Cross the Line: (Alex Cross 24)

by James Patterson

  The second we were back in the squad car and Sampson had us moving, I called Chief Michaels and filled him in.

  “How many men do you need?” he asked when I’d finished.

  I thought about that, said, “Four, sir, including Detective Stone. She and McGrath were friends. She’ll want in.”

  “Done. I’ll have them assembled ASAP.”

  “Give us an hour,” I said. “We’re swinging by McGrath’s before we head in to the office.”

  “No stone unturned, Alex,” Michaels said.

  “No, sir.”

  “You’ll have to look at Terry Howard.”

  “I heard Terry’s in rough shape.”

  “Just the same. It will come up, and we have to say we’ve looked at him.”

  “I’ll do it myself.”

  Michaels hung up. I knew the pressure on him to find the killer was already building. When a fellow cop is murdered, you want swift justice. You want to show solidarity, solve the case quick, and put someone in cuffs and on trial.

  Then again, you don’t want to leap to conclusions before you’ve collected all the evidence. With six detectives now assigned to the case, we’d be gathering facts fast and furious for the next few days. We’d be working around the clock.

  I closed my eyes and took several deep, long breaths, preparing for the hard road that lay ahead and for the separation from my family.

  The prospect of hard work didn’t bother me; being apart from my family did. I’m better when I have a home life. I’m a more grounded person. I’m also a saner cop.

  The car slowed. Sampson said, “We’re here, Alex.”

  McGrath’s place was a first-floor apartment in a converted row house near Dupont Circle. We got out the key our dead boss had been carrying and opened his front door.

  It swung open on oiled hinges, revealing a sparsely furnished space with two recliners, a curved-screen TV on the wall, and a stack of cardboard packing boxes in the corner. It looked like McGrath had not yet fully moved in.

  Before I could say that to Sampson, something crashed deep inside the apartment, and we heard someone running.

  I drew my weapon, hissed, “Sampson, around the back.”

  My partner pivoted and ran, looking for a way into the alley. I went through McGrath’s place, gun up, moving quickly, taking note of how few possessions the chief of detectives had had.

  I cleared the floor fast, went to the kitchen, and found a window open. I stuck my head out. Sampson flashed by me. I twisted my head, saw he was chasing a male Caucasian in jeans, a black AC/DC T-shirt, and a black golf hat, brim pulled down over a wild shock of spiky blond hair.

  He was a powerful runner; an athlete, certainly. He was carrying a black knapsack, but he still bounded more than ran, chewing up ground, putting a growing distance between himself and my partner. I spun around, raced back through McGrath’s house and out the front door, jumped into the car, threw on the bubble and siren, and pulled out, trying to cut the runner off.

  I came flying around the corner of Twenty-Fifth and I Streets and caught a glimpse of his back as he dodged a pedestrian and vanished at the end of the block. It was astonishing how fast he’d covered that distance. Sampson was only just coming out of the alley, at least a hundred yards behind the guy.

  I felt like flooring it and roaring after him, but I knew we were already beaten; I Street jogs at the end of the block, becomes Twenty-Sixth Street, and dead-ends at Rock Creek Park, which had enough vegetation and terrain changes to swallow up any man who had that kind of wheels. Oddly, we weren’t far as the crow flies from where the Maserati had crashed and exploded earlier in the day.

  I turned off the siren, stopped next to Sampson, and got out.

  “You okay, John?”

  My partner was bent over, hands on his knees, drenched in sweat and gasping for air.

  “Did you see that guy go?” he croaked. “Like the Flash or something.”

  “Impressive,” I said. “Question is, what was the Flash doing in Tommy McGrath’s place?”

  CHAPTER

  6

  TWO HOURS LATER, Detective Bree Stone drove into the tony West Langley neighborhood of McLean, Virginia.

  “What do you think Tommy had on his laptop?” asked Detective Kurt Muller, the older man sitting beside her in the passenger seat. He was working the ends of his silver mustache so they held in tight curls.

