I, Alex Cross Read online

  Was this why Caroline had moved to DC? And was it the reason she’d died the way she did?

  I came out to the living room in a fog, not even sure I could talk yet. Bree was down on the floor with an open box and several photos spread in front of her.

  She held one up for me to see. “I’d recognize you anywhere,” she said.

  It was a snapshot of Nana, Blake, and me. I even knew the date—July 4, 1976, the summer of the Bicentennial. In the picture, my brother and I were wearing plastic boaters with red, white, and blue bands around them. Nana looked impossibly young and so pretty.

  Bree stood up next to me, still looking at the photo. “She didn’t forget you, Alex. One way or another, Caroline knew who you were. It makes me wonder why she didn’t try to contact you after she came to DC.”

  The picture of Nana, my brother, and me wasn’t mine to take, but I put it in my jacket pocket anyway. “I don’t think she wanted to be found,” I said. “Not by me. Not by anybody she knew. She was an escort, Bree. High-end. Anything goes.”

  Chapter 8

  BACK AT THE office, which was buzzing with activity and noise, I got word from Detective Fellows down in Virginia. Prints on the stolen car matched up to a John Tucci of Philadelphia, now at large.

  I played some fast connect-the-dots—from Fellows in Virginia, to a friend at the FBI in Washington, to their field office in Philly and an agent, Cass Murdoch, who threw down another piece of the puzzle for me: Tucci was a known but small-time cog in the Martino crime family organization.

  That information cut both ways. It was a specific lead early in the case. But it also suggested that the driver and the killer might not be the same person. Tucci was probably part of something bigger than himself.

  “Any guesses what Tucci was doing all the way down here?” I asked Agent Murdoch. Bree and I had her on speakerphone.

  “I’d say he was either reassigned or else moving up in the organization. Taking on bigger jobs, more responsibility. He’d been arrested but never served time.”

  “The car was stolen in Philadelphia,” Bree said.

  “So then, yeah, he was working from home, emphasis on the was. My guess is he’s probably dead by now, after a screwup like that, whatever the hell happened out there on I-95.”

  “How about possible clients in Washington?” I asked. “Does the Martino family have any regular business down here?”

  “Nothing I know of,” Murdoch said. “But there’s obviously someone. John Tucci was too small-time to have drummed this up on his own. He probably thought he was lucky to get the assignment. What an asshole.”

  I hung up with Murdoch and took a few minutes to scribble some notes and synthesize what she’d told us. Unfortunately, every new answer suggested a new question.

  One thing seemed pretty clear to me, though. This wasn’t just a homicide anymore, and it was no individual act. Maybe it involved a sex-and-violence creep—but maybe it was a cover-up? Or both?

  Chapter 9

  THERE WAS MORE, of course, lots more, the kind of upsetting detail that keeps certain stories in the news for months, and some of it came right away for a change. Dr. Carbondale reached me in my car on the way home. Bree was driving her own car. “Toxicology shows no known poisons in Caroline’s system,” Carbondale told me. “No drugs of any kind, other than a .07 blood alcohol level. She couldn’t have been more than tipsy at the time of death.”

  So Caroline hadn’t been on drugs, and she hadn’t been poisoned. That wasn’t much of a surprise to me. “What about other causes?” I asked Carbondale.

  “I’m more and more certain that’s going to be an unanswerable question. All I can do is rule out certain possibilities. There’s no way of determining, for example, if she was beaten or strangled or—”

  She stopped short.

  The words came out of me like bile. “Or put right into that machine.”

  “Yes,” she said tightly. “But there is one other thing to tell you.”

  I gritted my teeth and wanted to hit something with my fist. But I had to listen.

  “We’ve isolated the remaining fragments. There’s some indication of antemortem bite marks.”

  “Bite marks?” I looked around for a place to pull over. “Human bite marks?”

