Deadly Cross

by Patterson, James

  Bree and I glanced at each other. He caught it.

  “I’m not losing it,” Sampson said gruffly. “Anyway, for some reason staring at the map this morning made me realize that Billie’s death kept me from trying to figure out what happened to the jewelry taken off Christopher and Willingham.”

  Before either of us could reply, Nana Mama called us to dinner, which was miraculously good. She’d soaked the lamb in buttermilk for a full day before roasting it. The meat fell off the bone, and the bone was all that was left when we were done.

  The kids started the dishes. Nana Mama went in to watch Sixty Minutes, one of her Sunday-evening rituals.

  Sampson was starting to talk about the Maya Parker case again when my phone rang. It was Rawlins, the FBI contractor and cybercrime expert.

  I went out on the porch again and answered.

  “It took me a week,” Rawlins said. “But I got into Kelli Ann Higgins’s computer. My God, I’ve never seen so much dirt on so many people in my life.”

  “Anything on Kay Willingham or Randall Christopher?” I asked.

  “Both of them,” he said, and he described what he’d found.

  “Wow,” I said soberly when he’d finished. “It’s a lot to wrap your head around.”

  “Wait until you read some of the other files. I’ll e-mail you what you need for now.”

  “I appreciate the effort,” I said.

  “Glad to be of service,” Rawlins said and hung up.

  I sat in the glider trying to make sense of what Rawlins had told me. I decided that some secrets people keep are beyond comprehension. Then, in rapid succession, I saw the possible links between what I’d just learned and what we’d learned earlier —

  My phone buzzed. I turned it over, expecting it to be Sparkman calling with a follow-up question or Rawlins letting me know he’d e-mailed me the files from Higgins’s computers.

  Instead, I saw a text from Ned Mahoney:

  VP requested briefing. Tomorrow, 7:25 a.m. Be at Naval Observatory gate at 7:15 a.m. Bring multiple forms of identification.

  My mind was still buzzing with what I believed I’d discovered, but then I read the text a second time and thought, Okay, then. Game on.

  CHAPTER 83

  U.S. SECRET SERVICE AGENTS Donald Breit and Lloyd Price were waiting in an idling Chevy Suburban when we cleared security at the Naval Observatory on a dismal, rainy Monday morning in the nation’s capital.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, climbing in after Mahoney. “Good to see you both.”

  Breit, the bigger of the two, said, “Wish the rain would let up, but they’re saying downpour all day today and all day tomorrow. It’s going to put the VP in a sour mood. He was scheduled to play at Congressional later in the day.”

  “We’ll try not to keep him too long,” Mahoney said.

  “You couldn’t keep him long if you tried,” Price said, putting the SUV in gear and driving to the residence with the windshield wipers slapping. “Barnes keeps him on a tight leash. I think she’s given you fifteen minutes.” I glanced at Mahoney, who said, “More than enough time.”

  “Got anything?” Price asked.

  “A few things, nothing definitive on who killed Kay Willingham yet.”

  Breit puffed out a breath and shook his head. “Damn shame. He’ll be sorry to hear that.”

  “How’s he doing these days?” I asked.

  “He’s still mourning her, if that’s what you mean,” Breit said.

  Price nodded and said, “I suspect he always will. She was the love of his life.”

  We pulled up in front of the vice president’s residence, got out, and followed the two Secret Service agents inside, where we were greeted with the smell of bacon cooking and coffee brewing. We went to the same dining room as we had last time, which was set the same way, with the same server, Graciela, bustling about, smiling, and asking if we wanted coffee.

  We accepted the offer. Price glanced at his watch; Breit was looking at his phone. I checked the time, saw it was 7:23.

  Claudette Barnes, the vice president’s chief of staff, entered the room carrying files and looking harried. She greeted us, shook our hands, and thanked us for coming.

  Vice President J. Walter Willingham strode into the room a few moments later wearing black wingtip shoes, navy-blue suit pants, and a crisply starched white shirt with the collar open. At almost the same time, Graciela poked her head out of the back room and he nodded to her.

