Target: Alex Cross Page 8

  There was a sharp knock at the door. A tall, willowy blonde in a fine blue pantsuit and a pearl necklace came in carrying an attaché case.

  “Perrie Knight, counselor-at-law,” she said crisply. “I’ll be representing Ms. Morales. And this interview, I’m afraid, is over.”

  Bree exited the interrogation room looking agitated. She was openly angry when she reached the observation booth. I was still on hold, waiting for the lab tech.

  “Romero confessed,” she said. “I heard it. Wiggins and Flaherty heard it too.”

  “Lupe says it was just a manner of speaking,” Agent Reamer said.

  “Sure, she says that,” Bree replied. “She wants off death row.”

  “What’s Perrie Knight doing involved in this case?” Lieutenant Lee said. “She’s not with federal defenders. She’s high-dollar, white-collar crime cases.”

  The tech at Quantico came back on the line. I listened, thanked him, and hung up. “Morales was right about her gun being empty. In fact, the FBI lab says it’s never been fired.”

  “That doesn’t absolve Romero of the murder,” Bree said.

  “I agree,” Lieutenant Lee said.

  “You’re both right,” I said. “Until we check with that motel, an empty gun doesn’t absolve anyone. But you should also know that the ballistics folks at Quantico say that none of the weapons recovered last night remotely match the bullets that killed Senator Walker. I think we have to consider the senator’s case open again.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  MARTY FRANKS WHISTLED an old Kansas tune, “Carry On Wayward Son,” as he drove east toward an oncoming winter storm. It was already getting late. The sun barely showed in a gunmetal sky. Less than an hour of daylight left.

  Few people were on the highway in this mountainous part of West Virginia. Dead of winter. No reason to be out and about if you didn’t have to be, especially with a blizzard forecast.

  Franks liked to whistle. He was good at it, and he kept whistling that Kansas song until the burn phone rang on the seat beside him.

  He pressed Answer on the Bluetooth connection. “Talk.”

  “Peter here. How you coming along, Conker?” said a man with a British accent.

  “Five, maybe six hours out of DC, if I’m lucky,” Franks said.

  “There’s a room for you at the Mandarin Oriental under Richard Conker. Everything else you’ll need is in the safe. Code 1958. Repeat, 1958.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ll talk to you in the morning, then.”

  The line went dead. Franks ate a carrot, took a gulp of water, and thought about a bed at the Mandarin. But that was hours away.

  He took his mind off the long drive by focusing on the pleasant soreness in his shoulders and legs. A welterweight in his thirties with a smooth shaved head and a disarming smile, he kept his body in prime condition by pushing it hard, and often.

  Earlier in the day, just west of Cleveland, he’d stopped at a park and in twenty-degree temperatures put himself through a brutal hour-long routine of gymnastics, calisthenics, and body-weight plyometric exercises, followed by his own meld of yoga and the various martial arts he’d studied over the years. He’d burned twenty-five hundred calories, easy.

  Since then, Franks had been engaged in a near nonstop, slow-motion binge of various shakes, protein bars, and raw vegetables and fruits.

  And yet, after his phone call with the Brit, after knowing he had a high-dollar job waiting, he felt a different kind of hunger. One that couldn’t be sated with food.

  Franks saw a sign ahead: ROUTE 16, IVYDALE—MUDFORK .

  Despite the storm coming, despite the long drive ahead, he ran his tongue along his lips, went with his gut, and got off at the exit.

  West Virginia State Route 16 ran north and south. He took a left and headed toward Mudfork. The road was narrow, snow-covered, and potholed in places, but Franks drove fast in his white Chevy Tahoe. Wyoming plates. Radial studded snow tires. Heavy-duty shocks. Registered to Richard Conker.

  Franks pressed on the gas, his head swiveling as he scanned the area. He didn’t have a lot of time to find what he was looking for. Once darkness fell, he’d be done.

  North of the hamlet of Nebo, the land on both sides of the route turned hilly; it was forested in bare oaks and clad in four inches of fresh snow. Franks passed a short driveway and saw an opportunity that made him smile.