  “I think so, yes, but I can’t be certain at this point. Biting can look almost identical to bruising, even under the best of circumstances. That’s why I’m bringing in a forensic odontologist to consult. What we’re working with is bone fragments where some of the tissue survived, so I can only see—”

  “I’m going to have to call you back,” I said.

  I pulled to the side of Pennsylvania Avenue and just let people honk their horns and go around me. This was too much—the unfairness, the cruelty, the violence, all those things I’m usually so good at dealing with.

  I threw back my head and cursed at the car ceiling, or God, or both. How could this be allowed to happen? Then I laid my head against the steering wheel and I started to tear up. And while I was there, I said a prayer for Caroline, who didn’t have anyone with her when she needed it most.

  Chapter 10

  EDDIE TUCCI KNEW he had screwed up really bad this time. Unbelievable! It was a terrible mistake to give that job—or any job—to his nephew Johnny. Not for nothing did they call the kid Twitchy. Now he’d gone AWOL and Eddie had spent the past three days waiting for the rest of the shitstorm to hit the fan.

  Even so, when the lights in his bar went out just after closing on Wednesday night, Eddie didn’t think too much about it. The building was going to shit, the whole neighborhood. Breakers popped all the time.

  He slid closed the register drawer and walked out from behind the bar in the dark. Through the swinging door to the back room. If he could manage to find it, there was an electrical box on the wall.

  Eddie didn’t get that far.

  Out of nowhere, a bag came down over his head. At the same time, something hit his right knee from the side, hard. Eddie heard the joint pop just before he went down, moaning from the pain.

  His moans didn’t stop them. Somebody put him in a powerful headlock, while someone else tied his ankles. He couldn’t even get off a punch, a kick, nothing. He’d just been hog-tied.

  “You fuckers! I’m going to kill you. You hear me? You hear me?”

  Apparently not. They hoisted him up onto the big table in back and cuffed each hand to the wooden legs underneath. Eddie yanked at the cuffs, but they only cut into his wrists. Even if he could get up, his knee felt like it was never going to work right again. He’d be a cripple now.

  Then a faucet was turned on—full force.

  What was that about?

  Chapter 11

  WHEN THEY PULLED the bag off his head, the lights were back on. That was good, right?

  Well, not exactly. Eddie saw two upside-down faces looking at him, a white guy and a brown one, maybe Puerto Rican. They were dressed right for the neighborhood, but their short haircuts and the way they operated marked them as suits or military, maybe both.

  And Eddie knew right then just how scared he ought to be. This thing, his nephew’s screwup, had obviously gotten way out of hand.

  “We’re looking for Johnny,” the white guy said. “Any idea where he is?”

  “I haven’t heard from him!” It was the God’s honest truth. These were not people to mess around with. He was sure of that much.

  “That’s not what I asked you, Ed. I asked if you knew where he was.” The voice was cool, the two of them watching him like he was a specimen in a lab.

  “Hand to God, I don’t know where Johnny is. You gotta believe me on that.”

  “Okay, I hear you.” The dark one nodded. “I believe you, Ed. Let’s just be sure, though.”

  Eddie’s heart jumped into his throat before they even moved on him. The white one put him in another powerful headlock, grabbed his jaw, and forced the handle of a screwdriver into his mouth. Then he pinched Eddie’s nose closed with two fi
ngers.

  The other dude came back into view, holding the running end of a green rubber hose. He held it over Eddie’s face and let the water pour into his mouth.

  Eddie gagged hard. This was bad! The water was coming too fast to swallow. He couldn’t breathe; he nearly bit through the screwdriver handle trying to spit it out.

  Pretty soon, his chest began to burn and his lungs were pulling for air. He bucked on the table, but the cuffs yanked him right back down. Pressure was building behind his eyes and nose, and he realized suddenly that he was going to die.

  That’s when the panic really took over. There was no pain anymore, no sound of him choking—just overwhelming fear. It was worse than any nightmare he could imagine, because this was real. It was happening in the back room of his own gin mill in Philly.

