Текст книги "Alex Cross, Run"

Автор книги: James Patterson

Соавторы: James Patterson
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER

49

I LEFT THE MEETING WITH KIM AND WENT STRAIGHT BACK TO MY CAR, IN the parking garage under the Daly Building. Sometimes there’s no better place to get some work done in private. Bree calls it my mobile office.

Mostly, I had calls to make. I flipped open a pad on my knee and dialed the first of several names on my list—Ned Mahoney.

Ned’s a good friend, a great FBI agent, and the person over at the Bureau who I most trust to give me a straight answer. He ran the Hostage and Rescue Team out of Quantico, but I’d also been hearing murmurs that Mahoney was on his way up at the Bureau. I’d believe it when I saw it.

“Alex,” he answered. “How’s the hardest-working man in show business? Wait, don’t tell me. Up to your ass, am I right?”

Ned also has a mouth that won’t quit. He comes across as sarcastic a lot of the time, but the truth is, there just aren’t many sacred cows in Ned’s world. It’s one of the things I like about him.

“I need some info,” I told him. “It’s about a kidnapping down in Georgia,” I said. “The name’s Rebecca Reilly.”

“Reilly,” he said. “Anything to do with that nasty windowsill action over on Vernon a few weeks ago?”

“Off the record? Yeah,” I said. “Rebecca’s the vic’s baby. She was in her grandparents’ custody down south when she was taken. The grandparents were killed, too. I can’t get anyone in Atlanta or Savannah to talk to me about it.”

Ned made a sound like he was sucking air through his teeth. “This business stinks, doesn’t it? Why didn’t we become accountants or something?”

“’Cause we care, Ned.”

“Oh, right. That,” he said. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll get you back as soon as I can.”

It didn’t take him long, either. By the time I’d put in calls to Jarret Krause, Sampson, and Sergeant Huizenga, I had a voice mail waiting from Ned. He didn’t want to leave any specific information on my phone, so I called him back right away.

“Not much to tell,” he said. “The Bureau’s still active with the case, so they probably have good reason to believe Rebecca was taken out of Georgia. But that’s as far as I got. They’re holding their cards pretty close.”

“Thanks for trying,” I said. It was more than I’d had before.

“How’re you doing, anyway?” Ned asked. “Seems like you’ve been getting spanked pretty bad in the press lately.”

This was the one thing I didn’t want to talk about, but curiosity got the best of me. It often does.

“Why?” I said. “What have you heard?”

“That whole Real Deal thing,” Ned said. “Seems like I can’t turn around without reading about it these days. Or you. Is it true you threw that guy’s tape recorder into the woods?”

“I’ll take the fifth,” I told him. It wasn’t like I thought Guidice’s blog was a secret anymore, but it was no fun to be reminded of the fact. The longer this went on, the more I’d become a part of the story myself—and that’s nowhere a self-respecting cop wants to be. “Bottom line, the guy’s a major tool,” I said.

“Don’t sweat it too much,” Ned told me. “This stuff’s like herpes. It pops up, it goes away for a while, then it comes back. There’s nothing you can do but keep your head down and stick to what’s important.”

I had to laugh. “Herpes, huh? Remind me to call you back the next time I need cheering up.”

“Anytime, Alex. Meanwhile, just don’t read that crap. It’s only going to piss you off. Especially today.”

It was probably good advice, but it was coming a little too late. As soon as I hung up with Ned, I opened the browser on my phone and went straight to The Real Deal.

For better or worse.

CHAPTER

50

A NEW LOW

Posted by RG at 11:52 p.m.

Sometimes I’m surprised at the depths to which the Metropolitan Police Department will sink. Yesterday evening was a good example. My own criticisms of Detective Alex Cross (see sidebar, here) are well known. Despite his reputation as a superior investigator—which he may well be—Dr. Cross is also a prime example of the kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing that pervades that department.

Click here for an audio recording of my encounter with Detective Cross just yesterday. See what you think for yourself. I was attempting to report on the latest in a series of murders, of young hustlers in and around Georgetown—the so-called River Killer case (for which the MPD has no reported progress, by the way). At the time of the incident, I was in the parking lot at Lock Seven of the C&O Canal, off of Clara Barton Parkway. I’ve Google mapped it here, and marked the police perimeter as it was established, along with the spot where my encounter with Detective Cross took place. As you’ll see, I was well within the allowable area for press and other onlookers. There is no question of trespass in this case.

