The first thing on Mars’s mind when he woke the morning of January 6 was that Gordon Ball had said he hadn’t gone out to Bunny Palmer’s house when she’d called about the intruder because he was going out to Hollywood. But Gordon hadn’t said anything about what he’d found at Hollywood.
It was an hour later in Richmond. With the Boosey death on his desk, Ball might be in early. Mars dialed, got a wrong number, thought about it and dialed again.
“Hate to push—but did you have a chance to get out to Hollywood?” Mars asked when Ball picked up.
“Yeah. I was there when I got paged about Junior. Sorry, I meant to say. But this thing with Boosey …”
“You didn’t find anything around the Confederate monument that looks like it could be tied to Hec’s ritual?”
“There was something. Not sure—but there’s been some defacing on the base of Pickett’s monument.”
“Like what?”
Ball was silent for a moment, then he said, “There were three vertical marks. Looked at them real close. They were carved.” Ball hesitated, then sounded sheepish. “Truth is, I got the call about Junior just then. I did think about the three hangings. Maybe a long shot, but …”
“Gordon? You don’t know this yet. There’s been another hanging—yesterday. Near the Chesapeake Bay.” Mars’s head spun as he tried to sift through the ideas that were popping
in his brain. “Gordon, what time were you at Hollywood? Be as precise as you can.”
“Well, I left my office right around ten-thirty. Got caught up for a few minutes in a couple of issues as I was leaving—guess I was out of the building no later than, say, eleven. I would have been at Hollywood no later than eleven-thirty.”
“I don’t know drive times in your area, but tell me. The Wilmington police said it would have taken Macintosh about an hour—tops—to get from where he was in Wilmington at seven-thirty A.M. to the boathouse on Chesapeake Bay where the body was recovered. So let’s say he’s there at eight-thirty and spends an hour hanging the victim. Could Macintosh have gotten from the bay to Hollywood in a couple hours?”
Ball’s line was silent for a moment. “It’s going to depend, of course, on where he was on the bay. If he was an hour from Wilmington, I’d guess he was pretty far north. Make it from there to Hollywood in a couple hours? Damn near impossible. And traffic in that area is a bitch. He’d have to go over the toll bridge, then through Newport News, back up to Richmond—again, depending on exactly where he was on the bay. My guess is he wouldn’t want to take a ferry, so I think the smart guess is he’d go to the bridge. I suppose it’s possible, Mars. But I don’t think it’s likely.”
Mars thought about what Ball was saying. He put that together with the thought that it was unlikely that Macintosh would want to carve on the Pickett monument in broad daylight.
“Gordon,” he said, “could you send someone out to Hollywood to check the Pickett monument again?”
It didn’t take Ball any time at all to say, “To see if Hec carved a fourth mark on the monument between the time I was there yesterday and now?”
“You got it in one,” Mars said.
He found Nettie and Linda VanCleve in the lounge, piles of paper stacked on the floor in front of them.
Mars and Linda each started at the sight of the other. Nettie started talking as if the tension in the air didn’t exist.
“I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to run something by you that Linda and I have worked out on what you so elegantly referred to as Sherman’s bastards. It’s a big assumption—but not entirely off the wall. And it’s all we’ve got, so …” Nettie turned toward Linda. “Tell him what you found.”
Being careful not to meet his eyes, VanCleve said, “What we did was to check St. Paul birth records for the period of 1865 through 1893, which was the period Sherman owned and operated a boardinghouse in St. Paul. What we were looking for was a birth to an unmarried woman with a resident address that matched that of the boardinghouse …”
Mars unintentionally raised an eyebrow, signaling skepticism. Noticing his response, VanCleve’s voice tightened, and she spoke faster. “We had a bit more to go on than that. I personally reviewed the correspondence we had on file for Sherman. There was very little that he’d written, other than business correspondence. But there were two letters addressed to Sherman written in a woman’s hand, dated August eleven, 1866, and October nine, 1866. As it happens, I’d read both letters previously, when we were looking for any evidence of Sherman’s connection to the flag after its capture. I hadn’t thought much about them—at least in terms of representing an intimate relationship between Sherman and the correspondent. But when I read them again, it struck me that the tone was self-consciously formal and there were several very ambiguous references. What I thought on rereading the letters was that the first could well be a letter announcing the birth of a child, and the second was a letter thanking Sherman for his continued consideration …”
“The woman’s name?” Mars said.
