same.
Did the photographer wander around or take a straight path?
He Googled Rock Creek Park and found the Melvin Hazen trail, the path he’d scrambled down off Connecticut Avenue. The park itself was twelve miles long in one place, had twenty-five miles of trails, almost eighteen-hundred acres of wilderness, deer, raccoon and fox, overgrown bridges, and the ruins of old mills.
The letters on the camera bag had to be the photographer’s initials. Who was JF?
Burke’s text came in. He had a meeting with a client in the morning and was picking up a train ticket at Union Station. He’d be there at noon near the theater.
Monroe loped across the parking lot toward Maxwell’s. The restaurant had closed for the night, but he could see Annie in the adjoining store, straightening bottles of organic wine and sleek cooking equipment on the shelves. She waved, pulled her long hair over her shoulder, and came to the door, fastening her coat over her jeans. His heart skipped a beat when she smiled.
“Hey, you,” he said.
She leaned up to kiss him. “I’m starving. I’ve been craving a bagel with cream cheese and tomato all day.”
Monroe laughed. “The deli’s closed. Maybe the pub has bagels.”
They went into Sullivan’s, an Irish watering hole with a floor full of half-empty tables. A gaunt, fortyish waiter took their order when they sat down near the bar. Sully’s didn’t have bagels. They didn’t have cream cheese, either, but the waiter said the kitchen would come up with something just as good. Monroe ordered a bottle of water.
“I still want a bagel with cream cheese,” Annie said.
“Let’s get married,” Monroe said.
She smiled and looked down. “I’ve heard that before.”
“We’ll have a bagel and cream cheese wedding cake.”
“I want sixteen children. You should know that.”
“Fine with me,” he said. “Let’s have twenty-five.”
She toyed with her silverware. “How many children do you really want?”
“I want to get through law school before I even think about that.”
“I still want sixteen.”She looked down again.
The baby conversation again under the banter. He’d put his studies aside when his parents died and promised himself he would get his law degree before life swept him away again.
“I’ve never seen that necklace,” he said, trying to turn her mood.
Annie smiled. “It belonged to my mother. She brought it with her from China when she came here as a girl. The characters say ‘forget me not.’”
Rain was falling by the time they left Sully’s. The wind gusted through the leaves and rattled the signs in the parking lot. They had just stepped off the curb when she grabbed his sleeve.
“What’s that?” Annie said.
A mangled mass of gray feathers and curled up red claws lay under the streetlight. The head was missing and a thin stream of blood ran over the wet sidewalk. Monroe looked up. Flocks of pigeons roosted above the stores and in the trees near the Metro. This one must have been a straggler.
“A pigeon,” he said with disgust. “A cat must have gotten it.”
Annie took his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 3
The Woman in the Photo
“U FO s aren’t real,” Burke said with derision. He handled the print as if it had lice and put it down on the cafe table. In his thirties with eyebrows that rose in mock surprise and an immaculate suit and tie, he had the soft look of a man who lived in his office.
Travis took his black coffee and settled in a chair, feeling like a lowlife in jeans and sneakers. Behind them a crowd moved through Union Station’s glittery food court.
“Looks real to me,” Travis said. “When you worked for the Associated Press—”
“I covered politics, not UFO s.”
“Just tell me, with your professional experience, do you think somebody could’ve staged these photos?”
“Sure they did,” Burke said. “They put a toy against some bushes to make it look like it landed from outer