  “Good of you to come, Dr. Cross,” Willingham said, shaking my hand, holding my forearm, and smiling in that mesmerizing way he had.

  “Thank you, Mr. Vice President,” I said. “We just wanted to keep you abreast of the investigation. As you requested.”

  “I did indeed,” he said.

  Willingham went to Ned next, shook his hand, and said, “Do you have him, Special Agent Mahoney? Kay’s killer?”

  “No, sir. Not yet. But we stumbled onto a few irregularities in Alabama having to do with Kay’s estate that we thought you should know about.”

  “Irregularities in Alabama?” he said with mild surprise as Graciela entered and set his usual breakfast before him.

  “Montgomery, sir,” I said. “Evidence of fraud and coercion going back years, maybe decades.”

  Barnes said, “Fraud on whom? And by whom?”

  “On your late wife by her second cousin Robert Carson Jr. and others.”

  The chief of staff’s jaw dropped at the same time the vice president set his fork down. Then they both said, “Bobby Carson?”

  Willingham looked at Barnes. “I told you Bobby was bad news and you wouldn’t listen. Not like his old man at all. I told you that fifteen years ago.” Then he shifted his gaze to us. “I worked with Bobby at Carson and Knight in Montgomery for about six months after I left the district attorney’s office and was getting ready to run for governor. I was not impressed by him, but Claudette worked with him longer.”

  “Six years,” Willingham’s chief of staff said, still shocked by the news.

  Mahoney said, “Carson was abetted by the head of West Briar and Kay’s psychiatrists there.”

  The vice president gently pounded his fist on the table, looking at his chief of staff and his Secret Service agents. “I knew that too! There was something shifty about those two. Didn’t I always say so?” Agent Breit nodded, said, “The entire time Kay was down there, sir.”

  Agent Price and Barnes agreed.

  Vice President Willingham told us that after the divorce, Kay’s mother’s death, her most recent nervous breakdown, and her commitment to West Briar, every time he made inquiries about her health and well-being, he was stonewalled by her doctors.

  “I wasn’t asking for particulars, just concerned, you know, having been through it with her before,” Willingham said. “The old doctors at West Briar would always share information and ask me questions. Those two would not tell me a thing. I mean, where is the benefit of being me these days?”

  He glanced at his chief of staff, then sighed and shook his head. “Tell me what they did to her, Bobby Carson and those mental snake-oil salesmen.”

  We laid it all out. When we finished, Willingham said, “My God, Bobby Carson found it in himself to use Kay so he could destroy that beautiful land to make a buck.”

  Barnes said, “I imagine it was a lot of bucks, JW.”

  “With those quacks doping her out of her mind to do it,” the vice president said, peering at me and Mahoney. “Explain how you figured all this out.”

  His chief of staff looked at her phone. “You have an eight-fifteen meeting, sir, with the White House counsel.”

  “Who will make me sit and stew, Claudette,” he said brusquely. “Please continue, gentlemen. How exactly did you figure this out?”

  Mahoney said, “Part of it was luck, sir, and Dr. Cross’s sense that there was something not quite right about Bobby Carson and Kay’s psychiatrists.” Willingham looked over at me. “Good for you. Great minds think alike.”
>
  “Thank you, Mr. Vice President,” I replied. “But the real credit goes to Kay’s childhood friend Althea Lincoln.”

  Willingham suddenly grew wary. So did Barnes, who stopped scribbling notes as she said, “You talked to Althea Lincoln?”

  “We did.”

  “She actually talked to you?” the vice president asked with his eyebrows raised. “Because as far as I know, that woman has not uttered a word in years.”

  “Except to your late wife, evidently,” I said.

  “And us,” Mahoney said.

  CHAPTER 84

  DEMPSEY’S ALL-NIGHT DINER SERVED breakfast around the clock and was something of an institution in Anacostia, historically the blackest and poorest neighborhood in Washington, DC.

  Calvin Dempsey opened the place shortly after returning from World War II, and it had not been closed since except for three hours on the night of Dempsey’s wake in 2004 and three hours on the morning of the late owner’s funeral.

