have been near. Who have we ever known who could pull off something like that? Make people see what he wants them to see, not what’s really there, him included.”
She stared up at him. “Only Tammy Tuttle.”
“Bingo,” he said. “She may have learned at his knee.”
“But we looked at her file. We found no connection.”
“And we were wrong.”
She got to her feet. “Agent Arnold will call back in a minute, then we’re going to nail that crazy old man.”
She placed her fingertips against his mouth. “No, don’t undress me and don’t argue. We’re in this together. I’m not going to keel over on you. Hey, I might even sing you another song.”
AT TEN-THIRTY SATURDAY morning, Savich opened his front door to see Ruth with Brewster nestled in the crook of her arm, Sheriff Dixon Noble and his sons standing behind her, grinning.
“Well, this is a surprise. Now, Ruth, I told you guys last night everything’s all right. You shouldn’t have come, you—”
“Be quiet, Dillon, just be quiet. I’ve been so worried, I had to see for myself. Where’s Sherlock?” Then Ruth threw herself against him, Brewster between them, barking manically. “The news reports, Dillon, all those awful clips we saw on TV. It looked like a scene out of hell. Please tell me Sherlock is okay.”
“She’s fine, I promise.”
“Okay, okay. We couldn’t stand it. We had to make sure.”
“In other words,” Dix said, stepping forward to shake Savich’s hand, “you could have been lying to Ruth, could really have been stretched out in a hospital bed, riddled with bullets and burning metal.
“Truth is, we were as worried as Ruth. She was convinced you were being stoic, said she’d belt you one if you weren’t upright and smiling when we got here. Your Porsche—on the news they showed you pulling up in front of the club, panned to all the insane chaos, then they showed the Porsche burning. Some sight that was.”
“All right, Brewster, come here.”
“Be careful, Savich, you know how he is,” Dix said.
“Yeah, I will.” Savich let Brewster lick his chin, then held him slightly away. But Brewster didn’t pee. Rafe said, “We just walked him thirty minutes ago, so I guess his tank’s empty.”
“I’m convinced he has an auxiliary tank,” their father said.
Rafe said to Savich, “Rob says you can get any girl you like when you drive a car like your Porsche.”
“Yeah,” Dix said, “it’s all over for him now, boys. Tough break.”
Sean walked into the entrance hall, his mother behind him. He stopped and stared at Brewster, who was wildly licking his father’s face. He smiled.
Ruth saw the sling. “Ohmigod, Sherlock, Dillon said you hurt your arm, but just a little bit. What happened?”
Sherlock said, “I’m fine, really. It was a piece of flying metal, hardly touched me. Hello, Rob, Rafe, Dix. It’s great to see you guys. Come in, come in. Oh dear, Dillon, quick, move Brewster off the carpet, he’s peeing.”
Half an hour later, the four adults sat around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and tea and eating raisin- stuffed scones from the new Potomac Street bakery, Sweet Things. The three boys had consumed half a dozen scones and were now in the living room with Graciella and Brewster, who occasionally barked and butted his head against Sean’s hand.
Graciella sat on the sofa, mending a sweater, smiling at the boys and the most adorable dog she’d ever seen.
Ruth said to Savich, “You baited him again. You thought you could break him down.”
Savich shrugged. “I wasn’t getting anywhere finding out who he really is. There simply hasn’t been a case in which I had to kill a woman. But after the bombing and Moses’s call last night, Sherlock and I think we finally know.”
Ruth sat forward, her elbows on the table.
Savich must have seen something in Sherlock’s eyes because he rose, got a pain pill from the kitchen counter, and held it to her mouth. When she’d swallowed the pill, he sat down again, raised his teacup to toast Ruth. “Are you ready for this? The woman was Tammy Tuttle.”
Ruth froze, said to Dix, “That was before I came into the unit, but I heard all about her, how she had this power to make people see what she wanted them to see.”
“Mass hypnosis?” Dix asked, an eyebrow up. “You sure? That’s pretty out there.”
Savich nodded. “You’re telling me. But we had a real hard time tracking her down even though we had her in our sights on two occasions. Thank God Tammy Tuttle couldn’t trick everyone. When she got close enough to me, for whatever reason, I recognized her. Moses had only one fact right—I did nearly shoot her arm off. She was going to kill two teenage boys she and her crazy twin, Tommy, had kidnapped. I had to shoot her in the shoulder, which led to her losing an arm. She escaped from the hospital when she recovered and came after me. She wanted me real bad, like Moses.”
Sherlock said, “Dillon didn’t kill her, though. His sister was staying with us at the time. Tammy took her right out of our house and drove to the barn on the Plum River in Maryland where it all started. She managed to save herself, killed Tammy. We arrived when it was all over.”
“Your sister,” Dix said to Savich, “she’s all right?”
“Oh yes.”
Ruth took a bite of scone, savored it. “I want to marry the guy who made these.”
Savich said, “Arturo weighs three hundred pounds.”
Ruth grinned. “Okay, so maybe he’s not perfect. So Moses Grace is what? Tammy Tuttle’s grandfather?
”
“Maybe. It’s interesting. Moses hasn’t mentioned Tammy’s twin, Tommy. I wonder why not.”
Sherlock said, “The only family we know of is Tommy and Tammy’s cousin, Marilyn Warluski. She owns the barn on the Plum River, which is how MAX found the Tuttles. Marilyn wasn’t a criminal, simply a bit on the slow side, I guess, and malleable, or she’d simply been beaten down by her cousins. They used her, manipulated her, but she survived. We’re all praying she knows something about him, maybe can tell us what Moses Grace’s real name is.”
Savich said, “I remember asking Marilyn about Tommy and Tammy’s parents, and she told me their mom was dead. She didn’t know who their dad was. I didn’t ask for more because there was too much going on. It makes sense that Moses Grace might be their grandfather. They had to get their crazy genes from somewhere. Moses sure fits the bill.”
Dix asked Savich, “No luck tracking Moses after his call last night?”
“Our guys located where the call came from again—the parking lot of another Denny’s, this one in Juniperville, Virginia, about a forty-minute drive from here. It appears he and Claudia are fond of Denny’
s, but it took too long to identify the phone and triangulate the signal again. They were gone by the time the squad cars got there.”
Savich added, “I’m convinced Moses has a pretty good idea how long it takes us to track him through a cell phone. He keeps using them because it gives him a kick to have cops racing to a particular spot only to find he’s done a vanishing act.”
“Then you’ll have to find him another way,” Ruth said.
“I do have a couple of ideas,” Savich said, but he didn’t elaborate. Sherlock squeezed his hand. “Dillon asked Dane Carver to find Marilyn Warluski. Last we heard she was in the Caribbean, so Dane is checking all the islands first. Unless she’s in hiding for some reason we don’t know about, it shouldn’t be long.”
“There’s another thing,” Savich said as he drank more of his tea. “When I speak to Moses, his grammar can be appallingly bad, but other times it’s perfect. I’m thinking he’s playing a game with me, trying to make me think he’s illiterate, but then he forgets and speaks normally. His Southern accent fades in and out, too. I really doubt he’s the fourth-grade dropout he pretends to be.”
Rafe and Rob came into the kitchen with Sean running between them, Graciella behind them, grinning like a proud parent. Rob said, “Agent Savich, we heard you talking about this Marilyn Warluski person, how she owns a barn near the Plum River and you’re looking for her. We asked Graciella how to spell it, then we googled her on Graciella’s laptop. There’s a Marilyn Warluski who lives in Summerset, Maryland, at Thirty-eight Baylor Street. We
