The People vs. Alex Cross: (Alex Cross 25) Read online

  Not that things couldn’t be better. Lenore Walker had said that she thought the iPhone Sampson found in the woods was her son’s, but she wasn’t sure. And when we’d taken the device to Keith Rawlins at Quantico earlier in the day, he’d noted that the water damage was going to make it exceedingly difficult for him to access the phone’s data, if he could do it at all.

  Despite Rawlins’s promise to work every bit of magic he knew, we’d left the FBI’s cybercrimes lab feeling frustrated. In our minds, the phone was Timmy Walker’s, but unless we could get into it, we were once again at a dead end when it came to his murder. And even though we didn’t have a smoking gun connecting the boy’s death to the missing blondes, it felt like, without the phone, we would never find Gretchen Lindel, Ginny Krauss, Alison Dane, Delilah Franks, Patsy Mansfield, and Cathy Dupris.

  But good things had happened too. Nana had taken a phone call for Jannie at home and relayed the message to me, and that had led to near pandemonium as everyone in our family tried to rearrange things in order to be home when the doorbell rang.

  In the front hall now, Jannie looked over her shoulder, and I said, “Go on.”

  She opened the front door, revealing a tall, lean, African American man in his early forties. He wore a blue suit with a green and gold tie, and he beamed when he saw my daughter.

  “Jannie Cross,” he said, smiling as he shook her hand. “I’m so glad we could work out a time to meet.”

  Jannie was dumbstruck but managed to say, “I am too, sir, uh, Coach.”

  I said, “She’s thrilled you’re here. We all are.”

  “Dr. Cross?” he said, turning his hundred-watt smile on me and reaching to shake my hand. “I’m Robert Johnson.”

  “Please, come in, Coach,” I said. “My grandmother makes a mean pie if you’re interested.”

  “I’m always interested in pie,” he said. “What kind?”

  “Shoofly pie without the sugar bomb,” Jannie said. “She got the recipe from an Amish cookbook and altered it with maple syrup.”

  “I would love some of that,” he said.

  I led the way back to the kitchen, where Coach Johnson introduced himself to everyone and good-naturedly submitted to Nana Mama when she ordered him to sit down and have some pie and a cup of green tea.

  “Jannie,” Johnson said after finishing his dessert, “I’m not going to lie to you. The food at the University of Oregon is not as good as you’re used to at home.”

  My grandmother loved that.

  “Unless you could convince Nana to move to Eugene with you,” he said. “Then the entire Ducks track team could benefit.”

  That pleased Nana even more. “You’re scoring brownie points, Coach.”

  “I was hoping so,” Coach Johnson said, and he winked at her. “Can I tell you all about our program?”

  “Please,” Bree said.

  Johnson said, “Since I took over as head track coach at the University of Oregon three years ago, we have won eight national championships: men’s indoor and outdoor track, women’s indoor and outdoor track, and women’s cross-country. Oregon has been honored as the national Men’s and Women’s Programs of the Year in each of the past two years. The women won it the year before that as well.”

  Once Coach Johnson started his recruiting pitch, his attention rarely left Jannie, who was listening raptly.

  “Twenty-eight Duck athletes have won NCAA individual championships under my watch,” Johnson went on. “Including Phyllis Francis.”

  Jannie sat up straighter. “She set the American record in the indoor four-hundred.”

  “She did,” Johnson said, and he paused to look around at us all. “And I think you can beat that record, Jannie.”

  CHAPTER

  92

  JANNIE LOOKED AS stunned as I felt. The American record?

  “I really do believe that,” Johnson said to me. “I’ve watched Jannie’s films. I’ve reviewed her training times, her program, and her progress with Coach McDonald. We both feel that record is within the range of possibility if she chooses and applies herself in the right program.”

  “Your program,” my father said.

  “There’s none better,” the coach replied. “Oregon’s track-and-field tradition is deep and wide. We have the finest facility in the country at Hayward Field. The weather is near perfect for year-round training. And we have the best coaches and trainers. Period.”