  Beyond some pines, two hundred yards farther on, he came upon the relic of a farmhouse, windowless, siding peeled to bare board and rotten. The barn’s roof was caved in. No sign of life anywhere.

  Even better.

  Franks pulled into the overgrown lane and parked the white Tahoe behind a gnarled old spruce and crab-apple trees laden with snow. His wiser, more experienced self said to sit there a few moments, breathe, and consider other options.

  But then, even with the window closed, he heard the buzz of a chain saw. It almost took his breath away. Throwing caution to the wind, he reached around beneath the seat behind him, grabbed a few things, and climbed out.

  The snow came up over Franks’s ankles, running shoes, socks, and the bottom of his leggings. His feet felt cold and wet almost immediately, but he didn’t care.

  He pulled up the hood of his black fleece jacket against the wind and broke into a jog, passing an old chicken coop in the overgrown farmyard as he headed toward a stand of mature pine trees and the revving, biting sounds of that saw.

  CHAPTER

  26

  FRANKS DUCKED INTO a pine break planted ages ago.

  No doubt meant to block the view of nosy neighbors, he thought, ignoring the fluffy snow that sloughed off the boughs and clung to his hood, shoulders, and sleeves. He welcomed the snow and knew he had to have been almost invisible in those firs, frosted as he was, and moved toward the chain saw.

  Creeping up to the edge of the muddy work yard he’d glimpsed from the road, he spotted a stack of long logs to his left and a steel shed to his right.

  The chain saw and its operator worked by an idle log splitter set up near the base of a low hill of firewood. The logger had his back to Franks and was lopping fifteen-inch sections off a stripped tree trunk braced and strapped between two sawhorses.

  He had on an orange helmet with a visor and ear protectors, and he wore thick leather chaps and gauntlet gloves over a quilted canvas coverall. By the ease with which the man wielded the twenty-four-inch Stihl saw, Franks understood that beneath all that heavy gear, there was someone of formidable strength and power.

  That thrilled Franks. He forced himself to breathe deeply for a count of three before stepping from the pines, plucking up a short length of discarded tree limb about the thickness of his fist, and running right at the logger.

  He slowed at ten yards, glanced toward the road, saw nothing, and then threw the piece of wood at the man’s back.

  It smacked him. The logger started. The Stihl chain saw bucked and jumped, almost coming free of his grasp.

  He released the throttle. The saw idled. The blade stopped cutting a quarter of the way through the log. Only then did the logger look over his shoulder.

  Franks was in a fighting crouch not six yards away. He showed the sawyer the eight-inch blade of the Buck hunting knife in his right hand before lunging toward him.

  Franks slashed at the logger’s left upper arm, felt the razor-sharp blade slice through the canvas jacket and several layers beneath. The sawyer screamed out in pain. Franks leaped back into that fighting crouch, the Buck knife weaving in the cold air, the blade showing a film of bright blood.

  The logger let loose a bellow of rage then. He hit the gas on the chain saw and wrenched it free of the log. He swung it sideways and moved toward Franks, who jumped away nimbly, just out of reach of the chain saw’s ripping blade.

  Franks grinned at the logger, who’d swung too hard with the heavy saw and staggered left in the mud before regaining his balance. Now he squared off as he faced him, the cutting machine growlin
g in his hands.

  Franks looked the sawyer in the eye then and saw no fear. That made Franks even happier. Somehow, somewhere in the past, in the military, perhaps, the logger had faced death, and with that two-foot chain saw in hand now, he had the confidence of a warrior who knows his enemy holds an inferior weapon.

  “I’ll cut you in half, shit-brains,” the logger shouted from behind his helmet’s visor. “I’ll put you in two pieces.”

  “Do it, then,” Franks said calmly. “You can claim self-defense.”

  The logger thought about that, smiled, and pulled the butt end of the saw tight to his pelvis so the blade stuck out in front of him like some motorized sword. The logger charged at Franks, feinting this way and that with the spinning head of the saw.

