’re coming?”
“Mr. Forbes made the request for counseling himself,” I said.
The deputy, a stout woman named Estella Maines, sniffed and said, “We’ll bring him out to you, Dr. Cross, but I don’t know why you bother.”
“The hopeless idealist in me, Deputy.”
Maines almost smiled as she buzzed me through.
I went to the booth, reminding myself that these kinds of visits were important for me. Despite the fact that I had a busy life as a contract consultant to DC Metro and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I found deeper fulfillment in my role as a therapist.
Martin Forbes shuffled out a steel door and took a seat on the other side of a bulletproof-glass divider. In his mid-forties, balding, Forbes was an unremarkable-looking man except for a squiggly white line that ran underneath his jaw. That scar was the only reason I’d agreed to see him.
Once upon a time, I’d worked with Forbes at the FBI when he was briefly assigned to the Behavioral Analysis Unit. He was a junior agent then and as eager to catch bad guys as I was.
That eagerness had almost gotten Forbes killed, but it had saved the life of Ned Mahoney, my former partner at the Bureau. We’d all been investigating several violent murders in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas that had smelled of a serial killer but turned out to be a crime syndicate covering its tracks.
Mahoney had gotten too close to a cell of the Sinaloa drug cartel and was snatched off the street one night in Tucson. Forbes witnessed the grab, followed, and fought successfully to free Ned. Before he managed that, a cartel thug tried to slit his throat.
Forbes picked up the phone on his side of the glass. “I appreciate you coming, Alex.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“I’m innocent.”
“I saw that you pleaded not guilty.”
“I did,” he said. “This is no legal bullshit move, Alex. I’ve been framed.”
I sighed. “You said you wanted counseling, Marty. It’s why I came.”
“I knew you wouldn’t come otherwise. I did not do this.”
“You’ve got history, Marty. Your rep caught up with you.”
Forbes flushed, but he calmed himself. “I was cleared on those shoots. Didn’t you tell me that if you want to put out the fire, you’ve got to get close enough to burn?”
“That was Mahoney.”
“Well, I am no vigilante. I don’t know who pulled the trigger on those scum on the yacht, but as much as they deserved it, I sure as hell wasn’t the one who did it.”
I didn’t reply for several moments, letting my mind tick back through the case as laid out in the news articles that had dubbed the former FBI agent Dirty Marty, a riff on Dirty Harry, a cop gone rogue, taking justice into his own hands.
Though Forbes had been cleared in those shooting incidents, the Bureau was concerned enough to rein him in; he’d been transferred from a senior investigatory position in Chicago to a desk job in crime analysis at Quantico. At the time, Forbes had been leading a probe into a sexual-slavery ring, a group of people who brought women and young girls and boys from underdeveloped countries into the United States through Canada or Mexico.
The twenty-four-month probe had penetrated the ring at low levels, enough to free more than fifty women enslaved as prostitutes traveling the country, guarded by violent pimps. Those freed women had identified two men and a woman as the likely masterminds of the ring.
Carlos Octavio, a Panamanian national fluent in eight languages, was said to work in tandem with Ji Su Rhee, a Korean woman who spoke nine languages. Octavio and Rhee bought girls, boys, and young women in lawless, impoverished countries. Gor Bedrossian, an Armenian with ties to U.S. and Russian crime syndicates, was believed to be the one who put the smuggling and distribution system together and enforced it all with an iron fist.