  Eddie didn’t even know that the water had stopped at first. The white guy tilted his head to the side, pulled out the screwdriver, and let him hack it out for a minute. It felt as if he were going to cough up a lung.

  “Most people last a couple of minutes before they cave. Of course, these are soldiers I’m talking about.” One of them patted him on the belly. “That doesn’t quite describe you, Ed. So let me ask you again. Do you know where Johnny is?”

  Eddie could barely talk, but he choked out a fast answer. “I’ll find him. I swear to God I will!”

  “See, this is what I hate about the mob.” The voice came a little closer to his left ear. “You people just say whatever you need to say, whenever you need to say it. There’s no integrity. Nothing you can depend on.”

  “Give me a chance! I’m begging you!”

  “You don’t get it, Ed. This is your chance. You either know where Johnny is or you don’t. Now, which is it?”

  “I don’t know!” He was blubbering, half out of his mind. “Please… I don’t know.”

  They broke a couple of teeth getting the screwdriver back in his mouth. Eddie clenched his jaw and thrashed and begged for his life, but only until the torrent of water cut him off again. It didn’t take long before he was right back where he’d been a minute ago, absolutely convinced he was about to die.

  And this time he was right.

  Chapter 12

  THE BIZARRE MURDER case was spreading out like spidery legs around me, but one question hung over the rest: Were there others who had died like Caroline? Was that a possibility? A probability?

  Obtaining a credible account of missing persons in DC is harder than it might seem. After speaking with someone at the Youth Investigations Bureau, which has a centralized database, I had to go district by district, personally talking with detectives all over the city. Incident reports are public information, but what I needed were PD252s, which are private case notes.

  That’s where I could start to filter for students, runaways, and above all, anyone with a known or suspected history of prostitution.

  I brought home the files I’d gathered and took them to my office in the attic after dinner. I cleared off one entire wall and started tacking up everything—pictures of the missing, index cards with case vitals that I’d written up. Plus a DC street map, flagged everywhere that victims had last been seen.

  When all that was done, I stood back and stared, looking for some kind of pattern to reveal itself.

  There was Jasmine Arenas, nineteen, two priors for solicitation. She worked Fourth and K, where she’d last been seen getting into a blue Beemer around two a.m. on October 12 of last year.

  Becca York was just sixteen, very pretty, an honor student. She’d left Dunbar High School on the afternoon of December 21 and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. Her foster parents suspected she’d run away to New York or the West Coast.

  Timothy O’Neill was a twenty-three-year-old call boy who had been living with his parents in Spring Valley at the time of his disappearance. He drove away from the house around ten p.m. on May 29 and never came home again.

  It wasn’t like I actually expected any kind of connect-the-dots pattern to jump out at me. This was more like building the haystack. Tomorrow, we’d start looking for the needle.

  That meant fieldwork, and lots of it, following up on every one of these tawdry files. If just one of them showed a connection to Caroline, it could be huge. This was the kind of homicide that used to make me wonder why I keep coming back for more, year after year. I knew that on some level I was addicted to the chase, but I used to think that if I figured out why, then I’d stop needing it so much, maybe even turn in my badge. That hadn’t happened. Just the opposite.

  Even if Caroline hadn’t been my niece, I still would have been standing in my attic at two in the morning, staring at that terrible board, as determined as ever to find out who had killed her and maybe these other young people—and why.

  Remains.

  That was the single word, or maybe the concept, that I couldn’t get out of my head, couldn’t shake if I wanted to.

  Chapter 13

  I FELL ASLEEP hard that night and woke up the same way, diving into sleep and having to be ripped out of it. I ate breakfast with Nana, Bree, and the kids, but when I left the house I still wasn’t completely awake. It didn’t augur well, if you believe in auguring.

