Cross the Line: (Alex Cross 24) Read online

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means your boyfriend is disloyal,” I said. “He keeps three different women in three different apartments, rotates among them.”

  Bui’s face hardened, but she said nothing.

  “How’s that make you feel, sharing him with two others, good for only one night in three?”

  Le’s girlfriend blinked, stared at the floor, and said, “If that.”

  “Right. And suppose his other two girlfriends decide it’s better to tell us what they know than get caught in Thao’s net. Where’s that going to leave you?”

  Tears began to well in her eyes. “Up a creek,” she said. “Take off the cuffs, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  BREE BUILT UP a quick rapport with the twenty-four-year-old, so we decided to let her and Muller run the questioning when we returned to DC.

  I went back to the office I share with Sampson and found a GoPro camera in a sealed evidence bag along with a note from the medical examiner Nancy Barton.

  From the Maserati, she’d written. You’ll find it interesting. Barton had included a cable to hook up the camera to my computer. I attached it and turned the camera on. I had to fiddle until I got it in playback mode, and then Sampson and I watched the most recent MPEG file.

  We watched it again. We talked about what we’d seen, and then we watched it a third time.

  “I think we need to tell Michaels sooner rather than later,” Sampson said.

  “Agreed,” I replied.

  Ten minutes later, we were in the office of DC police chief Bryan Michaels. A welterweight fighting a paunchy belly, Michaels took a sip from his coffee cup and made a sour face.

  “Damn it, I’ll never get used to this,” he said, shuddering and setting the cup down on his desk. “Hot lemon water. Supposed to be good for me, change my alkalinity.”

  “Add honey,” I said.

  “But first call up that video we sent you,” Sampson said.

  “I could use a latte.” Michaels sighed, put on reading glasses, and turned to his computer.

  A few keystrokes later, the MPEG video appeared.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “Film of the last minutes of Aaron Peters’s life,” I said. “He had a GoPro Hero mounted in a fireproof housing on his dashboard. He must have hooked it up to his speedometer somehow, because—well, you’ll see.”

  The chief clicked on the video, blew it up to full screen.

  The camera gave us a view from the center of the dash, looking over the sleek hood and down along the headlight beams of the Maserati. In the lower right corner of the video, there was a digital speedometer. Lower left, a timer set at 0.

  “Here we go, epic run,” said Aaron Peters off camera as he left Beach Drive for Rock Creek Parkway.

  The timer started running as the engine roared, and the Maserati accelerated from thirty to seventy-five in under four seconds.

  Peters laughed and then said, “Sonofa—”

  The sounds of downshifting and brakes squealing filled the chief ’s office.

  “Watch for it, Chief,” Sampson said.

  Coming out of a backward S curve, a single headlamp cut the pavement beside the Maserati.

  “Motorcycle?” Michaels said.

  “What the … hey, asshole!” Aaron Peters said.

  The headlights slashed again to the right, and you could hear the powerful whine of the motorcycle over the Maserati’s engine. But then Peters began cutting back and forth, trying to keep the motorcyclist from passing. He braked poorly in the next curve and tried to accelerate.

  “Catch me if you can,” Aaron Peters said, and his speed climbed to ninety.

  It didn’t seem to matter. The single headlight swung, and the motorcycle’s engine sounded almost as loud as the Maserati’s before two shots rang out. The sports car went out of control, smacked a guardrail, and did a whip-fast 360-degree skid that almost lit up the escaping motorcyclist for a split second before the car vaulted into the woods, hit the trees, and exploded into flames.

  “Jesus,” Michaels said. “The guy shot from a motorcycle as he was going ninety?”

  “Exactly our reaction,” I said. “Now call up the pictures I sent you.”

  A minute later, the screen split into two photographs. One showed the wounds on COD Tom McGrath as photographed during his autopsy earlier in the day. The other picture was a close-up of Peters’s two head wounds.

  “Okay?” Michaels said.

  “In both cases, the shooting was extraordinary,” I said. “And in both cases, every bullet fired was a forty-five, perhaps from a Remington model 1911.”

  Chief Michaels squinted one eye. “You think it’s the same shooter?”

  “We have two slugs from Peters’s Kevlar helmet. We should have solid comparisons to the bullets that killed McGrath, but in the meantime we have to consider the possibility of one shooter, and I thought you should know.”

  The chief thought a moment, said, “I don’t want any of this getting out until we’ve got a confirm or no-confirm on the ballistics. Are we clear?”

  “We are,” Sampson said, and I nodded.

  “Any connection between Peters and McGrath?” the chief asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Sampson said.

  “Keep me posted.”

  “Every few hours, sir,” I said.

  When we turned to leave, Michaels said, “Alex, could I have a word with you?”

  I glanced at Sampson, said, “Sure.”

  When the door closed behind my partner, Michaels said, “I need a chief of detectives.”

  “Who are you considering?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Who better?”

  I felt all sorts of conflicting emotions roil through me.

  “Well?” Michaels said.

  “I’m flattered, Chief,” I said. “And humbled that you think highly enough of me to offer me the job. But I need some time to think, to talk to Bree and my family.”