“The mother’s name on the birth certificate was Colleen Johnson. We did find a marriage license for her dated three years later, when she married a Richard Peter. There isn’t a full signature on the correspondence to Sherman, just a C followed by a period. But the date of birth for Colleen Johnson’s
son was August ninth, 1866—two days prior to the letter that could be interpreted as a birth announcement.”
“Something else,” Nettie said. “Sherman sold insurance after he lost his leg and left the First Minnesota. Commerce Department records indicate that a life insurance policy in the amount of five hundred dollars was issued to a Colleen Johnson in late September of 1866. The beneficiary was Johnson’s son. We can’t establish that it was Sherman who purchased the policy on her behalf, but …”
“But it fits,” Mars said. He stepped forward, giving them a joint hug. “Not even close to off the wall. The question now: How long to get to the living descendents of Colleen Johnson Peter’s son?”
“We’re on the second generation past the son now,” VanCleve said. “Another six to eight hours—maybe.”
Mars had just turned to leave the lounge when a division secretary approached him.
“Mars? Gordon Ball on your line.”
Mars felt his pulse accelerate as he took the phone.
“Gordon?” He couldn’t bring himself to ask. He just held his breath.
“Four marks, Mars.”
Mars closed his eyes and exhaled.
“I’m setting up undercover surveillance on Hollywood now,” Ball said. “It’ll be in place twenty-four-seven for as long as necessary. This is great news, Mars. It gives us a real shot.”
“Good news, bad news, Gordon. To get our shot, someone needs to die.”
Mars looked over his shoulder. The division secretary was signaling him again.
“Long distance holding for you,” she mouthed.
“Gotta go, Gordon. I’ll be back to you shortly.”
Before picking up the second call, Mars looked at the ID screen. Area code 906. A light chill ran down his spine. He
jotted down the ten-digit number and passed it to the secretary. “Get a location on this number right away. We’ve got the recorder on this line?”
When the secretary nodded, Mars picked up.
“A change in plan,” the voice said.
Macintosh’s smooth confidence was gone. There was an emotional vibrato in his voice. It sounded like he was working hard to maintain control.
He knows about Junior, Mars thought.
Immediately Macintosh began.
“‘With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free
While God is marching on.’”
The last phrase was hissed in a voice overtaken by rage.
Then the line went dead.
Keegan, Nettie, VanCleve, and Mars pored over the copy of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” They found the three lines that Macintosh had quoted. They were the final three lines of the final stanza.
Keegan said, “He’s gone from the first four lines of the Hymn to the final three lines—except in the final three lines he’s included the emblematic phrase—‘While God is marching on.’ In the first stanza, the emblematic phrase, ‘His truth is marching on,’ was omitted. What is he saying?”
Nettie, staring at the Hymn, traced down the lines, her lips moving but silent.
“It’s what Evelyn said. That how he’s choosing the lines is more important than the words themselves.” She turned the pages of the Hymn around, facing them, while she moved an index finger from line to line.
“It’s not complicated. If you count the lines in each of the six stanzas—excluding the emblematic phrase—you have
eighteen lines. If you include the final emblematic phrase—‘While God is marching on’—you’ve got nineteen lines.” She looked at them. “Is there any doubt why he’d select nineteen lines—and why he’d want to end with ‘While God is marching on?’ And his message in the first call—three lines when we had three deaths, followed by a line in which Mars would have ‘particular interest’—was ‘I’ve killed three of the targets, I’m about to kill the fourth.’”
Keegan said, “And in the second call, by quoting the final three lines, he’s telling us there are going to be three more victims. And like he said: a change in plan. For some reason he’s skipping targeted victims five through sixteen and going for victims seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen.”
“Do any of us,” Mars said, “have any doubt who he intends those final three victims to be? Or why? Junior’s death has raised the possibility Hec won’t complete his message. He’s covered Lee’s birth date with the Willes Corrigan hanging. He’s starting on Sherman’s descendents, and I’m betting there are going to be three of them. If nothing else, those are the targets he wants to be sure he takes out.”
Keegan ran his fingers through his hair. “The one thing we’ve got going for us. He doesn’t know what we know. He doesn’t know we’re close to identifying his final targets.”
Nettie and VanCleve rose simultaneously. “If we really push, we can have one within the next four hours.”
Mars shook his head slowly. “According to what we found out about the phone number and based on what happened in Delaware, Hec’s next victim is in the Marquette, Michigan area. That person has one, maybe two hours to live. It’s too late to save him. The best we can do is save the other two.”