  At each feint, Franks stepped back, one foot, then the other, and then again, staying just inches from the whirling teeth and seeing his enemy grow more and more frustrated at not being able to cut him to pieces.

  The logger took his finger off the gas. His shoulders and chest were heaving from the exertion of flinging the heavy saw around.

  Franks stood his ground, watching everything about the man, trying to see him as a whole enemy rather than just eyes or legs or arms, and definitely not as just that saw.

  “What the hell are you doing this for?” the logger yelled.

  “Practice,” Franks yelled back.

  “Practice? You insane?”

  “Just hungry.”

  “Hungry? Hungry?”

  The logger’s expression turned murderous. He exploded then and charged forward, wielding the saw like a bayonet that he intended to drive straight through Franks.

  Franks stood his ground. At the last second, he flung his body sideways and sprang at the logger. The chain saw’s teeth passed inches from his belly before he drove the Buck knife up under the visor and deep into the logger’s neck.

  The logger dropped the chain saw, which bit into the mud and flipped away from them, sputtering, coughing, and then dying.

  Franks was barely aware of the sounds. He was watching and feeling the logger’s quivers and shakes as more of his blood spurted against the inside of the visor. He grabbed the knife handle with his other hand just before the logger died and sagged against the blade and hilt.

  Franks used all of his strength to heft the dead man’s weight, then pushed hard against it and yanked back on the knife handle. The blade came free. The logger fell in the mud beside his saw.

  Franks stood there for several long moments, gasping for air, feeling exhilarated beyond words, soaking up the whole scene, until a snowflake hit his face. He looked up into a sky heading toward dusk, seeing more and more flakes coming at him, thick ones, swirling down.

  He felt giddy. A part of him wanted to stay and relive the last few amazing minutes. But his wiser self knew when to walk away.

  Franks never wavered as he hustled through the pine break into the old farmyard. The snow showers had turned into a squall by the time he reached the Chevy.

  When he drove past the logger’s work lot, Franks could make out the small hill of firewood through the falling snow but not the log splitter or the man he’d killed in mortal combat. He felt neither pity toward nor interest in the logger beyond the memory of their encounter. The logger had been a thrill, a challenge, training against a worthy opponent, and nothing more.

  He started to whistle, and then to sing. “Carry on, my wayward son, there’ll be peace when you are done.”

  As he sang on, the wind picked up. So did the snow. It was a full-on blizzard by the time he reached I-79 and turned east again toward Washington.

  CHAPTER

  27

  CHIEF MICHAELS GAVE Bree a withering glare as he worried a pen in his hand.

  “You told me we had him!” Michaels said. “Self-confessed, you said! I told the mayor. I told the congressmen. I … shit.”

  He plopped in his chair and tossed the pen on the desk in disgust.

  Bree took a deep breath before saying as calmly as she could: “Chief, at the time, I believed I had Senator Walker’s killer. Romero had threatened the senator recently. He referenced Senator Walker’s murder as evidence he would not hesitate to kill Mrs. Sheridan or her daughters. His accomplice says he came three thousand miles to, quote, ‘set some things straight and make a pile of Benjamins.’ He was a prime suspect even before he started shooting.”

  “But Romero’s on this motel security tape in Roanoke?”

  “I haven’t seen it,” she said, deflated. “But evidently Romero, Lupe Morales, and this Chewy character are all on motel video checking in and out. With the snowstorm, there definitely was not enough time for them to get from Roanoke and back.”

  “So the senator’s killer remains at large,” Michaels said. “There’s still an asshole out there we don’t know about.”

  “Or a dead one we do know about.”

  Michaels cocked his head. “I’m not following.”

  Bree opened the manila file in her lap. She handed over photographs taken at the strangulation scene in Georgetown.

  “This man, carrying the ID of one Carl Thomas of Pittsburgh, was throttled five blocks from the senator’s crime scene about seventeen hours after Walker was shot.”

  “Loose proximity,” the chief said dismissively. “Where’s the hard connection?”