  “What about the academics?” Bree asked.

  “Amen,” Nana Mama said.

  “The university offers two hundred and seventy different majors, from the sciences to engineering to education and the arts. Our program in sports marketing is ranked number one in the country. The Clark Honors College is the oldest of its kind in the country and attracts many gifted students such as yourself, Jannie.

  “Academics and sports aside, the campus is stunningly beautiful. Eugene is one of the most vibrant places I’ve ever lived. And we offer all of our athletes tutors to make sure they stay eligible to compete and, most important, to graduate.”

  “Are you offering my sister a scholarship?” Ali asked.

  Coach Johnson laughed. “You don’t fool around, do you?”

  Ali grinned and shook his head.

  “Maybe you should go into sports marketing, young man,” Johnson said. “Be your sister’s agent someday.”

  Ali smiled and said, “You didn’t answer the question.”

  The coach laughed again, looked at me. “He’s a little tiger.”

  “Every day,” I said.

  Coach Johnson turned to Jannie. “You know how I first heard of you?”

  My daughter shook her head.

  “When you were on ESPN.”

  Imitating the ESPN announcer, Ali said, “That girl ran so fast she broke her foot!”

  The coach nodded. “That’s the one. How’s the foot doing?”

  “Really good,” Jannie said.

  “No pain?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “You’re a lucky, lucky young lady,” Johnson said. “That injury could have been a career ender. But it wasn’t, and so, Jannie Cross, I am here to offer you a scholarship, a full ride—tuition, room, and board—at the University of Oregon in exchange for a signed national letter of intent to run for the Ducks.”

  I don’t think Jannie expected that. I know I didn’t. She hadn’t even competed in her junior year of spring outdoor track. I’d figured if she ran well from now on, she might start getting real offers in the fall of her senior year.

  “I’m thrilled, but do I have to answer right now, Coach?” she said, smiling and biting her lip.

  “Of course not,” he said. “It would make my life easier if you did, but my life isn’t what’s at stake. Yours is. So I’m going to give you some advice, because I think you’re a rare talent whether or not you come to Eugene to run for me. Jannie, you are going to get multiple scholarship offers. You should visit every school that you’re interested in and really explore the people and the places and the track programs before you make a decision. I know Eugene is far from Washington, DC, but would you be interested in paying us a visit?”

  Jannie looked relieved that she didn’t have to decide on the spot, glanced at me, and nodded. “I’d like that, Coach.”

  “Excellent,” Johnson said. “When could you bring her out?” he asked me.

  I glanced at Bree, who said, “Winter vacation?”

  “Perfect,” he said. “Oh, and those plane tickets will be on the Ducks.”

  “Can I come?” Ali asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Jannie said.

  Coach Johnson stayed a few more minutes, answering our questions, and charming Nana Mama no end.

  “I’ll be back for more of that pie,” he told her as he was leaving.

  “You’re always welcome, Coach Johnson.”

  When the door shut, we were all grinning like fools. Bree kissed Jannie, who said, “Did that really just happen?”

  �
��Best track program in the country,” I said, feeling my eyes water.

  “Long way from home,” Nana Mama said in a way that made me realize she probably wouldn’t get to see Jannie run in person if she went to Oregon.

  “It is a really long way,” Jannie said. “I don’t know about that.”

  “You don’t have to know right now,” I said. “We’ll listen to everyone, and you’ll make the decision when you are ready. Okay?”

  Jannie hugged me. “Thanks, Dad. I’m so glad you were here for that. It could have been different. You know?”

  I closed my eyes, kissed the top of her head, and said, “I do, baby girl. I really do.”

  CHAPTER

  93

  WHEN THE ELEVATOR door opened onto the second subbasement below the FBI’s Cyber Division, Keith Rawlins had the tunes cranked inside his lab. The thudding, infectious bass line of Flo Rida’s “My House” came right through the glass window and seemed to vibrate in my chest.

