Deadly Cross

by Patterson, James

  His face fell. Bree reached out and rubbed his shoulders. “Ongoing investigation, Ali. Your dad can’t even talk about it with me.”

  “She’s right,” I said.

  Nana Mama called out, “Come give me a kiss, Alex, and have some lunch.”

  I couldn’t help but remember Jannie’s theory that my grandmother had microphones and cameras all over the house that she tracked from the kitchen. I smiled. “We have been summoned.”

  We went to the kitchen. I gave Nana Mama a kiss and a hug. “How is it you look so young and beautiful?” I said. “Do you have a painting in the attic that shows your real age?”

  She laughed. “The Picture of Nana Mama?”

  “Exactly,” I said and yawned.

  “You look like you haven’t been sleeping much.”

  “I slept a bit on the plane this morning,” I said, yawning again and going to get a coffee cup. “I shouldn’t be this beat. Maybe I’ll take a nap later.”

  Bree chewed on the inside of her cheek as I poured my coffee, and Nana Mama put out cold cuts, homemade bread, and potato chips in a bowl.

  “Alex, you have an appointment at two p.m. you can’t break,” Bree said. “One of your patients. Mrs. Hernandez.”

  I shut my eyes a moment, then said, “I don’t remember scheduling her for today. I can’t get out of it? I feel like a zombie.”

  Ali thought that was funny. But Bree said, “I asked her to come. And so did Sampson. We have questions for her about Elizabeth, and there are things I need to show you after lunch.”

  “Elizabeth Hernandez?” Ali said. “The girl taken before Maya Parker?”

  Bree hesitated and then nodded. “But we can’t talk about her, Ali.”

  “Of course.” Ali sighed, took a handful of chips, and munched on them.

  I made a sandwich, said to Bree, “You sound like you’re going back to work.”

  Nana Mama frowned. “You didn’t tell him over the phone?”

  Bree smiled, said, “I wanted to tell him in person. But yes, I am going back to work, but not until next month, and not for Metro PD. While you were gone, a headhunter called and asked if I would be interested in a job working in an elite private-sector investigation company. I’d be based in DC but I’d travel the world if needed. I was flattered and said I was interested. An hour later Elena Martin, the president of Bluestone Group, called from her jet en route to Abu Dhabi.”

  “Bluestone Group. I’ve heard of them. They do big-time corporate security work all over the world.”

  “They do, but that won’t be me. I made that very clear, and she was very clear that she wanted me to stick to my strengths, which are investigative. She’s great, a real visionary, and she basically made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I can work from home or out of their DC office, and the salary and benefits package is significantly better than what I was getting as COD!”

  Part of me was sad because Bree had been a fine chief of detectives and would no longer be a force for good inside Metro PD. But she seemed so thrilled and the job sounded so phenomenal that I smiled, leaned over, and kissed her. “Congratulations. I guess I’ll have to get used to the idea of you calling me from jets on your way to Abu Dhabi.”

  “Why not?” Bree said, beaming. “This will be a whole new world for me!”

  “So that starts next month. What are you doing in the meantime?”

  “Catching a killer and a rapist.”

  CHAPTER 74

  I ASKED BREE HOW SHE was going to solve the series of killings if she was on leave and about to quit Metro PD. She said she had thirty days of leave due to her and when she offered to spend the time working exclusively on those cases, Commissioner Dennison had agreed.

  Jannie came home soon after me. She’d been training on hurdles and said she’d posted one of her best times ever in practice.

  A few minutes later, John Sampson arrived with Willow, who was looking kind of listless and sad until Jannie suggested they go up to her room to hang out.

  Nana Mama insisted Sampson, Bree, and I take coffee and brownies she’d made from scratch that morning to my basement office. Down there, Sampson showed me the map he’d created and explained how he’d found what he believed was the rapist and killer’s favorite hunting ground.

  “Impressive,” I said. “We’re going to have to show this to Keith Karl Rawlins if it pans out. The FBI should be looking at this approach. Have you found a common denominator between the incubator, the apartment building, and the school?”