  “You’d have more regular hours. Be able to see them more consistently, if that matters to you.”

  “It does, but I still am going to need some time to—”

  “Take all the time in the world. Just give me an answer by eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  NANA MAMA WAS in rare form that night. She’d seen Rachael Ray make chicken Provençal and decided to make it herself, doctoring the dish a bit by adding a little of this and a little of that until it was the kind of meal where you fought for seconds.

  “Good, isn’t it?” I said.

  “I’ll say,” Ali said.

  “More, please,” Jannie said.

  “Is that cumin?” Bree asked, smacking her lips.

  “And a touch of curry powder,” Nana Mama said. “That and the way the onions and the chicken skin get so crispy? I’d pay for a meal like this.”

  “Nana?” Ali said. “Did you check the lottery?”

  Nana Mama had been playing numbers since I was a little kid. It was one of her few vices. Every week since I’d moved into her home all those years ago, she’d played a number.

  “Already looked,” I said. “No one won Powerball. It’ll be up over fifty million the next draw.”

  “No, Dad,” Ali said. “The charter-school lottery.”

  My grandmother said, “Ali wants to go to Washington Latin, and I want him to go. He’ll be challenged academically in a charter, just as Jannie has been.”

  “I should get in, right, Dad?” Ali said. “I scored ninety-six percent in math.”

  “In the ninety-sixth percentile in math,” Nana Mama corrected him.

  “And ninety-one percent, uh, tile, in reading,” Ali said.

  “That will get you at least one more number in the lottery.”

  “Two more,” Nana said. “He’ll have a good chance.”

  Ali grinned down the table at me. He was such an affabl
e brainiac, interested in so many subjects it was sometimes hard to believe he was only seven. “I’m getting in if I have to go down the chimney,” he said.

  “Always better to go in the front door,” Bree said.

  She was up clearing dishes. I joined her, and we cleaned the kitchen to a high gloss that pleased Nana Mama enough for her to go out to watch NCIS, her latest favorite television show. Bree looked ready to join her, but I said, “Take a walk in the rain with me?”

  Bree smiled. “Sure.”

  The air was hot and saturated with the light rain that had begun falling. It felt good to walk in it, loosened up my legs a little after I’d eaten so much.

  “What did Michele Bui have to say?”

  “Nothing that pins the murders on Le, but she gave us enough promising leads to make it worthwhile,” Bree said. “She says he does have a Remington 1911 in a forty-five caliber. Several, evidently. And he had mentioned Tommy McGrath numerous times in the past few months, and always in anger. Le told Michele that Tommy was persecuting him. It’s amazing how they squeal when someone’s getting close.”

  “I know,” I said. “Listen, Michaels offered me chief of detectives.”

  Bree stopped and beamed at me. “Really? Oh my God, Alex. This is big.”

  “I know.”

  “You should do it. You deserve it, and I think you’d be great at it. Kind of like Tommy was, a mentor, an ally for every detective in Metro.”

  We started walking again. “I’ve thought of that. It’s appealing on that level.”

  “You’d also have more regular hours for the first time in longer than you’ve known me,” Bree said. “Jannie’s gonna be a sophomore. She won’t be home forever.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I’d get to see all of her races and attend science fairs with Ali. It’s really tempting.”

  Bree stopped again. There were raindrops on her cheeks that looked like tears. I brushed them away.

  “I hear a but coming,” she said.

  “There’s always a but coming.”

  “And yours is?”

  “Right here,” I said, patting my rump.

  “You’re avoiding the issue,” she said.

  “I am. Let’s go back.”

  “Not before you kiss me,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re kind of sexy in the rain.”

  “That so?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, and she got up on her tiptoes, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me long and deep.

  “Wow,” I said. “I’m going to have to walk in the rain more often.”

  She grinned and started strolling away coyly. “Can you imagine me in a steamy-hot rain forest, Chief Cross?”

  “Vividly,” I said, and we both laughed our way back to the house.

  I went upstairs to our bedroom and punched in the number for my recently found long-lost father. He answered on the second ring.

  “Haven’t heard from you in a bit, Alex,” my dad said.

  “You either, Dad. Retirement got you busy?”

  “Picking up more work than I can handle with the Palm Beach County prosecutors,” he said, sounding as if he couldn’t believe it.

  “Why does that surprise you?” I said. “They may have thrown you out of sheriff’s homicide, but they’re not going to waste talent.”

  “I’m still pinching myself I’m not in prison.”

  “You paid your dues. You became a good man, Jason Cross or Peter Drummond or whatever it is you’re calling yourself these days.”

  “Pete’s fine,” he said. “End of that. What’s up with you and the family?”

  I told him about the job offer.

  He listened and then said, “What turns you on, son?”

  “Being a detective,” I said. “It’s what I’m good at. Being an administrator—not so much.”

  “You can always delegate,” he said. “Stick to the stuff you’d enjoy about being COD and get rid of the rest of it. Negotiate it with your chief up front.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll sleep on it.”