  “Something that got the laptop stolen and maybe also got him killed,” Bree said, thinking back to the meeting they’d just left and the briefing they’d gotten from Alex and Sampson.

  There was a lot to absorb, but they were sure that the fast-running burglar had taken McGrath’s computer and probably his backup drive from his home office. They had DC Metro’s IT experts going over McGrath’s work files, and there was a detective looking at every security-camera feed within six blocks of the Whole Foods. Another top investigator was searching through all of McGrath’s old cases to see if he had done anything that might warrant assassination.

  Alex had asked Bree and Muller to pay a visit to McGrath’s estranged wife at her home in McLean, Virginia. Alex and Sampson would focus on Edita Kravic and Terry Howard.

  “Heard Howard’s sick,” Muller said.

  “Hate to think that he was involved,” Bree said as they drove.

  “Me too,” Muller said. “He used to be a friend of mine.”

  She slowed, spotted the mailbox with the address she was looking for, and turned into the long driveway of a sprawling Cape house with gray cedar-shake siding and a lushly landscaped yard.

  “This must have cost a small fortune,” Bree said.

  “One point seven five million,” Muller said. “I checked before we left.”

  “How does a chief of detectives afford a place like this?”

  “Wife’s money,” Muller said. “She came with a trust fund.”

  That had Bree chewing the inside of her cheek. Parking, she said, “How come I didn’t know that?”

  “I take it you were never invited out here for dinner or a barbecue.”

  “I’ve never been here before in my life.”

  “I have,” Muller said, and he climbed out.

  Bree followed him as he crossed the driveway. When they were twenty feet shy of the door, it opened, and a tall, distinguished-looking man in a well-cut suit exited carrying a briefcase. The man stopped when he saw them.

  A woman in her forties appeared in the doorway behind him. She had sandy-blond hair, a tennis-honed body, puffy red eyes, and a tortured expression on her face.

  “Kurt,” she called to Muller in a wavering voice. “I’m crushed to see you like this.”

  Muller nodded, said, “I am too, Vivian.”

  The well-dressed man half turned toward her.

  Vivian McGrath gestured to the man absently. “Kurt, this is Lance Gordon, my attorney. Detective Muller used to work for Tommy, Lance.”

  “We both did,” Bree said.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, all of you,” Gordon said. “Vivian, call anytime if you have questions.”

  “I appreciate it, Lance,” she said. “Really.”

  The lawyer pursed his lips and nodded before walking past Muller and Bree. When he went by, Bree noticed an oddly familiar odor trailing him. Weirdly sweet. But she couldn’t place it.

  Bree and Muller went to McGrath’s widow. Muller said, “Got to be hard, Viv. Even after everything.”

  Bree forgot about Gordon and focused on Vivian as tears leaked from her eyes and she swallowed against emotion.

  “It’s true,” she choked out. “I’d already lost him. But this. It’s just …”

  Muller patted her shoulder awkwardly, said, “Viv, this is Detective Bree Stone. We’re part of a task force working on Tom’s case. Alex Cross is leading.”

  Vivian smiled weakly. “Nothing but the best for Tommy.”

  Then she put a well-manicured hand on Bree’s arm and said, “He talked of you often, Detective Stone. Please
come inside. Can I offer you coffee?”

  “Please,” Bree said, and Muller nodded.

  She led them through rooms that could have been featured in Architectural Digest and ushered them into a kitchen with exposed-beam ceilings, cream-colored cabinets, and a maroon stove.

  Gleaming copper pots hung over a prep station. Every surface was spotless. Every knife and utensil looked in its place, so much so that it felt sterile to Bree. There were no pictures taped to the fridge, no stacks of mail on the counters, and no dishes in the sink.

  “Sit, sit,” Vivian said, gesturing to stools at a breakfast counter. “What do you want to know? How can I help?”

  “We understand you and Tom were getting divorced,” Bree said.

  “We’d separated, yes.” She sniffled. “What would you like? Espresso? A latte?”