  “Not yet,” Bree said. “The incubator has changed ownership three times in the seventeen years it’s been in operation, and since the incubator is a place for start-ups, the tenant turnover has been high. We’ve talked to the past two owners, gotten the names of some of the past tenants, and tracked down a few personnel rosters, but we haven’t seen anything that links anyone to the apartment building or the streets around Harrison Charter.”

  Sampson said, “Then again, we’re still waiting for the apartment’s landlord to dig up records older than ten years, which was when she bought the property.”

  “How many units there?”

  “Sixty,” Bree said. “And like the incubator, lots of turnover.”

  I chewed on that a few moments. The doorbell rang.

  “She’s early,” Bree said.

  “Analisa Hernandez is always early,” I said and went to the door to let her in.

  For the second time in a row, she came in her bubbly self, hugged me, hugged Bree, and even hugged John, who she’d never even met before.

  “What’s happened, Analisa?” I said. “I’d swear you were a happy lady.”

  She smiled, sat down, put her hand over her heart, and said, “You know, I woke up this morning and started to worry in bed about everything all over again. Then I said, No, Analisa, you must stop spending so much time in your head. You must return to your heart to find your peace. And I did, you know. I put my hand over my heart like this and I closed my eyes and I said, ‘Please, God, show me the way. Just for today.’ ” She got tears in her eyes. “Not long I’m lying there and I feel Elizabeth. Not think of her. I just felt her love, right here in my heart, like she was living in me.”

  “Of course she is,” I said softly. “She always will be.”

  “Yes, Dr. Cross,” Analisa said, smiling through her tears. “But I never felt it like that until this morning, and I got up believing that everything is going to be okay. Elizabeth is not gone. Her love for me and my love for her will be with me always, and like you said, she will give me meaning in my work with the girls in Guatemala.”

  Bree handed her a tissue and said, “I love that.”

  Sampson was wiping at his eyes. “I do too.”

  “And you know what else?” Analisa said, patting her heart. “When I feel Elizabeth here this morning, I also just suddenly knew for certain that you will find him someday. I think so. The one who ended her physical life.”

  CHAPTER 75

  BREE, SAMPSON, AND I EXCHANGED glances. Bree said, “Well, that’s why we asked you here, Analisa. Maybe you can help us make that day come faster.”

  “Okay?”

  Sampson pulled up Google Earth and the map of Southeast Washington, DC, on my computer and highlighted the apartment complex, the business incubator, and the charter school.

  Bree said, “Have you or Elizabeth ever been to this apartment building?”

  She put on her reading glasses to peer at the screen and the address, then shook her head. “Elizabeth, maybe, but not me.”

  “You’ve obviously been in and around Harrison Charter,” Sampson said.

  “Lived in the neighborhood fifteen years.”

  “What about this building?” Bree asked, tapping on the third location.

  Analisa squinted at the screen. “Can you show me the street view?”

  Sampson typed and used his mouse, and then we were on the street, looking straight at the building.

  “Ahh, the business incubator. I c
leaned it for many years in my old job.”

  Bree, Sampson, and I nodded to each other. We were getting somewhere.

  Bree asked, “Did Elizabeth ever go with you when you cleaned it?”

  “Many times. She used to do her homework there while I vacuumed at night.”

  I said, “When was the last time that happened? I mean, when you and Elizabeth were both there?”

  “Oh,” she said. “It has been a long time since I stopped cleaning the incubator. When Elizabeth was twelve, maybe? So about six years ago?”

  Bree asked Analisa if she remembered anyone staying late at the incubator, anyone who might have talked to Elizabeth or taken an inordinate amount of interest in her.

  She thought about that. “You know, many young people would be there one night and not so many another, and yes, some talked to Elizabeth. But I don’t remember a man being creepy with her, if that is what you mean. And she never told me something like that or I would have told the detectives when she disappeared.”

  “Did you ever run into anyone from the incubator at the school?” Sampson asked. “Someone who stood out?”