I will, however, admit to having a concealed recording device during our conversation. It’s something I always do in my dealings with MPD, as a backup, but this was the first time it’s ever proven necessary. Click here to listen to the encounter. What you’ll hear is me interacting with Detective Cross, followed by a brief struggle in which he took the handheld recorder I was carrying and threw it deep into the woods, in the direction I’ve marked with an arrow on the above-mentioned map.

What I hope is coming clear here is a growing—I’d say overwhelming—body of evidence that the MPD is badly in need of a little housecleaning. This is the kind of police behavior I’ve heard about in places like Egypt, and Libya, and China. Is it really what we want here at home?

As always, I encourage you NOT to take my word on any of this. Look into it for yourself. See what other people are saying. See what you think. If you’d like to share a comment or observation about the work MPD is doing, click here.

And remember—the police work for you. Not the other way around.

CHAPTER

51

WHEN I GOT HOME JUST BEFORE SEVEN THAT NIGHT, THE HOUSE WAS disconcertingly quiet. There was no Wii from the living room. No Nikki Minaj playing behind some closed door. No pounding feet on the stairs.

Instead, what I found was Bree sitting in the kitchen with Stephanie Gethmann, our social worker. Stephanie was the one from Child and Family Services assigned to Ava’s case. Usually we saw her once a month for home visits, but the last visit had been just a week before.

Something was up.

“Alex, come sit down,” Bree said. She looked tense, and touched my hand as I pulled out a chair to join them.

“What’s going on? Where are the kids?” I said.

“Jannie and Ali are with Aunt Tia,” Bree told me.

“What about Ava?” I said. “Is she okay?”

“A patrol cop brought her home this afternoon,” Bree said. “He found her in Seward Square, passed out on a park bench.”

The news hit me like a punch in the gut, but one that I was already half expecting.

“Passed out?” I said.

“With pupils like pin dots.”

That meant opiates. OxyContin, possibly, although Ava didn’t have that kind of money. Maybe fentanyl, which was cheaper and easier to get but also harder to control. My cop’s mind couldn’t help running down a list of possibilities.

“Nana’s upstairs with her now,” Bree went on. “She’s just sleeping. We’ll have to do a urine test in the morning.”

I nodded and looked down at the table. All of a sudden, it felt like July 1989 all over again. That was the last time drugs had haunted this house.

My brother Blake had been an addict. He’d shown up on Nana’s doorstep one night, dope sick and begging for help. Nana called me in my dorm at Georgetown and asked me to come home, which I did. It was a long, sweaty twelve hours, but we got through it. Nana was like an angel of mercy. I just helped out where I could.

What I didn’t know then was that it would be the last time all three of us were together. Blake promised to stick with the rehab program Nana found for him, but he quickly skipped out and disappeared. The next we heard was on the morning of September 2—another cop at the front door. Blake had been found in an Anacostia flophouse, dead from a heroin overdose.

Now, sitting here, I couldn’t help feeling terrified for Ava. She wasn’t Blake, obviously. But it was also true that Nana and I had done all we could for my brother, and it still wasn’t enough.

“So, what now?” I asked Stephanie.

“Counseling, for sure,” she said. “Maybe treatment. It depends on what Ava has to say for herself. We need to find out how long this has been going on, and if she’s dealing with an addiction here. Also, if you can find out where she’s getting her drugs, that could be a good step toward doing something about it.”

“We’ve had her on a short leash,” Bree said. “There’s been a little trouble lately.”

“Drug trouble?” Stephanie asked.

Bree and I looked at each other. “We weren’t sure,” she said. “But I guess we are now.”

“Well, as long as you’ll have her, Ava’s best off staying right here. I’ll let her rest tonight, but I’d like to see her tomorrow. And I’ll be making more frequent visits to the house. How are Wednesdays and Saturdays for you?”

“Fine,” Bree said.

I felt like I was still trying to catch up. My head was too crowded. When I looked up again, Stephanie and Bree were both looking back at me.

“I’m sorry—what?” I said.

“Wednesdays and Saturdays,” Stephanie repeated. “Is that okay for you, Alex?”

“Yes. Of course,” I said. “Whatever it takes. We’ll make it work.”

CHAPTER

52

“YES. OF COURSE. WHATEVER IT TAKES. WE’LL MAKE IT WORK.”

Ron Guidice slid the headphones off his ears and sat back. He’d heard all he needed to. The rest of the conversation could go to the hard drive.

In the meantime, it sounded like Alex was getting it coming and going these days. This was exactly what the electronic surveillance was for. There was only so much of a story Guidice could build without some kind of inside line on Alex’s home life. It was working out perfectly, in fact.