  It was a few minutes past seven in the morning, and Rawlins had evidently been in the lab all night. But you wouldn’t have known it. The digital wizard was stripped to his denim shorts, covered in sweat, and bouncing up and down on a mini-trampoline while punching the air in time to the beat.

  “I still can’t believe this guy works for us,” said Special Agent in Charge Mahoney, my old partner at the FBI, who had taken over the missing-blondes case for the Bureau.

  “I suffer the indignity of it every day,” Special Agent Batra said.

  “This could have waited a few hours,” Sampson said, and he yawned.

  I said, “He was excited enough about it to call us at five a.m.”

  “This better be good,” Sampson said. “All I’m saying.”

  Batra rolled her eyes and shouldered open the lab door. The music was blasting. Rawlins had Flo Rida’s music video playing on all screens. He spotted us and high-stepped our way, slinging his limp black Mohawk back and forth while singing, “‘Welcome to my house!’”

  Mahoney and Batra looked like they’d spent the night sleeping on coarse sandpaper. I smiled and drew my finger across my throat.

  Rawlins stopped dancing, pouted, picked up a remote, and froze the video. The lab got quiet.

  “The best part was just coming,” he said. “Clay Pritchard lays down the best saxophone licks since—”

  “You woke us up, called us in here,” Batra grumbled. “It wasn’t to dance, was it? Because if it was, I’m gonna be pissed.”

  “Beyond pissed,” Mahoney said.

  Rawlins sighed, said, “Sometimes I wonder if the academy’s training just squeezes the soul and celebration out of every agent who graduates Quantico.”

  “Let’s see what you’ve got, Krazy Kat,” I said.

  Rawlins fashioned his hair into a bun like a samurai’s top-knot, a style that appeared to give Mahoney and Batra indigestion. The computer scientist waved a finger at me with one hand and snatched up a towel with the other.

  “Took me almost three days straight, but I was able to raise the dead.”

  “You calling yourself the Messiah now?” Batra said.

  “Just a miracle worker,” Rawlins said as he toweled his upper body dry.

  He put on an FBI sweatshirt and a pair of black-and-white checkered sneakers before strolling over to the keyboard for the main screen array.

  “A lot of the data was corrupted,” he said, typing. “But I was able to salvage a few things from the day Timmy Walker was killed.”

  Rawlins hit Enter, and Flo Rida and his house disappeared on the screens, replaced by shaky video showing a wooded scene. The cameraman was sneaking through thick foliage.

  I had no idea where it was shot until a boy’s hand came forward and pushed aside leafy vines and saplings to reveal the lip of a dirt bank. The camera tilted down the bank and out twenty feet toward a blue Toyota Camry in a familiar clearing. The windows of the car were down.

  The camera trembled, and you could hear Timmy Walker breathing hard while Ginny Krauss and Alison Dane made love naked in the backseat.

  “The little Peeping Tom creep,” Batra said.

  “It is creepy,” Rawlins said. “But I think you’re going to like little peeping Timmy, God rest his soul, before it’s over.”

  The camera settled and zoomed in. Alison Dane’s hand slid from her lover’s breast and trailed down over her belly, and then she seemed to hear something. The cameraman did too.

  The focus went haywire for a moment before settling back on the girls, who were scrambling for their clothes. Then Ginny Krauss happened to look out the window and up the bank, straight at the camera.

  She screamed, “There’s some pervo kid in camo out there! He’s filming us!”

  Timmy apparently whirled around and took off back into the forest. The next twenty-seven seconds were herky-jerky, mostly flashes of green in a dim forest.

  Then, over the croaking of tree frogs and the thrumming of crickets, you could hear a vehicle roar into the clearing and skid to a stop. One of the girls screamed.

  The camera turned back and began moving again, going closer to the clearing, zooming in on a white Ford utility van idling in front of the Camry.

  One of the girls started screaming again. “Please! Don’t do this! Help! Kid! Help us, kid!”

  The screen went black.

  Rawlins said, “Unfortunately, that’s all the video I could recover.”

  “Shit,” Sampson said. “Can you give us a blown-up look at that van?”

  “I don’t need to,” Rawlins said. “Timmy did.”

