Cross the Line: (Alex Cross 24) Read online

  “He never got the chance to go for his gun,” I said.

  “So somebody awful strong and awful sneaky quiet,” Bree said.

  There were three other dead men outside the factory. The two by the doors were African American and had suffered broken necks. The one at the far corner was Caucasian and had also been strangled with piano wire. All of them were buff. All of them were armed. Not one of them carried an ID.

  “So how did it work?” Sampson asked. “One killer?”

  “He’d have to be a ninja or something,” I said. “I’m thinking four.”

  “At the same time?” Bree said.

  I looked around, saw no lightbulbs in any of the exterior light fixtures.

  “At the same time and in the dark,” I said. Then, gesturing toward the steel doors, I asked, “If they were guards, what were they guarding?”

  Sampson went to the near door, turned the knob, and pushed. The door creaked open. We got out Maglites and, pistols drawn, entered the abandoned factory. I led, my beam flickering down the cement-floored hall to swinging double doors, which I pushed through.

  Big machine tools had once occupied the large open space. You could see the outlines of them on the floors beneath a film of grit and dust; you could smell the oil of them in the air. There was also a faint smell of engine exhaust.

  Pigeons flew through broken windows two stories above us. The sun was starting to light up the area, but I kept the flash-light on, peering around, seeing that about halfway across the factory, the vault met the walls of a second story. In the space below that upper floor, there were two large gas-fired electrical generators idling, the source of that exhaust smell.

  “No one move,” Bree said.

  I turned and found her studying the factory floor. She scuffed at the grime with the toe of her shoe and then turned her light back the way we’d come.

  “We’re leaving footprints here,” she said. “But not back in the hallway. It’s been swept. Maybe mopped.”

  I got what she was saying and trained my flashlight on the floor by the double doors. The floor there was clean as well. On either side of the doors, there was a cleaned path about twenty inches wide that ran the length of the room tight to the wall; each ended at a steel industrial staircase.

  We didn’t need the flashlights to see that the stairs climbed to two catwalks and that the catwalks led to doors, one at either end of the second story. We walked along the left path, our flashlight beams finding mounds of junk, old pipes, conduits, and metal fittings, all coated in filth.

  But the steel staircases looked freshly swept. The catwalk too.

  One door was ajar, and I could see light shining beyond.

  “Alex?” Sampson said. He’d stopped on the catwalk behind me and was shining his light down at the factory floor and onto a fifth dead man sprawled on his belly there.

  “He’s been shot in the head,” Bree said, focusing her beam on the nasty exit wound at the back of his skull. “I’m calling in a second forensics team.”

  “Smart,” I said, shifting my attention to the open doorway. I moved closer and pushed the door inward, revealing a short passage that was blocked from floor to ceiling and wall to wall with black, heavy-gauge plastic sheeting.

  There was an industrial-strength vertical zipper in the sheeting and two small square windows through which light was blazing. I stepped up, looked through one of the windows, and felt my stomach fall twenty stories.

  “Alex?” Bree said from behind me. “What is that?”

  “An air lock,” I said, twisting away from the window.

  She must have caught the shock on my face, said, “What?”

  “Call in two more forensics teams,” I replied, hearing the tremor in my voice. “Better yet, call the FBI, Ned Mahoney. Tell him we need a team of the best from Quantico. And have them bring chemists and hazmat suits.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  BY THE TIME my old friend and partner Ned Mahoney and two FBI chemists arrived, there were news satellite trucks setting up and news helicopters circling overhead.

  I was on the phone with Chief Michaels, having just given him an overview of what we’d seen inside.

  “Jesus,” he said. “The FBI will take this over, won’t they?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Which brings me to your question from last night.”

  “Okay?”

  “I’m honored, but my place is in the field, and right now it’s inside this factory.”

  “Goddamn it, Cross, I need someone managing my detectives.”

  “Chief, they’re bringing me my hazmat suit. I’ll call when we’re out and know the full extent of things.”

  I hung up before he could challenge me. I went to the FBI van, where Mahoney, his chemists, and Sampson were climbing into protective suits.

  “How many did you see?” Mahoney asked.

  “At least five more bodies,” I said.

  “Wait until the cable shows get hold of this,” Sampson said.

  “They already have,” said Bree, coming up behind us and eyeing the hazmat suits. “Someone needs to talk to them.”

  “Once we know what to tell them,” I said. “You coming?”

  She made a sour face and shook her head. “I’d get claustrophobic in one of those things. And we don’t even know what’s in there yet.”

  “Which is why we have to go look,” I said, and I kissed her.

  I donned the hooded visor. The temperature outside was pushing ninety, and inside the suit, it had to be well over one hundred degrees as we started back into the factory. Sampson let the chemists go through the air lock first. I heard one of them inhale sharply.

  “Be careful in here,” he said. “No sudden moves.”

  “Believe me, there won’t be,” I said, and I ducked through the flaps of the air lock into a room set up as a sophisticated laboratory.

  The FBI chemists were already studying the mind-boggling array of equipment and the various chemical processes that had been under way at the time of the massacre. Sampson and I went to the five dead people in the room, two women and three men, sprawled by various workbenches.