Guidice marked the time on a legal pad next to his computer and had just started typing up some thoughts when a knock came from the hall.

“Ronald, honey?”

“Come in,” he said, flipping the laptop closed.

When his mother opened the door, she had baby Grace held in the crook of one arm. A white cloth diaper was draped over her shoulder. The nipple of a small Evenflo bottle showed over the top of her housecoat pocket.

“Emma Lee says she wants daddy to tuck her in tonight.”

“No problem,” Guidice said.

When he got to the door, though, Lydia didn’t move. She just stood there, filling the frame with her considerable girth. It was her own version of passive-aggressive, putting herself in the way like a cow on the tracks. She obviously had something on her mind.

Guidice steeled his patience. It wasn’t clear yet whether his mother was going to need a little stick, or a little carrot. Maybe both.

“What is it, Mom?” he asked.

“Did you call the police yet?”

“No,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, I do worry about it,” she said, absently rocking the baby. “I mean…” Now she dropped her voice to a whisper, as if anyone else were listening. “How do you even know she’s yours?”

Guidice reached over and stroked his daughter’s rosy cheek with one finger. Her little half-lidded eyes made him smile.

“Look at her,” he said. “She looks just like me.”

“Still. This is the baby’s mother we’re talking about,” Lydia insisted.

“She was just some slut, Mom. A one-night stand.”

His mother half turned her head and held up a hand. “Too much information, thank you. I’m just saying, it’s not right what she did.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Think about it, Mom. This is someone who leaves a baby in a car with a note and walks away. Do you really want that kind of person in Grace’s life?”

Lydia held the baby a little closer. “Well, no, but—”

“That’s why we moved. I didn’t want her finding us. And frankly, I don’t want to find her, either. I say Grace deserves better than that.”

“I suppose,” Lydia answered tentatively—either because she agreed with him, or because her tenth-grade education hadn’t armed her for any kind of substantive debate in life.

“Don’t suppose, Mom. Think about it,” he told her. “Do you really want someone like that raising your granddaughter?”

“No,” she answered, more resolutely this time.

“No,” he said. “You don’t. And neither do I.”

He let it all sink in for a moment, and then softened his tone as he went on. Time for a little carrot.

“Believe me,” he said. “You’re a way better mother than she’d ever be. No contest, Mom.”

Lydia Guidice was always easily flattered. She smiled as she blushed, and then finally stepped out of the way.

“Go on,” she said. “Emma Lee’s waiting.”

Guidice kissed his mother on the cheek before he headed up the hall.

There were other solutions, of course. Lydia could be eliminated just as easily as anyone else, physically speaking. It would even be a relief to put the ultimate gag order on that incessant nagging.

But it was basically a cost-benefit situation at this point. Lydia played a vital role in the family. Like it or not, he needed her right now. It would be shortsighted to take her out just to shut her up.

No, Guidice thought. He couldn’t do that. Couldn’t even think about it.

Not unless it became absolutely necessary.

CHAPTER

53

I TRIED TO STAY FOCUSED AT THE NEXT MORNING’S BRIEFING, BUT IT WAS HARD to keep my mind in the room.

I was starting to wonder if I’d overextended myself. It’s a question that comes up a lot. I had three cases on the books—plus Ava. She was the fourth case. Later in the day, we had a meeting at Child and Family Services. In the meantime, I had more than enough to keep me busy.

Too much, in fact, but how do you say no to something when the stakes are people’s lives? We had nine dead so far, one missing, and, with three unknown suspects at large, the looming promise of more to come.

There’s a good amount of disagreement about clusters, as they’re called in serial homicide. Some people say they’re nothing more than coincidence, and that we’re bound to see concurrent activity from time to time. The United States is the world capital of serial murder, with somewhere between twenty-five and fifty active killers at any given time.

The most famous cluster I knew of had been in South LA, from the early eighties through 2007. LAPD had tracked down five separate cases then, including the Grim Sleeper and the Southside Slayer. By the time all five of those files were closed, a total of fifty-five people had died, all within a fifty-square-mile area.

There had also been some recent coverage about the three killers operating simultaneously in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, on Long Island. The last I’d heard, two suspects were in custody, with one still at large, and the body count was up to thirty.

Now, Washington had the makings of its own cluster. I spent virtually all my time turning over these three cases in my head—thinking about methods, victim profiles, possible motives, and most of all, wondering where one of these guys might strike next.

