Hey bud, I texted him. I’ll be right at the top of the stairs.
I expected some kind of rapid response. After all, that was what Jannie had given me, answering my text about Ali and Nana Mama within thirty seconds. But I got nothing back from Damon. Then again, he rarely answered his phone. Why was I paying fifty bucks a month so he could have the damn thing if he—
The train’s arrival was announced, and quickly passengers began to pour up the stairs through gate G. But they were all gone within ten minutes. I walked down the stairs and found the porter, who said he’d just walked the length of the train and it was empty except for Amtrak personnel.
Had Damon missed it? Wouldn’t he have called? Or texted?
I tried his cell and was immediately switched to voice mail, which meant either the phone was off or the battery was dead. But couldn’t he have borrowed someone else’s phone? He knew I’d be waiting. I’d told him so the other night.
Maybe he had missed it and was taking the next express train, or a local. I went back up into the main hall to the ticket counter and asked the teller if he could check to see if Damon had gotten on the train at Albany.
“Can’t do that,” the teller said snippily. “Right-to-privacy laws.”
I showed him my badge, and he sniffed. “It’s a federal law, Detective.”
“Do me a favor?” I asked.
“If I can,” he said, in a way that said he wouldn’t.
“Call Amtrak Police Captain Seymour Johnson for me?”
The teller stiffened. “I know who he is.”
“I bet you do.”
Captain Johnson owed me big-time for my role in helping to unravel and thwart the al-Dossari bomb plot, and ten minutes later he looked up from his computer and shook his head. “He’s not in the system, Alex.”
Okay, I thought, trying to remain calm. Where is he? Where could he be?
I thought of calling Bree and Jannie to see if they’d heard from him, but it seemed unlikely. If anyone, he would have tried to contact me. I scrolled through my contacts list and found the number of the Kraft School. I got a recording that said the school was in recess for the Easter holiday and told me to push zero in an emergency.
A security guard named Whitfield answered in a bored tone. I identified myself as Damon Cross’s father and explained the situation.
“Oh, you know kids,” Whitfield replied. “He probably—”
“Could you check his room, please?”
The guard hesitated. “I don’t know if I can—”
“Mr. Whitfield,” I said, hugely irritated. “Is it not true that one of your fellow guards was killed in the past week?”
That got to him. “Yes. But that has nothing—”
“Mr. Whitfield, I am a homicide detective, so we’re going to go with my instincts here. I want you to go and check my son’s room and then get back to me. And I want the name of the jitney service he was supposed to have used to get to Albany. Or I’ll track down the headmaster and see what he can do.”
“I’ll call you back in ten minutes,” Whitfield said, and hung up.
I called Bree and was relieved when she picked up. “Where are you?”
“Almost home from Maine Avenue Fish Market with crabs and a jar of Blue Crab Bay boil seasonings. Damon’s favorite.”
I told her about Damon not making any train from Albany that morning.
“But where would he go?”
“I’m trying to figure that out,” I said.
“Keep me posted,” she said. “But Alex, Damon is a big boy who can take care of himself. Let’s not panic yet. He probably got a ride and forgot to tell you.”
But as I hung up, I had the growing, oppressive sense that something could be going very wrong in my son’s life. I flashed on his late mother, saw her holding him as a baby. That only fueled my fears.
Where are you Damon? Where are you, son?
Please, God, make my boy okay.
CHAPTER 97
Jannie Cross had never felt like this before. It was as if in one day, one afternoon really, she’d become a different kind of creature, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly in 54.9 seconds. This morning she’d come to school as Jannie Cross, the only freshman varsity runner, and she’d just left, heading toward the Howard University Metro station with people calling her a phenom and Will Crawford asking if she was interested in going to the senior prom.
The senior prom! With Will Crawford!
It was easily the greatest day of her life, exhilarating and scary and fun and too many other emotions to count. Could it get any better than this? Was what Coach Anderson said true? Could I break more records? Run in college? Or even go to the Olympics?
That last question sent shivers down her spine. Could I do that? Run at that level? Faster than anyone in the world?
Jannie felt indescribably warm and complete at that idea. It was as if she’d found her purpose and identity in life, doing something that she loved, something that made her very, very happy. The fact that her dad had been there to see it was so good. And Bree, too. It was all good, all—
“Jannie Cross?” a woman asked in a soft southern drawl.
Jannie startled and looked up. She was still two blocks from the Metro station. There was a very pretty woman with curly blond hair, in jeans and a leather jacket, in front of her at the curb, holding a car door open.
“Yes?” Jannie said, feeling uncertain about the situation.
“My name’s Dee-Dee,” she said. “I’m a friend of your brother Damon. And, well, you were the first person he wanted to see when he got home.”
Jannie cocked her head, confused. “He’s in there? Damon?”
“Still asleep after helping me on the long drive from school,” the woman said so softly that Jannie was forced to come closer to hear. “I think he had a long night with his friends.”
“I thought my dad was picking him up at the train station,” Jannie said, taking several steps toward the car. She looked into the backseat and saw Damon sleeping on a pillow leaned up against the rear right window.