  He gave the keyboard several more orders and the biggest screen was filled with a digital photograph showing a grainy zoomed-in view of the van. The windows were tinted, so we couldn’t get a look at the interior, but the signage on the side was clearly visible.

  “Dish Network?” Mahoney said.

  “And those are Maryland plates,” I said. “Five, seven, E, one … can’t make out the—”

  “It’s a six,” Rawlins said. “You see it better in the other photographs.”

  “How many other photographs?” Sampson said.

  “Five. Timmy could have just kept running after the girls spotted him. But he heard them screaming and decided to take these pictures. I think he was going to go to the police with them. Otherwise, why take the risk? Why not do the natural thing for a twelve-year-old boy caught with his hand in the pervert cookie jar and just run?”

  Judging from her body language, Batra seemed to have some issue with the theory, but Mahoney said, “I think you’re right.”

  “I do too,” I said. “I also think those pictures got Timmy Walker killed.”

  “Oh, I know they did,” Rawlins said. “The phone died less than twenty-five seconds after the last picture was taken.”

  CHAPTER

  94

  JUST AFTER DARK that same day, Sampson, Mahoney, and I were watching FBI crime scene techs getting ready to tear apart a white Ford utility van with Dish Network signage on both sides. It was in the parking lot at the Dish authorized-seller store in Rockville, Maryland, and roped off with police tape.

  The store manager, a small, cranelike man named Lester Potter, was rubbing his hands together and watching nervously.

  “You know that van was stolen, right?” Potter said.

  “When was that?” Sampson asked.

  “Five, six months ago? One of my techs was out doing a residential satellite install in Gaithersburg. She’s in the house not ten minutes, comes out, and the van’s gone. Boosted in broad daylight. They disabled the tracking device. Six weeks go by, and the company’s written it off, figured it was looted and chopped up for parts. But then we get a call. Pennsylvania state troopers found it abandoned in long-term parking at the Harrisburg airport. It’s crazy, but they didn’t take a thing. That van was as clean and shipshape as it was when it was stolen. Someone just took it for a joyride.”

  “No,” Sampson said. “Someone took it to kidnap two teenage girls who a
re still being held captive and terrorized to satisfy the twisted fantasies of Internet trolls.”

  “Oh,” Potter said, his face turning pale. “I had no idea.”

  “Who was the driver the day it was stolen?” I said.

  “Lourdes Rodriguez,” he said. “One of my best employees ever.”

  “Can we talk with Ms. Rodriguez?”

  “She doesn’t work here anymore,” Potter said. “Lucky gal inherited a pile of money from a great-uncle and took this job and shoved it a few months ago.”

  Sampson said, “I guess the glamour of being a satellite installer wasn’t enough to keep her on the Dish Network career path.”

  The store manager gave him an odd look, said, “Who could blame her?”

  “No one,” I said. “You have contact information for Ms. Rodriguez?”

  “I’m sure I do somewhere.”

  “Could you do us a solid and dig it up?”

  Potter’s nose twitched as if he thought the task beneath him, but he went inside.

  “Why take nothing?” I said.

  “How many people without training know how to install satellites?” Sampson said. “And I can’t imagine they’re easy to sell on the black market. They say Dish all over—”

  “Agent Mahoney?” Karen Getty, an FBI crime scene tech, called out.

  Getty was standing at the rear of the van wearing disposable white coveralls, latex gloves, and blue booties over her shoes. The two rear doors of the van were open, revealing shelves, boxes of supplies, six satellite dishes, and stacked rolls of cable.

  “You’re going to want to see this,” Getty said.

  We all went to the rear of the van, which looked spotless.

  “Kill the lights,” she said.

  The interior lights died. So did the spots brought in to illuminate the search. She picked up a bottle marked LUMINOL and started spraying it around.

  Luminol is a compound that glows when it’s exposed to certain substances, like the iron in hemoglobin. When someone tries to clean up blood, traces of it are left behind; spray that area with luminol, and the chemical glows blue for a brief period.