Killer number one was the man I thought of as “Russell,” the supposed boyfriend of Elizabeth Reilly. He was the most unpredictable in a way, with four and a half years between his pregnant victims, and a probable kidnapping on his resume, too.

Number two was the one they’d dubbed the River Killer in the press. Three gay hustlers had been found dead so far, but my fear was that we just hadn’t found them all yet. Under normal conditions, it can take weeks for a submerged, decomposing body to build up enough gas to become buoyant and rise to the surface.

Killer number three was the least established, but he already had two different monikers. Some were calling him the Georgetown Ripper. Others were using the Barbie Killer, for the blond hair and perfect bodies on his two known victims. MPD had left those comparisons out of their official statements, but the media had picked up on it anyway.

That was the case that had me most on edge right now. Considering the apparent relationship between the River Killer and this guy, I couldn’t help feeling as though our Barbie Killer had some catching up to do. In the plainest possible terms, it felt to me like we were overdue for another dead blonde.

Three days later, it turned out I was half right.

This time, it was two dead blondes.

CHAPTER

54

THE BODIES WERE FOUND BY A HOUSEKEEPER WHEN SHE ARRIVED FOR WORK that Monday morning. Time of death was later determined to be somewhere around ten o’clock on Saturday night, which meant that these women were dead in their house for a full thirty-six hours. More bad news for the investigation. I headed over as soon as I got the call.

The place was a pink brick townhome on Cambridge Place, a well-to-do but tightly packed block of Georgetown. Still, there had been no reports of any screams, or disturbances of any kind.

“We’ve got no signs of forced entry,” Errico Valente told me at the front door. “The alarm system was disabled, too. Seems like he might have been admitted to the house.”

“Are there neighborhood cameras?”

“Yeah. It’s a private security firm,” he said. “We’re tracking down the logs right now.”

The bulk of DC’s municipal crime cameras are normally reserved for our most violent neighborhoods. The irony was that these two homicides had now put Second District, which is Georgetown, on par with anywhere else in the city, body for body.

From the home’s center hall, I followed Valente up to the apparent crime scene, a master suite on the second of three floors. The victims in this case were a mother and daughter, Cecily and Keira Whitley, ages forty-three and nineteen. Mrs. Whitley was divorced, but her ex-husband still lived in DC, where they’d raised two daughters. Keira’s twin sister was enrolled at UC Santa Barbara out in California.

Now the Whitley family had been cut in half.

Coming into the bedroom, I saw the mother first. She was laid out on the pale pink sheets of an unmade king-size bed. The covers had been pulled off and left in a heap on the floor.

Her daughter was on an overstuffed chaise longue in the corner, facing her mother. Marks in the carpet told me the chaise had been moved to that position recently.

Both victims were tall, attractive women, with the telltale signs of what had once been long blond hair. In fact, they looked quite a bit alike. Two more Barbies for the Barbie Killer. If there was any doubt on that front, the signature knife work clinched it. Both had incurred stab wounds to the left chest, abdomen, and right thigh, near the femoral artery. Dried blood formed a dark corona around each of their bodies on the mattress and chaise, respectively.

“Evil son of a bitch,” Valente said. “Just killing for killing’s sake.”

That seemed to be the case. There were no signs of sexual assault, or robbery. Mrs. Whitley’s blue leather purse sat clasped on a dresser by the window, and the heavy diamond studs in Keira’s ears had been left untouched.

Age didn’t seem to be a factor for this guy, either. The only real consistencies were the very clear physical type, the repetitive knife work, and of course, the chopped hair. It was virtually everywhere I looked—matted in with the blood on the furniture, but also lying in loose tufts, and endless random strands all over the room, and all over the victims themselves. It was as bizarre a scene as I’d been to in a long time.

But was one of those elements more important than the other? He was working something out, that was for sure. Maybe reliving a fantasy of some kind—over and over.

It was possible these women were surrogates for someone else, I thought. Someone whom our killer only wished he could get to. His dead mother, maybe. Or an ex of some kind. I didn’t really see a clear path to figuring that one out yet, but somewhere in my gut, the question felt like it was pointing me in the right direction.

Who was this guy—and who was he trying to kill, over and over again?

CHAPTER

55

BY THE TIME VALENTE AND I MADE A GOOD PASS THROUGH THE HOUSE, WE heard from the sergeant on the front door that a rep from Baseline Security had arrived. Errico radioed back to keep whoever it was outside, and we made our way out to the street to meet with him.