  Analisa pursed her lips and her eyes shifted down and to the left. Then she shook her head. “No. I mean, just Mr. Randall.”

  “Wait, stop,” I said. “Randall Christopher was at the incubator?”

  “Sí, it’s where he started the charter school.”

  CHAPTER 76

  ANALISA CONFIRMED THAT SHE AND Elizabeth would often see Randall Christopher at the incubator working late to put the charter school together. Sampson did an internet search and, sure enough, found a brief story from years ago describing the idealistic young educator out to build an education system of his own design.

  “I think the last year he was there, he had two classes of kids at the incubator,” Analisa said. “Then he moved somewhere else for a year before the city decided to sell the Harrison property and he stepped in.”

  “Do you think that’s why Mr. Christopher got involved in the search for Elizabeth and Maya?”

  “I don’t know about Maya,” she said. “But yes, he told me he was organizing the search because of those nights when he helped her with her math at the incubator.” She glanced at the clock. “I’m sorry. I must be at work at three.”

  “Where do you work?” Sampson asked, turning away from the computer.

  Analisa smiled. “I am a hostess in a restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental. It is wonderful. No more cleaning and they are very kind, give me time off to do my real work in Guatemala. I’ll see you next week, Dr. Cross?”

  “Our regular time,” I said, walking her to the basement door. “I look forward to it.”

  “I do too,” she said, stepping through, then turning. “Be careful. Like I said, I feel like you will find him soon.”

  “We’re on alert,” I promised. I smiled and shut the door.

  Back in my office, Bree showed me a text forwarded from Jannie. Bree had asked Jannie to ask Christopher’s daughters if they knew the apartment building in Marshall Heights.

  Tina had replied: We lived there four years before moving to our new house.

  Suddenly, because he was the only person we could link definitively to all three locations on Sampson’s map, the dead principal became a prime suspect in the series of rapes and murders that had shaken Southeast DC for almost fifteen years.

  “Lot of flags flying,” Sampson said.

  Bree nodded. “He worked at the incubator and lived at the apartment building at the time of many of the earlier rapes and killings. He ran Harrison Charter when the last few victims were taken, including Maya Parker and Elizabeth Hernandez.”

  I said, “And he got involved in the searches for both of them. Organizing them, insinuating himself into the investigation.”

  “Classic serial-killer move,” Sampson said.

  Bree said, “He could easily have guided the civilian searches away from where he did not want people to go.”

  “Concerned citizen, school principal, family man, upstanding member of the community,” I said. “Pretty good cover for a serial killer.”

  Sampson said, “If Christopher was the killer, we have to at least consider that someone figured it out and shot him to death. Kay was an innocent bystander.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We need to rule Christopher in or out as the serial killer before we can determine who killed him.”

  “I’ll start a list of questions to answer,” Sampson said, turning to the keyboard.

  “Number one,” Bree said. “Where’s his lair?”

  Sampson said, “Alex, you searched his house. If Christopher’s our guy, he kept his trophies or souvenirs somewhere, probably where he took his victims.”

  “Agreed.”

  Bree said, “Elaine Paulson said Christopher had multiple short-term affairs over the course of their marriage. What if he didn’t? What if he was just actively hunting at those times?”

  Sampson said, “Could Elaine have known who he really was?”

  “Good point,” I said. “We’ll need to talk to her to match her recollection of the affair time frames to when the victims were taken and then — ”

  Bree’s cell phone rang. She looked at it. “It’s Dennison. I have to take this.” She walked out of the office, the phone to her ear, saying, “Yes, Commissioner?”

  “We’ll want to interview all the teachers at Harrison and his administrative staff,” Sampson said.

  Bree popped her head in. “Not now. We have to leave pronto. Some billionaire celeb was just shot in the ass outside the International Hotel.”

  CHAPTER 77

  THE PROTEST WAS STILL LOUD and raucous when we reached the International Hotel, a five-star luxury establishment in what used to be the Old Post Office building at Eleventh and Pennsylvania Avenue. The length of the avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill had been closed for the legally permitted march, just one of dozens that take place in the nation’s capital every year.