  Dempsey had a brother who served time for armed robbery, and he’d had a soft spot for ex-cons, often offering them their first jobs out of prison. During his time, the food had been uniformly excellent. Since then, the tradition of hiring men and women on parole had continued, but the quality of the cooking had ebbed and flowed, and so had the diner’s fortunes.

  “I can’t believe it’s still open,” Sampson said as he and Bree climbed out of his car opposite the diner, a shabby property with a blue neon sign that said dempsey’s in scrolled letters. “Last time I thought I got ptomaine eating here.”

  “Positive about this tip?”

  “Hundred percent?” he said. “No. It was a street rumor, but it came from a usually reliable source, so I figured we’d start here.”

  There were two signs on the front door. The first said HOT-CAKES 24/7 and the second read SORRY, WE’RE STILL OPEN.

  Sampson said, “Some things never change.”

  “Good,” Bree said, opening the door.

  “I’ll go around back.”

  “Given the picture, I don’t think we’ll see a runner,” Bree said.

  “Just the same.”

  Bree went inside the diner and scanned the narrow, L-shaped room: A long counter on the left with ten chipped chrome and faded red vinyl stools. A pass-through to the kitchen. Six booths by the windows.

  Two men, one in his thirties, the other about fifty, drank coffee at opposite ends of the counter. An older woman ate ice cream with two young boys in the nearest booth. The rest of the booths and stools were empty.

  There was music playing; the Weekend, Bree thought. And the entire place smelled like frying bacon and onions. A ropy, intense man with lots of forearm tats wearing a stained apron came through the swinging doors at the far end of the diner and went behind the counter.

  “Anywhere you like, ma’am,” the waiter said with a smile that seemed fake.

  “Thanks,” Bree said and walked to the middle of the counter, directly opposite the pass-through to the kitchen.

  There were two people working back there, an Asian man in his forties and a big, big African-American woman who seemed in charge.

  The man behind the counter wore a name tag that said LARRY. He gave Bree a menu.

  She showed him her badge.

  “You the manager these days, Larry?” she asked quietly.

  Larry’s expression hardened. “I’m clean. Everyone here is clean. Drug tests seven days a week. We all showed negative yesterday.”

  “I’m not here about drug violations,” Bree said. “I’m looking for Mary Jo Nevis.”

  He leaned over the counter, fuming. “She’s been through enough, and she’s the best cook we’ve got. Don’t do this!”

  “I’m just here to ask a few questions,” Bree said.

  Larry glared at her a beat, then turned and shouted, “The Man’s here to see you, Waffles!”

  The shout startled Bree and everyone else. A pot crashed in the kitchen.

  “Bad boy, Larry,” Bree said. She got up on the counter, jumped down behind it, and ran through the swinging doors.

  The Asian cook was cursing in a language she didn’t recognize and looking down at a large prep bowl on the floor spilling flour and broken eggs. There was no one else in the kitchen.

  Bree dodged past him, smelling bacon burning on the griddle, to a short hall that led to the back door. She yanked it open and found Sampson in the alley with his gun drawn, and the big, big African-American cook about ten feet away with her fingers interlaced behind her head.

  “Whatever anyone said about me, it’s fake news,” she said.

  CHAPTER 85

  SAMPSON TOOK A STEP TOWARD her. “Do I have to put the cuffs on you, Mary Jo?”

  She threw him a look. “Does this sister look like she’s running anywhere?”

  Bree said, “Are we going to find a weapon on you, Ms. Nevis?”

  For that, Bree received the sneer of the year. “Come close, little one. I’ll sit on you. Smother you. How’s that for a weapon?”

  “Answer the question,” Sampson said.

  “No,” Nevis said. “And I am clean. Squeaky.”

  “Then why’d you run, or try to run?”

  “You mistook my nicotine craving for quickness. Just out for a smoke. Check my apron. Front right pocket.”

  “Left a heck of a mess for your buddy to clean up,” Bree said.