  Bree said, “Espresso would be fine.”

  “Latte,” Muller said, and he touched his mustache.

  In one corner of the kitchen was an espresso maker that Bree figured would have set her back a month’s pay. Vivian pushed a button, and the machine steamed and hissed and spilled black coffee that smelled like heaven.

  When Vivian set the cup and saucer down in front of her, Bree said, “The separation.”

  McGrath’s widow hardened, crossed her arms, and said, “What about it?”

  “Tom’s idea?” Muller asked. “Or yours?”

  “Tom never told you?”

  “Assume we know nothing,” Bree said.

  “I suggested the separation, but it was because of Tom,” she said forlornly. “I’d always believed we could make it work. He was so unlike anyone who ran in my social circles, but we worked for seventeen years, and then, for reasons I’m still trying to figure out, we just didn’t anymore.”

  She broke down sobbing.

  CHAPTER

  7

  BREE TOOK A breath, feeling more frustrated than sympathetic.

  When Vivian got control again, Bree said, “Can you be more specific about how it wasn’t working?”

  She wiped at her eyes with a tissue, glanced at Muller, and then said, “He stopped touching me, if you must know. And it felt like he had secrets. He kept a second phone. Spent money he didn’t have. I figured he had a mistress.”

  Bree didn’t comment on that.

  “Did Tommy have a mistress?” Muller asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vivian said. “I think so. You tell me. I never hired anyone to look, I mean. But I could see Tom was unhappy with me, so three months ago I asked him if he still loved me. He wouldn’t answer the question. I asked him if he wanted a separation, a divorce, and he said that was up to me.”

  “If you wanted to stay with him, why did you suggest the separation?” Bree asked.

  Vivian wiped at her eyes, pulled herself up straight, and gazed at Bree evenly. “I thought it might knock some sense into him, make him come back to me.”

  “I gather he didn’t,” Muller said.

  She looked humiliated. “No.”

  “Had you filed for divorce?” Bree asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I still loved him,” she said. “I hoped …”

  “Must have hurt,” Bree said.

  “It hurt, it demeaned, and it saddened me more than you can imagine, Detective Stone,” she said with a stricken expression.

  “And angered you?”

  Vivian looked right at Bree. “Of course.”

  “Enough to kill him?” Muller asked.

  “Never. We used to watch those television shows like Forty-Eight Hours and Dateline where there’s always one spouse killing another. We always said we couldn’t understand that; if the marriage wasn’t working, you left. Found a way to be friends or not and just moved on.”

  “How did your marriage work financially?” Bree asked.

  “There was a prenup, if that’s what you’re asking,” Vivian said. “The day we married, seventeen years ago, Tom knew he’d get nothing if we divorced.”

  “He angry about that?” Muller asked.

  Vivian snorted. “Quite the opposite. Tommy was fine with the agreement—proud of it, in fact. He said it proved he’d married me for …”

  Tears welled in her eyes again. She took a deep breath. “He liked the personal independence it represented, and the self-reliance.”

  “How did your lives mix?” Bree asked. “I mean, you’re out here, leading a country-club life, while Tom was in the city doing a dangerous job.”

  Vivian’s face went through a slow flurry of emotions—resistance, then consideration, and finally acceptance. Her shoulders slumped.

  “The more I think about it, Detective Stone, the more I see that Tom and I did live in separate worlds, right from the beginning. Here we had a safe, fairy-tale life, but out there in DC, on the streets—well, Tom liked to fight dragons. Being a cop made him feel alive, and all I could feel when I went into the city with him was fear.”

  Muller said, “He was killed with a younger woman.”

  “I heard that,” she said. “Who was she?”

  “Edita Kravic, early thirties, studying law at American University, damned attractive.”

  Vivian took the news that the woman her estranged husband had died with was in her early thirties and damned attractive like a one-two punch.

  “Was she his mistress?” she asked in a strained voice.

  “We don’t know,” Bree said. “He ever mention that name to you?”

  “Never.”