  They wore hospital scrubs, lab goggles, booties, and surgical hats and masks. Every one of them was shot either through the head or square in the chest.

  I scanned the floor all around, said, “I haven’t seen a cartridge casing yet.”

  “No,” Sampson said. “They policed their brass, swept their way out.”

  “Professional gunmen,” I said.

  Mahoney and the chemists came over.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Pitts, one of the chemists, said, “It’s no Walter White setup, but this has the makings of a serious drug lab. Meth and ecstasy.”

  “Any danger of this place exploding?” I asked.

  “Lots of potential danger,” Pitts said. “But now that we know what we’ve got, we’ll start shutting down the reactions. Then we’ll do an inventory and take the samples we need. We’ll call for a full team to dismantle the entire lab and store it for trial.”

  Trial. I couldn’t begin to think how long it was going to take to investigate this case, much less bring the killers to court. Sampson and I headed toward a second air lock at the other end of the laboratory.

  We went through it, and in the next twenty minutes we found the rest of the illegal drug factory as well as twelve more bodies. Five females, seven males of various races and ages. Twenty-two dead in all.

  Three of the females were found in a packaging room with long stainless-steel tables, large mortars and pestles, digital scales, hundreds of boxes of zip-lock bags, and four vacuum-sealing machines. Six kilos of raw meth were piled on the table. Sampson figured there was at least twice that amount already wrapped, sealed, and boxed for delivery.

  “If this were a case of assassins hired by rival drug lords, you’d figure they would have taken the drugs with them,” Sampson said.

  “Maybe they were after money,”
I said. “An operation this size has to be generating millions in cash.”

  In the last room we found the cash. On a pallet, there were banded fifty-dollar bills, similar to the ones we’d seen at Edita Kravic’s place, stacked three feet high and wrapped in cellophane. Next to that were two guys in their mid- to late thirties wearing suits and ties. Both had been shot between the eyes.

  “Has to be at least a million dollars right there, and they leave it,” Sampson said. “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either,” I said.

  “Revenge?”

  “Maybe. Not one of the victims seems to have put up any kind of resistance. It’s as if every single one of them was surprised and killed with a single shot.”

  “Which means suppressors on all the weapons.”

  “Definitely.”

  Sampson said, “Everything about this is scary smart and precise. The shooting. Picking up the brass. Sweeping as they left. The lack of a reason.”

  “Oh, there’s a reason, John,” I said. “You don’t kill twenty-two people if you don’t have a damned good reason.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  AN HOUR LATER, in the full heat of the day, Bree stepped up in front of a bank of microphones outside the factory fences.

  “I know this has been frustrating, but we wanted to give you accurate facts and it took time to gather them,” she said in a clear, commanding voice. “We are dealing with multiple homicides in the unstable environment of an extremely large methamphetamine lab. Twenty-two are known dead.”

  Gasps went up. Reporters started bellowing questions. Screams of horror and grief gathered force in the crowd beyond the media throng.

  “Please,” Bree said, holding up her hands. “The bodies have been stripped of identification. Someone out there knows someone who worked in this factory—a wife, a mother, a friend, a husband, a father, a son or daughter.

  “If you’re that someone, we ask that you come forward to identify the body and help us understand who might be responsible for committing these cold-blooded killings and why.”

  The media went nuts and bombarded Bree with questions. She kept calm and told them essentially the same thing over and over again.

  “Well done,” I said when she walked away from the microphones after promising to update them on the hour.

  “Just have to know how to feed them,” Bree said. “Bit by bit.”

  No one came forward initially, not even those people openly grieving. Then the bodies started leaving the factory in black bags, and the massacre was real, and their loss was heartbreaking.

  Vicky Sue Granger was the first to talk. In her late twenties, she looked devastated, and she said she was sure her husband, Dale, was in there.

  “He work in the lab?” Bree asked.

  “Shamrock City,” she said weakly. “That’s what they called it. If you were lucky enough to get inside, and you worked hard, the money just came pouring—”

  She stopped talking. I guess she figured the less she said about illegal cash, the better.

  I said, “Who was in charge?”

  Mrs. Granger shrugged, said, “Dale got in through T-Shawn, his cousin.”

  Other relatives started coming forward once we’d moved the bodies to an air-conditioned space at the medical examiner’s office. Family after family was forced to walk down the line of corpses lying in open bags on the cement floor. One man was looking for his eighteen-year-old son. Two girls were there for their older sister. A grandmother broke down in Bree’s arms.

  Dale Granger was there. He worked in packaging and had taken a bullet to the chest. His cousin Tim Shawn Warren, a part-time bouncer at a strip club, was one of the muscular guys who’d been strangled outside.

  Few of the relatives wanted to talk. The ones that did come up to us claimed to know little of what their loved ones had been doing, only that they’d gotten jobs and suddenly had a lot of cash on hand.

  Then Claire Newfield walked in. She saw her younger brother, Clyde, a guard with a broken neck, and became hysterical. When she finally got herself under control, she said Clyde had told her that he worked for scientists.

