Chapter 1

It was Saturday night, and the sun had just gone down, creating that twilight that leaves you wondering whether you should have your headlights turned on yet or not. Mark Evans didn't have to make that choice, as he was in the process of pulling into his garage, located on a quiet residential street in Sharpsburg. In a moment the slim, dark-haired man emerged from the side door carrying his garment bag, briefcase and laptop case, long experience allowing him to manage the three bulky items with ease. One didn't travel as much as he was forced to, without developing this type of skill.

He unlocked and entered the side door of his home, but didn't bother to call out to his wife, Lisa, to let her know he was there; he already knew she wasn't home. Instead, he walked through to the living room with his briefcase and laptop, having deposited his garment bag at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor of their modest, but comfortable, home. He set the two items on the sofa before removing his topcoat, which he then carried to the closet near the front door, where he hung it on its accustomed hanger.

Only now, with both hands free and in the comfort of his own home, did he remove his jacket and tie, and unbutton the top two buttons on his white shirt. He didn't normally wear such formal business attire, but today he'd returned from a regional meeting of managers working for his employer, ABC Industries. Technically he wasn't in management, but his role as the most knowledgeable systems analyst on staff mandated that he had to attend the meetings in Pittsburg. His immediate supervisor was a good man at organizing the personnel, but he knew virtually nothing about the computer systems that let their business operate smoothly.

He could have been home the night before, but that wouldn't have fit with his plans. Instead he had told his wife that the meeting was followed by a series of workshops that would last the weekend, and that he would be returning on Monday. He had his reasons for telling her that, and had been forced to waste time for the majority of the day so that he wouldn't return home too early. He also wished he had been able to pack more comfortable clothing for this trip, but if he had done so Lisa might have wondered why he needed to do that; he never took anything but his dress clothes to these regularly scheduled business meetings.

Now that he was at home, his first step would be to go have a shower and then change into something a little more comfortable. 20 minutes after disappearing upstairs with his garment bag, he returned to the main floor dressed, wearing his more normal jeans and polo shirt, and looking very refreshed from his quick shower.

The next half-hour was spent choosing, reheating, and then eating a meal comprised of leftovers from the refrigerator. Lisa was a good cook, and even the leftovers made a good meal. His meal was washed down with a bottle of light premium beer, one of his few vices. By the time he had finished the bottle of beer he had moved to the living room, where he was now stretched back in a La-Z-Boy chair, reading the front page of the local newspaper. To any casual observer he was a typical husband, relaxing after a long and arduous trip out of town.

In truth, he was simply killing more time, following his script to the letter, patiently waiting for the selected time to bring his major personal crisis to a head. He'd had a month to work alone on the five stages of grief, and really, the only one to have been successfully dealt with was denial. Anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance were all in play at the moment. He hoped that over the course of the night he could make some progress on several of those remaining four stages.

It was after midnight, and Sunday was freshly minted, when he finally seemed satisfied with what his watch was telling him, and got up to return the empty beer bottle to the kitchen counter. While there he moved his dirty dishes to the dishwasher, before using a damp cloth to return the tabletop to a pristine condition. He knew as he did these minor chores that it was simply a form of delay, a way for his second thoughts and apprehensions to make him reconsider his chosen path. When no new solution to his problem presented itself, he went to the hall closet for a light jacket, and then began making his way to the side door, and the beginning of his nights' mission.

As his fingertips brushed the doorknob he suddenly yanked his hand back, snapped his fingers, and said, "Damn! I almost forgot." He hurried back into the living room, placed his briefcase on the coffee table, and then set his laptop upon the briefcase. In less than a minute he had turned on the laptop, logged himself in and had secured a connection to the Internet through the wireless router situated in the computer room he and Lisa maintained. Several minutes of typing and sending an e-mail completed the tasks that he had forgotten, and once he had logged off and shut down the laptop, he returned to the side door, confidently and unhurriedly leaving the house.

After spending about five minutes in his garage, he raised the garage door, backed out onto the street, turned on his headlights and slowly drove away as the garage door closed silently behind him.

It was 7:37 a.m. when the Sharpsburg 911 operator answered a new incoming call. "This is your 911 Emergency Operator. What is the nature of your emergency?"

A vaguely female voice, seemingly young, replied on an apparently poor telephone connection, "I ... I think I need the police. I think a crime has been committed."

The 911 operator coolly continued, "What is your location, ma'am? We need your location to send the police on the call."

"I'm ... I'm on Park Drive, the payphone on Park Drive beside George Washington Park." The word payphone immediately explained the poor connection to the operator.

"What kind of crime has been committed, ma'am? Have you been attacked or robbed?"

There was a slight delay before the young woman replied, "No, it's not me. I'm OK. It's just ... I just came from jogging through the park on the paved access road, the one that circles around to the picnic areas. There's a car there, beside one of the picnic sites. The doors are open, and the light is on inside it, and there's blood ... Lots of blood."

The 911 operator was now very interested in the call, and asked, "Will an ambulance be needed? Are there injured parties involved?"

"No, there's no one there that's injured. At least I didn't see anyone there. There's just the empty car and the blood." A few seconds passed before the woman continued, "I didn't look around too much. I was afraid that someone would be coming after me too, so I ran out here to the pay phone to call you."

"You did the right thing, I'm sure. A car has been dispatched and should be there in less than 10 minutes. Please wait for the officers so that you can tell them exactly where this car is situated."

The caller, sounding a bit anxious, replied, "No, I'm not going to wait around here. What if whoever did this comes after me? I'm going to go straight home." Her last words were followed by the click of the receiver as she hung up the phone.

The 911 operator looked helplessly at her screen as the blinking computer image of the caller's number disappeared as the phone was hung up. "Damn. I suppose this was just her idea of a joke. Oh well, hopefully I didn't take those officers away from anything more important than their coffee break."