“I was coming right through DC,” Dee-Dee said. “And he helped with gas and driving, but before he went to sleep, he forgot to give me your address.”
“That’s easy,” Jannie said. “I’ll show you.”
Pleased, the woman closed the rear door and opened the front passenger door. “Thank you so much. He was actually very excited to be coming home, before he hit the snooze button.”
Jannie’s head was so full of thoughts and dreams that she barely heard the woman. It was enough that her big brother was in the car and she could wake him and tell him all that had happened that day.
She climbed into the front seat and was putting on her safety belt when she finally realized that something was off about the situation. “How did you know where I—?”
When the needle jabbed into the side of her neck, Jannie made a yipping noise, like a puppy that’s had its paw stepped on, and almost immediately saw dots and then blackness.
CHAPTER 98
At that same moment, Marcus Sunday waited in the shadows where the new addition met the old house. Thanks to Nana Mama’s key, he’d been able to sneak in the back a solid half hour before Bree Stone returned home. He’d gone upstairs and printed a few items, and then had returned here to wait.
Through the plastic sheeting that sealed off the construction site, he watched Cross’s wife enter the dining area, moving stiffly, her face bandaged. She’d been hurt somewhere in her core, he thought. That was good. A trained cop is a difficult person to manage. An injured cop not so much.
Bree put two sacks of blue crabs on the dining room table and then set about filling a big pot with water to put on the little two-burner they’d been using. Gingerly she removed her jacket. She was wearing her shoulder holster, left side, the injured side, so she’d have to reach across her body to draw.
Sunday was so close to the second-biggest prize of the day that he had to fight not to hyperve
ntilate. The writer lived for these kinds of moments, when he was free, unencumbered by any convention whatsoever, a stranger in many ways even to himself.
Boundaries? Limits? There were none now, as far as he was concerned. No reason to be subtle here, he thought. When you get the chance, you take her.
But Sunday was cunning enough to understand that he couldn’t act like a bull in a china shop. He had to do this cleanly, with no noise that might alert Bree before it was too late.
She turned on the burners, put a lid on the pot, and went upstairs to change. She was deeply favoring her left side. Good. All good.
Sunday knew from experience that the long Velcro strips that sealed off the Visqueen sheets might be loud enough to be heard upstairs.
Instead of chancing that, he got out a utility knife with a fresh blade, and a 9mm Beretta, and waited. The hypodermic needle with the Rohypnol was in his shirt pocket, ready to go.
Now all he needed was for Bree to return to see if the pot was boiling. Five minutes later, he heard the staircase creak and the padding of feet. Cross’s wife walked right into the dining room, right to the pot. She had her back to him, wore sandals, yoga pants, and a loose blouse. No holster. No gun.
In two silent diagonal downward slashes, Sunday opened a large triangle of the sheeting. It flapped forward, leaving the writer a gaping hole through which to aim. “You watch pots, they never boil,” he growled at her.
Bree jumped and knocked into the pot. It fell. The heated water poured all around the bags of crabs. She tried to turn around, but Sunday was already through the sheeting and right behind her, the muzzle of the Beretta pressed to the nape of her neck. “Don’t do it,” he said. “Or I’ll be forced to kill you.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he replied, kicking her feet apart and feeling for a second weapon at her ankle. But she’d taken both holsters off upstairs.
“What do you want?” she said. “Do you know who I am? Who lives here?”
“I know exactly who lives here,” Sunday replied. “So listen. We’re going out through the addition and the gate into the alley. If you value your family, you’ll do exactly as I say. Now, back through that hole in the plastic.”
Bree hesitated and he pushed her roughly in the ribs, showing her that he understood where her balance points were, that he understood where her injuries lay. From that point on, Cross’s wife did as he instructed, leading the way through the addition to the steel door and out into the backyard.
It was just before dark and the neighborhood was alive with dogs barking, moms calling their children to dinner, baseballs striking leather mitts. But the only thing Sunday was focused on as they made their way to the rear gate was the smell of Bree Stone. That, as much as the threat of violence, aroused him. When he and Acadia were finally alone, they’d tear each other apart.
When they got to the gate, he said, “Open it.”
Bree hesitated, said, “I’m a cop. You know what they do to people who mess with cops?”
“I know what I’m going to do if you mess with me,” Sunday said.
Cross’s wife threw the latch and pulled open the gate.
“Slow left,” he said. “Go to the back of the van and open the door.”
The alley was quiet, dark, and empty. His vehicle was ten yards away. Sunday knew that if Bree were to try a countermeasure, she would do so climbing into the van, as much out of panic as opportunity.
For a moment as she climbs in she’ll be higher than me, he thought. She’ll also be seeing her stepson and Cross’s grandmother.
Sure enough, when Bree opened the door and started to get in, she spotted Ali and Nana Mama, passed out, duct tape across their mouths and around their wrists and ankles. She tried to mule-kick Sunday, but he’d already anticipated that move and eased off to the side. With her leg fully extended, he stuck the hypodermic needle through the stretchy fabric of her yoga pants and buried it and the drug in her right haunch. Bree gave a kind of half-scream and fell forward on her broken ribs, out cold.