  “Sounds to me like you’ve already made your decision.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  ON THE EVE of battle, he always changed his identity to suit his role. That night he thought of himself as John Brown.

  Brown rode in the front passenger seat of a tan panel van that bore no markings. Perfect for a predator. Or a pack of them.

  “Seven minutes,” Brown said, rubbing at a sore knee.

  He heard grunts from behind him in the van and then the unmistakable ker-thunk of banana magazines seating and the chick-chink of automatic weapons feeding rounds into breeches.

  They left Interstate 695 and crossed the bridge over the Anacostia River, heading toward the part of DC few tourists ever ventured. Drugs. Apathy. Poverty. They were all here. They all festered here, and because they were an infection, they had to be cut out, the area doused with antibiotics.

  They left the bridge, headed south on I-295 and then east again on Suitland Parkway. They exited two miles later and went south of Buena Vista.

  “Be smart and disciplined,” Brown said, pulling a sheer black mask down over his face. “Nothing gets taken, and nothing gets left behind. Agreed?”

  Grunts of approval came from the blackness of the van behind him. Brown leaned over and took the wheel while the driver put on his mask.

  A female voice in the back said, “Work the plan.”

  “Smart choices, smart fire,” a male said.

  “Surgical precision,” another male said.

  Brown pressed the microphone taped to his neck. “Status, Cass?”

  His headphones crackled with a woman’s voice

  “Good to go,” Cass said. She was in the van trailing them.

  Brown said, “Fifty seconds out.”

  More rounds were seated in chambers. A few soldiers coughed or blew their noses. The tension in the van was remarkably low, given the task ahead. Then again, the men and women following Brown were highly trained. This was neither a new drill nor an unfamiliar assignment.

  They pulled onto a spur road that hooked around back to the west, where it met the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. The van stopped where three streetlights had gone dark thanks to Crosman pellet guns two of his men used the night before. Brown’s driver killed the headlights. The rear of the van opened, and four men dressed head to toe in black spilled out.

  Brown got out after them. Before clicking shut the passenger-side door, he said, “Oh three thirty.”

  The driver nodded and drove away. The second van disgorged its passengers as well, and soon eight men and two women were climbing up and over the wall and into the cemetery. They turned on night-vision goggles. They wove through the green shadows and tombstones on a route that had been scouted repeatedly in the past three weeks. The intelligence was solid. So was this entry and exit route.

  Now it was just a matter of executing the plan.

  With his sore knee, Brown struggled to keep up, but he soon joined the others strung out along the tree line as they looked across a junky parking lot toward a dark and abandoned machine-tool factory. He listened, heard the purr of gas-fired electric generators, several of them, which was all the evidence you really needed to know that there was more to that relic of a factory than met the eye.

  “See them, right there?” Cass whispered. “Two by the door, one on either end? Just like I told you.”

  Cass was a big woman in her early thirties with short blond hair, and she was extraordinarily strong from years spent training in CrossFit. She was also one of the most competent and loyal people Brown had ever met. He’d had her scout the machine shop, knowing she’d do the job right.

  He turned up the magnification on his night-vision, peered across the lot, and spotted the first two guards. They were lying on mattresses on either side of a double door. A third smoked a cigarette at the far corner. The fourth sat on his haunches at the opposite end of the building
.

  “Formation is the same,” Brown murmured into his microphone. “Cass and Hobbes, take the center. Price and Fender, the flanks.”

  They padded softly toward their prey. The two guards sleeping at the doors didn’t have a chance to stir or make a peep before Cass and Hobbes snapped their necks. And the two watching the corners of the factory had no warning as Price and Fender came up behind them, flipped loops of piano wire over their heads, and crushed their throats.

  CHAPTER

  19

  IN THE MISTY August dawn, six patrol cars with lights flashing formed a broad perimeter around an abandoned machine-tool factory in Anacostia. Despite the early hour, small groups of people were standing outside on stoops and sidewalks, peering at the old brick building as if it were some cursed place.

  Bree, Sampson, and I had responded because we were closest, and we found the two patrolmen who’d made the discovery shaken.

  They laid out the situation, which began with an anonymous call to 911 and ended with what they’d found in the old factory.

  “We saw enough to fall back and call in the cavalry,” one said.

  “You did right,” I said. “Show us.”

  The officers led us around the rear of the building. We could hear generators rumbling inside when we turned the corner and saw the first strangled man sprawled ten feet away on gravel and weeds.

  The piano wire that had killed him was embedded in his flesh. Early twenties, Hispanic, better than six feet tall and well over two hundred hard pounds, he wore a black wifebeater, baggy denim, expensive Nike basketball shoes, and lots of gold bling.

  “Took somebody awful strong to do this,” Bree said.

  “You know it,” Sampson said.

  I dug through the victim’s front pockets and came up with cash and a vial of pinkish powder.

  “Tastes like meth,” I said after dipping a gloved finger into it.

  There was something odd about the angle of the dead man’s hips, so I pushed the body forward. Nothing on the ground. But when I lifted the tail of his shirt, there was a 9mm Ruger in a concealed-carry holster at the small of his back.