  “Just for the record, Mrs. McGrath,” Bree said, “where were you at seven twenty this morning?”

  Vivian looked at her incredulously. “You honestly think I could kill Tom?”

  “We have to ask, Viv,” Muller said. “It’s part of the job. You know the drill.”

  “I was probably taking a shower.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “I should hope not. I’ve been living alone.”

  “Who was the first person you saw this morning?”

  “Catalina Monroe. My massage therapist. I had an eight o’clock.”

  “You have a way we can contact her?”

  McGrath’s widow rattled off a phone number, then said, “You know who you should be looking at?”

  “Tell us,” Bree said.

  “Terry Howard,” Vivian said with spite in her voice. “He threatened Tom on multiple occasions.”

  “Cross is working that angle,” Muller said.

  “Good. Good. I was afraid it might be … well, you know.”

  “Are you planning a memorial?” Bree asked.

  Vivian seemed more confused than ever; she looked down and whispered, “Is that something I’m supposed to do? I don’t know if Tommy would even want me to be involved.”

  Muller said, “I suppose you make that decision by first taking a moment to honor the good times you had with Tommy, figure out what they meant to you. If Tommy’s love during those years was enough, you do it, you see him buried. And if those years of love weren’t enough, you don’t.”

  “If you decide not to do anything, I’ll take care of the arrangements,” Bree said.

  McGrath’s widow looked around as if in a daze, her chin trembling, and then said, “No, Kurt’s right. Honoring our love and burying the husband Tommy was is the least I can do.”

  The dam burst, and she wept. “It’s the only thing I can do for him now.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  EDITA KRAVIC’S APARTMENT in Columbia Heights looked like it had been decorated right out of the Sundance Catalog—high-end furniture, nicely framed prints on the wall—and given the place’s location, the rent had to be two, maybe three thousand a month.

  That was strange, I thought, because law students were usually starving. Edita evidently did quite well with the whole Level 2 Certified Coach thing.

  The kitchen was stocked with culinary gadgetry, and there were fine wines chilling in the fridge along with gourmet cheeses and spread
s. Nice crystal in the cabinets, but no photographs anywhere in the living area, nothing that suggested Edita Kravic’s private life, nothing that could tell us more about her.

  The apartment had three bedrooms. The smallest one had been turned into an office. There was a business phone with several lines and an open laptop on the desk.

  “I’ll look here,” I said.

  “I’ll take the bedrooms,” Sampson said.

  Just as in the living area, there was nothing personal on the shelves or the walls. Just a basic desk, a backless chair, and two wooden filing cabinets. I tugged on the drawers of one and found them locked. The top drawer of the other slid open, revealing standard office supplies.

  The next drawer down was full of files. I looked through them, found out that she owned a late-model Audi A5 and that she vacationed in the Caymans—a lot, as in three times in the prior year. But there was nothing that gave me a clear idea of how she’d paid for it all.

  I was thinking she’d have to have an income of over a hundred grand to live like this. Did Level 2 Certified Coaches make that kind of money? If so, maybe I was in the wrong business.

  I thought about breaking the lock on the first cabinet but decided to take a look at the computer first. To my surprise, when I ran my finger across the touchpad, the screen lit right up and showed me the desktop. Several different applications were running.

  One was Edita’s law school e-mail account. I sat down and scanned through the e-mails, seeing nothing from Tom McGrath. Most of the messages were to and from professors and classmates. One classmate, JohnnyBoy5, had sent six e-mails to her in the eighteen hours preceding her murder.

  Really? read one sent around ten thirty the previous night. Standing me up again? This was your meet, remember?

  I did a search of her entire in-box, looking for all e-mails from JohnnyBoy5. There were more than a hundred, going back eighteen months. I rearranged them so they were in chronological order and read a tale of growing obsession.

  JohnnyBoy5 had evidently been smitten by Edita Kravic from the get-go, and he was not shy about saying so. Though she seemed to flirt with him at times, for the most part, she did nothing to encourage him.