Sunday pushed her legs in, calmly shut the rear door, got into the driver’s seat, and left. When he was well away from the Cross household, he checked his phone and saw that he had a new text from Acadia: Done. Moving.
Right behind you, he replied.
Tucking his phone back in his breast pocket and putting the van in drive, he thought: Let the enormity of his plight take hold in Cross’s vivid imagination, let him wallow in it a good while before Thierry Mulch flips the switch and shows Dr. Alex his new and stark reality.
Part Five
THE ZOMBIE WALKS
CHAPTER 99
Around seven that evening, I came home to find the door unlocked and the front rooms of the house dark and silent. I stepped into the front hall and called out, “Anybody home?”
I heard them then, making noises like the clicking of many dead phone lines, or cigarette lighters being struck one after the other. When I flipped on the hall light, six or seven blue crabs scuttled away along the floorboards, claws raised, snapping as they went. There were more loose crabs in the television room and more still in the dining room, some on their backs on the rug, having fallen from the table where the two-burner stove still burned. Our crab pot lay on the floor, water spilled all around it.
My mind seemed to go into slow motion then, seeing the sliced plastic sheeting that separated the new addition from the old house, noticing the sawdust in the water, putting together the puzzle pieces until I grasped the scene the way one might watching a movie. But it was not real. Not real at all.
My voice, sounding far away, echoed in my head as I read the scene: Bree had set the crabs on the table and was heating the water, expecting us all soon for dinner. But someone had come from behind my wife, from back in the addition, and there’d been a struggle. The pot had been upset, hot water spilled, and the crabs somehow freed.
Frightened of what other secrets my house might now be holding, I turned and ran through the crabs and up the stairs. My wife’s service weapon and backup pistol were sitting on the shelf where she kept them, along with her badge.
Whoever grabbed Bree knew her routine, I thought. Waited for her to stow her guns before making his move. Was Bree alone? Or was everyone here when it happened?
She’d been alone, I decided. If Ali had been here, the television would have been on. If Jannie had been here, I’d have seen her laptop somewhere close. If my grandmother had been here, I’d have seen some evidence of her, the knitting bag, something.
I tried to stay calm, but there was a sudden terrible weight in the house where I’d spent so many happy years. The air in my bedroom felt pressurized, as if it were seawater and I was a hundred feet down, fighting for every breath.
What the hell was going on? Where was Damon? Where was my wife? Jannie? Ali? Nana?
I had the overwhelming sense that I was in danger of drowning as my mind tried to answer the single question that came to dominate my thinking: What has happened to my family and why?
Sampson, I thought. Someone clearheaded. He can help me figure out—
My cell phone buzzed, alerting me to a text message. Grabbing it from my pocket, I looked at the sender and felt a rush of joy. Jannie had sent me a—
Two photographs came in. I opened them, seeing Bree, Ali, and Nana Mama in the first, and Damon and Jannie in the second. They all appeared unconscious, with duct tape wrapped about their wrists and ankles and strips of it stretched across their mouths.
A message accompanied the second picture, the one of Damon and Jannie: Don’t even think about calling Sampson, or your other friends with Metro and the FBI. Look around. You are alone now, Cross. And I am watching you. If you try to bring in reinforcements to your cause, your family dies, simple as that. Do not leave your home. Await further instructions to follow — T.M.
“T.M.,” I said, feeling scalded inside. “Thierry Mulch.”
CHAPTER 100
M
ulch, the faceless phantom who’d been lurking at the periphery of my life the last two weeks — sending crude letters, speaking at my son’s school, for God’s sake — now had my children, my wife, and my grandmother. That reality pounded through my head like so many wild horses. I got woozy and nauseated. I sat on the edge of my bed and massaged my temples with the heels of my palms, thinking: Who is he, Mulch? That Internet entrepreneur from Southern California who’d gone to Ali’s school? Or one of the other Thierry Mulches I’d found on the Web?
And what was his motive? Why was he doing this to me? What sort of leverage was he looking for? Was this for himself, or on behalf of a third party?
But it was the peril that my family faced that finally hit me like a shock wave off a roadside bomb. My imagination conjured up ten or more terrible endings for my wife, my children, my grandmother. Each of them felt like a concussion, one after another, so bad I feared I might crack like Carney had, splinter into several people, strangers every one.
Then my rational side stepped up, demanding that I detach from what might be happening to them, that I address the evidence and the facts. They were the only paths that might lead me to Mulch and my family.
Call Sampson. Call Quintus. Call Mahoney. Get them involved. You need manpower, and you need it now.
But Mulch had said he’d kill my family if I made that move. And he’d said he’d be watching, that he would know. Was he boasting? Bluffing?
No, I decided, he was clever enough to kidnap my entire family in an afternoon. It suggested planning. A lot of planning. So if he said he’d be watching, he’d be watching.
But how would he know if I contacted outside help?
I got to my feet then, turned off the light in the bedroom, crossed to the window, eased back the drapes, and looked down on Fifth Street. It was nearly nine by then and the sidewalks were quiet. Cars choked both sides of the street. Though the oak leaves were out, I could still see a long way east and west.
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