  “He said they were like geniuses,” Newfield said. “They’d figured out a new way to make meth and they were going to rule the entire East Coast.”

  “You have names?”

  “No, I didn’t want to know.”

  Around eight that night, we were left with seven bodies on the chill cement floor, and no one waiting outside. Two Jane Does. Five John Does. Two were the older Caucasian males in suits who’d been found with the cash; the remaining five were all in their late twenties and had been discovered in the meth lab.

  I knelt next to the bodies and looked at them. What had brought them to this? Who the hell were they?

  “Let’s get these bodies on ice,” I said.

  “Dr. Cross?” called one of the patrolmen by the door. “There’s a young lady out here who wants to look for her friends.”

  “Okay, one more.”

  Alexandra Campbell shuffled in as if against her will, shoulders rolled forward, looking everywhere but at the bodies. She was a reedy woman in her twenties with a colorful sleeve tattoo and blond hair dyed peach in places.

  “You think you know someone here?” I asked after introducing myself.

  Campbell shrugged miserably, said, “Gotta look. Make sure.”

  I led her over. Campbell stopped eight or nine feet from the remaining seven bodies. Her hand trembled up to cover her mouth.

  “Carlo,” she choked out. “Now look where you’ve left me.”

  She kind of folded down into herself then, wrapped her arms around her knees at the feet of the body bags, and sobbed her poor heart out. I gave her some time and then crouched at her side and offered her a tissue box.

  Bree brought her a bottle of water, and Campbell told us everything she knew.

  CHAPTER

  22

  WE DIDN’T REACH home until well after midnight. We ate cold leftover chicken in the kitchen and tried to forget the things we’d seen and heard.

  “You believe her?” Bree asked, getting up from the table to wash her plate. “Alexandra Campbell?”

  “The bones of it,” I said.

  “God help us, then,” she said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a zoo.”

  “Just be the calm tortoise,” I said.

  “You’re asking me to act like a turtle at work?”

  “No, like a tortoise, with a big armored shell and the ability to stand back from it all and keep plodding toward the finish line.”

  Bree looked at me sleepily, came into my arms, and said, “I have a feeling this is going to be all-consuming for a while, and you telling me to act like a land turtle wasn’t exactly the advice I expected from you. But I love you and let’s not lose track of each other.”

  “Deal,” I said, and followed her upstairs to bed.

  I don’t remember my head hitting the pillow. I don’t remember dreaming.

  There was nothing but darkness until the alarm went off at six fifteen. Bree was already up, showered, and dressed, and eating in the kitchen with Nana Mama. Jannie was drinking a protein shake and wearing her warm-ups.

  I yawned, said to Jannie, “You’re up early.”

  “Trainer’s waiting. He wants my workouts done before the heat comes up.”

  “You on the track?”

  “Gym,” Jannie said. “I’m being introduced to Olympic weight lifting.”

  “You’re going to be one of those bodybuilders?” my grandmother asked. “They’re not fast.”

  “No, Nana,” Jannie said. “This is exactly the opposite of bodybuilding. The Olympic lifts require every muscle in your body to engage and fire. So doing them in addition to running will get me much stronger and more explosive, and it’ll do it without making my body look freakish.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good,” Nana Mama said. “No freakish in this family.”

  I smiled through another yawn,
poured myself coffee. Bree rinsed the dishes and got ready to leave. I followed her into the front hallway.

  “Why are you in such a rush?” I asked.

  “Chief Michaels texted me, asked me to be in his office by nine.”

  “For what?”

  “To brief the mayor and the commissioner. How do I look?”

  “Like a badass crime fighter.”

  Bree smiled at that, pecked me on the lips, and said, “Thanks for making my life easier.”

  “Anytime. Day or night.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  THE MURDERS OF Aaron Peters, Tom McGrath, and Edita Kravic were put on the back burner after the massacre. Chief Michaels ordered virtually the entire Major Case Unit to work on the factory slayings.

  The FBI put another ten agents on the case. The help of the DEA was enlisted as well. A task-force meeting was called for early that afternoon in a room normally used for patrol roll call.

  The room was packed when Chief Michaels came in; he was followed by Ned Mahoney, a guy with a shaved head I didn’t recognize, and Bree. We hadn’t seen each other all morning, since I’d been back at the factory, watching the FBI neutralize and dismantle the meth lab.

  She smiled and opened her eyes wide at me, mouthed the word Text.

  I frowned, reached in my pocket, pulled out my smartphone, and realized that I’d shut the alerts off. There were several texts from Bree. The first three said Call.

  The last one said Oh, well, hold on to your hat.

  “This kind of slaughter will not go unanswered,” Chief Michaels began. “You cannot kill twenty-two people and not face punishment.”

  Everyone in the room sobered. Many nodded their heads.

  “The FBI, DEA, and DCPD have pledged total cooperation in that effort,” Chief Michaels said. “Our new chief of detectives, Bree Stone, will be supervising liaison with Special Agent Mahoney of the FBI and the acting DEA special agent in charge for the District, George Potter.”

  Sampson whispered in my ear, “Your mouth’s hanging open.”

  I shut it and grinned, prouder than proud. How could I not have seen that one coming?