  She shrugged. “Spilled milk happens. It’s just the meaning you give it. Learned that in Narcotics Anonymous.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sampson said. “Well, here’s the meaning I give it, Waffles. By the way, where’d you get that name?”

  Nevis laughed, wiggled her obese body, said, “Too many Eggos in adolescence. The name stuck.”

  “In Chicago,” Bree said.

  “You read my jacket?” she said.

  “Why do you think we’re here?” Sampson said.

  “I don’t know why — I’m waddling the straight and narrow. Ask my parole officer.”

  Bree had to fight not to smile. “We did, and she’s concerned about rumors you’re back to your old tricks and trade.”

  “No way, I did my time in Joliet,” Waffles said. “When I got out, I wanted a clean break from all that back on the South Side, so I came here. Heard you could find work, start a new life. I’m telling you, I wouldn’t mess that up. I got a six-year-old boy back home. I want to hold him someday soon.”

  “Compelling story,” Sampson said. “But there’s an old cop saying: once a fence, always a fence.”

  “Search me, then, if you dare put your hands on this fine temple of femininity,” she said. “I got nothing hot on me or at the house or anywhere else, much less in my panties.”

  “You have good timing,” Bree said. “You should have been a comic.”

  “Instead, I’m a diabetic,” Waffles said. “Can I drop my hands? Ten weeks out of stir, I’m not in shape for this. I’m getting a neck cramp.”

  “Go ahead,” Sampson said.

  She did, making a soft moan and rolling her shoulders.

  Bree said, “So why are we hearing these rumors of you taking in stolen goods?”

  Waffles took a deep breath and blew it out slow. “Some people know I used to do that kind of thing. It’s what I was in for.”

  “Who knew?”

  “Like a hundred people. I stood up and shared at a big NA meeting a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Any of them stand out?”

  “No.”

  “Anybody outside AA?”

  “NA, and … no,” she said, but she was looking at the ground.

  Bree could tell Waffles knew more than she was saying, but she didn’t comment.

  Finally the ex-con raised her head. “That it?”

  “You should tell us now while you have the chance,” Bree said. “This is bigger than any fence job you’ve ever seen.”

  “I told you — ”

  “No, we’re telling you, Mary Jo,” Sampson said. “Someone took jewelry off t
he victims of a double homicide a few weeks back. A pearl necklace. Earrings. Bracelets. A man’s Rolex.”

  Waffles shook her head defiantly. “Like I said, search me. Search my room at the halfway house. Search anywhere I go.”

  “You could have already fenced them,” Sampson said.

  “But I didn’t.”

  Bree racked her brain for angles, and it did not take long to find one. “You know, I believe you,” she said. “You don’t have the jewelry and never have.”

  Waffles sighed. “There you go. Can I go back to my job now before I don’t have one to go back to?”

  “After you tell us who tried to sell you stolen jewelry in the past few weeks.”

  “Didn’t happen,” Waffles said. “Fake news. Can I go?”

  “You know what obstruction of justice is, Ms. Nevis?” Bree asked.

  “I’m hyper-chubby, not stupid.”

  “You understand that withholding material evidence to a capital crime is itself a form of obstruction. Knowing something and staying silent is a form of obstruction.”

  “Unless I invoke the Fifth. What’s your point?”

  Bree took a step forward and gazed up into the woman’s eyes. “If we find out you’re lying to us, your silence can break the terms of your parole, and the smart funny lady in front of me will be back doing standup for hard-timers in Joliet, still guilt-ridden and dreaming about her son, who just gets older and farther away from his gifted, funny mom every day that passes.”

  Waffles held Bree’s gaze, but her expression shifted toward resentment.

  “You don’t play fair,” she said.

  “The murdered woman?” Bree said. “She was the ex-wife of the vice president of the United States. We don’t have to play even remotely fair with you.”

  CHAPTER 86

  IN THE DINING ROOM OF his official residence, Vice President Willingham shifted in his seat, took a sip of juice, and said, “When Althea Lincoln spoke to you, she told you about Bobby Carson being a swindler?”

  “Among other things,” I replied. “As Althea says, when you keep your mouth shut for years, you tend to hear a lot.”