  The one appointment I needed to keep that day was my meeting with Marcella Weaver. Three years earlier, the breakup of her high-priced escort service had made national headlines and earned her the nickname “Madam of the Beltway.” An alleged client list had never surfaced but still had power brokers all over town shaking in their Florsheims.

  Since then, she’d bounced back Heidi Fleiss–style, with a syndicated radio show, a couple of lingerie boutiques, and a speaking fee reported to be five thousand. An hour, ironically enough.

  I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted her insight into the possible murders of escorts. Once I’d agreed to have her lawyer present, she said she’d meet with me at her apartment.

  The place was a gorgeous duplex not far from Dupont Circle. She answered the door herself, looking casual and refined in jeans and a black cashmere sweater. She also wore diamond earrings and a diamond-studded cross.

  “Is it Detective or Dr. Cross?” she asked.

  “Detective, but I’m impressed that you asked.”

  “Old habits die hard, I guess. I’m careful. I do my research.” She smiled easily, way more laid back than I’d expected her to be. “Come on in, Detective.”

  In the living room, she introduced me to the lawyer, David Shupike. I recognized him from a couple of high-profile cases around town. He was a dour, balding stereotype of a lonely guy; it was easy to imagine how he and Marcella might have met.

  She poured me a tall glass of Pellegrino, and we sat down on a leather couch with a view of the city.

  “Let me get this out of the way.” I slid a picture of Caroline across the coffee table. “Have you ever seen her before?”

  “Don’t answer that, Marcella.” Shupike started to push the picture back, but Ms. Weaver stopped him. She stared at it, then whispered something in his ear until he nodded.

  “I don’t recognize her,” she said to me. “And for whatever it’s worth, if I had, I wouldn’t have taken David’s advice. I really do want to help if I can.”

  She seemed sincere to me, and I chose to believe her.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out who Caroline was working for when she was killed. I wonder if you could point me in any direction,” I said.

  She pulled her small bare feet up onto the couch while she thought about it.

  “How much rent was she paying?”

  “About three thousand a month.”

  “Well, she certainly wasn’t making that on the street. If you haven’t already, you should check and see if she had a profile with any of the services. Almost all of them are posted online now. Although, if she was truly higher end, it will be that much harder.”

  “Why is that?”

  She smiled, not impolitely. “Because not everyone caters to the kind of clientele who u
se Google to find their girls.”

  “Point taken. I’ve checked out the services already, though.” I liked this woman, in spite of her job history. “What else?”

  “It would help to know if she was working in-call, out-call, or maybe both. Also, if there was any kind of specialty that she had. Dominant, submissive, girl on girl, massage, group parties, that sort of thing.”

  I nodded, but this wasn’t easy for me, and it was getting worse. Every turn of the case reminded me of something else I didn’t want to know about Caroline. I took a sip of mineral water.

  “What about the girls themselves? Where are they coming from?”

  “I’ll tell you this—college newspapers were my gold mine. These kids think they can handle anything. A lot of them already despise men. Some just want an adventure. I advertised in a lot of places, but you’d be surprised.” She pointed at the pocket where I’d put away Caroline’s picture. “She might have been paying her way through law school. Even medical school, believe it or not. I had a future surgeon as one of my very best girls.”

  She stopped then and leaned toward me to see into my eyes. “I’m sorry, but… did this girl mean something to you? If you don’t mind my asking. You seem… sad.”

  Normally, I might have minded, but Marcella Weaver had been nothing but helpful and open with me so far.

  “Caroline was my niece,” I told her.

  She sat back again with a manicured hand over her mouth. “I never even saw the slightest violence against any of my girls. Whoever did this deserves to die a painful death, if you ask me.”

  It seemed like I’d said enough already, but if that lawyer hadn’t been sitting there, I probably would have told Marcella Weaver that I felt exactly the same way.

  Chapter 14

  I COULD FEEL some positive movement on the case, but the rest of the day was all dreaded missing-persons follow-up. Sampson hooked up with me for the afternoon, and we interviewed one distraught family member after another.