  “The victim was able to get two shots off at his killer with a gun recovered at the scene,” she said, and then she pushed a paper across the desk. “The rush report says there’s gunpowder residue on the victim’s right hand and wrist that matches the pistol.”

  “Okay?”

  Bree handed him a second document. “Results for gunpowder on his clothes.”

  Michaels studied the lab results, which had come in moments before Bree was set to speak with the chief.

  He glanced at the first report. “Different gunpowders?”

  Bree nodded. “It’s all being sent to Quantico for confirmation, but it will be interesting to see if the blast powder on his clothes matches the residues found in that apartment Senator Walker’s assassin used.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so, Chief, even without the lab results,” she said. “I had Thomas’s prints run. We got no hits in the FBI databases, but we did in Scotland Yard’s files.”

  Michaels sat forward. “Scotland Yard? I thought the victim was from Pittsburgh.”

  “I said his driver’s license said he was from Pittsburgh.”

  “And Scotland Yard says different?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that when we ran the prints, we definitely got a hit in Scotland Yard,” she said. “There’s a file there somewhere, but we were denied access to it.”

  Michaels shook his head. “So let me get this straight. A man with a Pittsburgh ID dies violently five blocks from Senator Walker’s murder scene, and Scotland Yard won’t tell us who he really is?”

  “That’s correct.”

  The chief thought about that. “So he’s a spook or something? Someone protected, anyway. Or someone Scotland Yard doesn’t want us to know about?”

  “Any or all three, sir,” Bree said.

  “What if he was working with the Brits? What if he shot Betsy Walker on orders from the Brits?”

  Bree had not considered that last idea, and the implications shocked her.

  “It would be a political assassination ordered by a foreign power,” she said. “An act of war. By an ally.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  MY SON ALI hustled ahead of me toward the front door of Fong and Company, the best Asian market in the District of Columbia.

  “I think this will be fun,” Ali said, looking at me over his shoulder. “You know, kind of like that show I like. Weird Foods ? I love that guy. He’s always eating the grossest things and makes it sound like he’s in heaven doing it.”

  “Okay
, what’s weird in this recipe?”

  “Nothing. I don’t think. But there’s bound to be weird food in the store, right?”

  He sounded so desperately hopeful that I laughed. “I’m sure we can find something weird if we look hard enough.”

  Ali brightened and pushed into Fong’s, a sprawling, happy warren with narrow aisles and shelves stacked high with mysterious boxes that threw sweet and spicy smells into the air.

  Ali went off through the maze, hunting. He pointed to several live tanks by the fish counter and said, “Okay, that’s weird.”

  “Live crabs?”

  “No, the eels,” he said, and he shivered. “I couldn’t eat those.”

  I saw them slithering about in the tank next to the crabs and lobsters. “Yeah, I’m not big on eels either.”

  “I’d eat just about anything else, though,” Ali said.

  That lasted until he spotted a sign for Burmese peppers, five thousand degrees of heat.

  “Okay, so I wouldn’t eat those either,” he said. “Why do some people like their food so hot that it makes them cry?”

  “I don’t really know. Ask your grandfather.”

  “Yeah, he’s always putting hot sauce on things.”

  We found a nice clerk in her twenties named Pam Pan and showed her Song’s list of ingredients.

  “Judging by the ingredients, those are going to be yummy rolls,” Pan said.

  “Old Hong Kong family recipe,” Ali said.

  “Really?” Pan said.

  “My girlfriend-in-law’s grandmother’s recipe.”

  “Your girlfriend-in-law?”

  “My brother’s girlfriend,” Ali said, smiling. “Makes sense, right?”

  The clerk laughed and looked at me. “Is he like this all the time?”

  “Twenty-four/seven.”

  Ali went on to prove it as the clerk took us around, peppering her with questions about the ingredients and whether there were any “really weird” foods in the store. He got a kick out of pickled chicken’s feet, which, to his credit, he tried.

  The faces he made caused Pan and me to crack up, and I felt like we’d made a friend by the time she’d found every ingredient in the recipe. Ali and I left the market and called for an Uber to take us home.