  Most of the marchers were moving right along, but there was a knot of them across Pennsylvania Avenue protesting a meeting of top Wall Street financiers at the hotel. Many of them carried signs and placards with catchy slogans like TAX THE RICH, THE CHANGE IS NOW, and THE BANKERS DID IT.

  According to DC Metro Lieutenant Meagan Reynolds, who met us in the hotel driveway, the Protest March for Social Justice and Economic Change involved roughly one hundred thousand people who had peacefully gathered outside the White House and then started walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill.

  “Things went smoothly on the march until most of the protesters had left Lafayette Park and maybe a quarter of them were past the International heading east,” Lieutenant Reynolds said. “At that point, Rex Dawson shows up on foot on the north side of Pennsylvania, coming south on Eleventh, back to the hotel. He’s dressed incognito except for the Hawaiian shirt.”

  “Stop,” I said. “Incognito except for the Hawaiian shirt?”

  Reynolds looked at me like I was clueless. “You don’t watch Snake Pit?”

  “I don’t watch investor shows.”

  “Well, Dawson’s on it. He wears flamboyant tropical shirts and is really arrogant. So, anyway, before the ambulance takes him, he tells me he’s got sunglasses and a San Diego Chargers hat when he starts to cross Eleventh Street against the left-to-right flow of protesters heading to the Hill. He gets bumped hard, loses the sunglasses and the hat.

  “Dawson keeps going, but people start recognizing him. And a lot of people don’t like Dawson, especially in this crowd. So they start yelling at him, and he starts yelling back at them. There’s a couple of shoves. A lot of anger. He reaches the traffic island, still in a crowd, and gets shot in the right glute by a small-caliber gun at close range.

  “Dawson thought someone kicked him. He threw a couple of punches and got away from the crowd. He evidently didn’t know he’d been shot until he reached the hotel lobby and felt his pants wet with blood.”

/>   “Where is he?” Bree asked.

  “GW,” Reynolds said. “He says he never saw the shooter.”

  I looked up at the International Hotel and saw several security cameras aimed at the protest. “Let’s get the footage from those cameras, every angle, and fast.”

  “I’m on it,” Sampson said and went into the hotel to find the security chief.

  Bree kept asking Reynolds questions. I half listened, watching the flow of marchers and that knot of hard-core protesters still there on the other side of the avenue, exercising their right to voice their opinion.

  The three signs I’d noticed before and others in the same anti-rich vein were still bouncing up and down in that crowd of eighty, maybe ninety protesters. I was about to turn away when I saw a flash of a different sign at the back of that knot of protesters.

  “Alex?” Bree said. “John says he’s got the tapes waiting for us.”

  The sign pivoted and I could see it clearly now: a distinctive and familiar graffiti that read SHOOT THE RICH.

  “He’s right there across the street!” I shouted to Bree and Lieutenant Reynolds.

  “What?” Bree said and came up beside me.

  I lost my visual on the sign and stared over there. “Someone in that crowd at our ten o’clock just flashed the Shoot the Rich sign at us.”

  “Where?” Lieutenant Reynolds said.

  “Keep watching,” I said.

  “I see ‘Tax the Rich,’ ” Bree said.

  “No, he’s there. He’s taunting us, hoping the graffiti turns up on the security — ”

  “I see the sign!” Lieutenant Reynolds said. “Our one o’clock.”

  I scanned the crowd and the signs.

  Then Bree shouted, “I’ve got him too. Dark bandanna, dark cap, and sunglasses! Reynolds, get him surrounded!”

  CHAPTER 78

  I’D SPOTTED HIM AGAIN BY then and was already moving north across Pennsylvania, trying to keep my eye on him and hearing Lieutenant Reynolds in my earbud ordering officers to move into position one block north and one block south of Pennsylvania Avenue on Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth. They were checking the identification of anyone leaving the area.