A black Range Rover was parked halfway between the Whitley home and the barriers at the end of the block. The man waiting for us there introduced himself as John Overbey, the owner of Baseline. His company worked for various neighborhood associations, providing video surveillance and away-from-home coverage where the city’s municipal cameras fell short.

It looked to me like business was good. Overbey’s green silk tie probably cost more than my entire suit.

“We’ve got one hundred percent coverage on this block,” he told us. “I started scanning the logs as soon as I heard the terrible news. And I’m pretty certain we’ve got your man.”

He kept eyeing the Whitleys’ town house while we talked. I’d want to get a look inside, too, if I were him, but Valente motioned for him to open his Toughbook right there on the hood of his car instead.

When the laptop screen flicked on, Overbey already had two side-by-side video images waiting. His time coding looked like a jumble to me, maybe some kind of in-house encryption, but he read it easily enough.

“That’s nine forty-six on Saturday night,” he said, pointing to the image on the left. “And the other is at ten fifteen. Both from the same unit, right over there.”

He turned and pointed up the block, to the corner of Cambridge and Thirtieth Street. In fact, I could see a small black box mounted under the second-floor window of the house on that corner.

“Let’s go chronologically,” Valente said.

Overbey brought the first image up to full screen and let the video play.

Unlike the city cameras, this one recorded a crisp digital color picture. The limitation was the fact that it had been taken at night. Cambridge Place was only sporadically lit by a handful of old-style street lamps along the brick sidewalk.

After a few seconds of empty footage, a man walked into the frame, heading up the block with his back to the camera.

“That’s him,” Overbey said.

There wasn’t much to see, except that he had a ball cap on, and a dark, knee-length coat. When he reached the Whitley home, he stepped up onto the stoop and appeared to ring the bell.

It was chilling, knowing what was about to happen, and not being able to do anything about it.

The porch light came on. There seemed to be a brief exchange at the door, while the man pointed up the street several times. Finally, a blond woman stepped outside. It was too far away to tell if it was Mrs. Whitley or her daughter, but she put an arm around the man and helped him inside. As she did, he moved with a sudden, pronounced limp that hadn’t been there before.

“Probably told her he’d been mugged,” Overbey said, minimizing that recording and bringing up the other. “Now watch. This is twenty-nine minutes later.”

Again, we saw the same street scene as before, from the same camera. After a moment, the man stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He turned left off the stoop, then started back up the block, moving easily with no discernible limp at all.

As he came near the camera again, we saw his face for the first time. He even looked up, right into the lens for a split second, as he passed under it and out of sight.

“Right there,” I said.

“Yeah.” Overbey stopped, rewound, and froze the image.

The man seemed to be looking right at us. Valente leaned in to see closer, and then cursed under his breath.

“Look familiar?” he said.

It did. The face was similar, but not exactly the same, as the old man we’d seen on the security tape at the parking garage the night Darcy Vickers was murdered.

He looked about the same age, maybe seventy, but unlike the last time, this guy had a mustache and glasses. Two white shocks of curly hair showed under the ball cap as well. The last guy had been mostly bald.

“Those are prosthetics,” I said, at the same moment I realized it.

Valente nodded. “Some kind of mask, right? Jesus. That could explain a lot.”

“I don’t think he cares if we know it, either,” I added. “He obviously had a bead on that camera, the way he looked right into it. Maybe he even wanted us to see him.”

That could cut both ways, I thought. It might have meant he was confident for a reason, and we were never going to see past that disguise enough to pin him down.

Or, maybe he was starting to feel cocky—maybe a little too cocky for his own good—and we’d just turned a corner on this thing.

I looked up at Overbey. “Can you piece together his movements?” I said. “Try and figure out where he went from here? Or where he came from?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Overbey said. “Our service area only goes as far as Q Street. But you could pull from the city as well.”

“On it,” Valente said, tapping a number into his phone.

“Hey, Detective Cross?”

Someone else was there now. I turned around to see a uniformed cop trying to get my attention.

“What is it?” I said.

“You’ve got a visitor, detective.”

“A what?” That didn’t make sense. This was a closed crime scene.

The cop shrugged. “He said you called and asked him to come right down. He’s waiting over there.”

I looked up the street the way the cop pointed. There, in his usual hoodie and cargos, was Ron Guidice.

“What the hell’s that douche bag doing here?” Valente said. “You want me to get rid of him for you?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll take care of it. In fact, it’s going to be my pleasure.”

Somehow, Guidice had found his way into my crime scene. I was going to be sure to help him find his way out.