Текст книги "Alex Cross, Run"

Автор книги: James Patterson

Соавторы: James Patterson
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER

93

I CAUGHT UP WITH BREE ON THE PHONE WHILE VALENTE AND I DROVE FROM Logan Circle over to M Street, where Josh Bergman lived. There was no new word about Ava. It was all eerily quiet on that front.

Meanwhile, I had to focus on this if I could.

It can take an hour or more to pull SWAT together, but that was time we didn’t have. Instead we dispatched a quick in-house team for the operation. Within thirty minutes, we had five tactically trained officers with one sergeant all ready to go in a parking lot on Water Street, a block from Bergman’s building.

Bergman had a high-dollar loft on the top floor of a converted flour mill, from Georgetown’s nineteenth-century industrial days. Word from our spotter, stationed on the roof behind his, was that Bergman seemed to be home alone.

After a fast briefing with Commander D’Auria, we piled into two plain white panel vans and pulled around the block. The drivers stopped in front, the van doors slid open, and we made a beeline for the entrance.

Besides the half dozen tactical personnel, the entry team included me, Valente, and two more D-1 detectives from Major Case Squad, winding our way up the three flights of stairs to the top. We had officers stationed around the block, EMTs on standby, and D’Auria with a small crew in a mobile command center back down on Water Street.

The breach team was armed with AR-15 rifles and SIG P226 sidearms. Tasers and pepper spray were standard issue as well.

I had my Glock out, for the first time since I’d been reinstated. All of us wore Kevlar, too. We had more than enough manpower to take Bergman in, but he was very possibly armed and dangerous. Maybe also a little desperate. He might try to get off a few shots of his own.

When we got to the third-floor landing, the sergeant at the head of the line wagged two fingers at a pair of officers, who came forward with the forty-five pound battering ram they’d carried up. Everyone was wired with headsets, but the protocol was for radio silence once we’d entered the building.

Inside I could hear Bergman talking. It sounded like half of a phone conversation.

“Where the hell are you? You said you’d be here an hour ago,” he said. He also sounded agitated, and seemed to be moving around. When he spoke again, his voice faded off toward the back of the apartment. “I don’t care,” he said. “Just…no, you listen to me. Just get here! Now!”

That was it. I could feel the collective pulse of the group start to go up, as the sergeant gave a visual countdown on his fingers—three, two, one. The two cops at the front pulled back with the ram and swung it at Bergman’s steel front door. It sent a resounding boom up and down the stairwell. Any cover we had now was blown.

“Units C and D, standby,” the sergeant radioed. “He may try to make a run for it.”

It took two more fast swings before the door finally tore away from the frame and blew open. My vision tunneled straight ahead as the sergeant corkscrewed his arm, ushering the team inside, double time.

“Go, go, go, go, go!”

CHAPTER

94

VALENTE AND I DIDN’T WAIT FOR CLEARANCE. WE FOLLOWED RIGHT IN BEHIND the breach team. Normally, investigative staff is meant to hold their position until we get an all clear, but neither of us were feeling that patient right now.

The apartment door opened into a wide-open loft space that looked pristine to the point of sterility. Bergman didn’t seem to have any stuff at all. There was a set of white modular furniture on a huge gray rug, like an island in the middle of the room, with a single tall rubber tree that reached up to the exposed I-beams in the ceiling. A stainless-steel kitchen off to the side looked like it had never been used.

There was no sign of Bergman anywhere in the front. The team quickly moved through, leapfrogging each other across the loft, and then down a long hallway toward the back of the building.

“MPD! Joshua Bergman?” I shouted. “Stay right where you are! Don’t move!”

At the very end of the hall there was an open door, with light streaming in through several iron-framed floor-to-ceiling windows. As soon as the first officer got there, I heard Bergman start to yell.

“Get away from me! Stay back!”

“Sir, put down the gun!” one of the officers shouted. “Keep your hands where we can see them and get down on the floor!”

“Go to hell!”

When I came into the room, Bergman was sitting up, cross-legged on a king-size platform bed. He had his back against the painted concrete block wall, with a white iPhone in one hand and a small Smith & Wesson revolver in the other. It could have easily been the same .32 he’d used to kill all those boys, as well as Sheila Bishop.

“Bergman, put the gun down!” I told him. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t?” He was clearly agitated, but also relatively focused. He looked me right in the eye when he said it.

“Just try to calm down,” I told him. “Let’s go one thing at a time.”

I lowered my own gun and took a step toward him, but only until he pressed the Smith & Wesson up to his chin.

“You think I’m kidding around here?” he said.

“Josh—don’t,” I said. “Please.”

“Too late,” he said. He held the phone up to his ear and spoke a single word to whoever was there. “Good-bye,” he said.

Then he pulled the trigger on that Smith & Wesson and blew himself away.

Whatever horrible things Bergman might have done to other people, it was god-awful to see him go out like that. This was an act of pure, irrational desperation. Maybe even insanity.

Not to mention a truly stomach-churning mess.

Everyone started moving at once. There was no question of survival, but Bergman’s death had to be confirmed. The sergeant went straight to the body and felt for a pulse on the wrist, while Valente called it in.

“One round fired, subject is down. Self-inflicted GSW,” he said. When the sergeant shook his head, Valente added, “No signs of life.”

Bergman’s gun had dropped onto the bloodstained comforter, and his phone was on the floor. That’s what I focused on. I was pretty sure I knew who he’d been talking to, but I needed to confirm it if I could.

I went straight to the phone, picked it up, and hit redial. On the first ring, it sent me right into voice mail.

“Hello,” I heard in a familiar voice. “You’ve reached Dr. Elijah Creem. I can’t take your call right now, but please leave a message. Thank you, and have a pleasant day.”

CHAPTER

95

THIS WASN’T THE END OF ANYTHING. WE WERE RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL.

Up until now, with only circumstantial evidence against Creem, it was all we could do to put a surveillance detail on him. Legally speaking, it’s one thing to watch someone at home, from the street. It’s another to go inside. The courts are jumpy about that kind of thing.

So it was ironic to get the push we needed, not from Creem but from Bergman, our presumed River Killer. The fact that he’d called Creem’s cell and home numbers multiple times in the hours before he killed himself was enough to put us over the top. Within an hour of Bergman’s death, we had a warrant number for secreted evidence in Creem’s house and a one-sheet for Creem himself, circulating up and down the Eastern Seaboard. The special note on this one was that Creem might have been traveling in disguise. The one-sheet included his DMV photo alongside the clearest image we had of the old man mask he’d been using, but we weren’t cutting off any possibilities. He could have easily switched up his look by now—and probably had.

My guess was that Creem had been planning this exit all along. It would explain the way he’d flaunted himself to the police so brazenly. Not to mention Sheila Bishop’s and Josh Bergman’s deaths. Was that all just one big, high-stakes smokescreen for him?

If so, it had worked. We’d already lost between five and nine hours on Creem, depending on what time he’d slipped away from us.

To search the house in Wesley Heights, Valente and I brought a team of three other detectives, plus four from mobile crime. It’s a slow, methodical process—aggravatingly so when your perp is already on the move. We spread out over the home’s three floors when we got there, to cover as much area as we could.

I started on the lower level, where Creem had an office, an examination room, and a waiting area with its own separate entrance. There was also a TV room and a garage down there—plenty of places to look.

As it turned out, there were a few things Creem hadn’t even tried to hide. Within the first few minutes, I found a makeup kit in his top desk drawer. There were tinting pigments, a dozen different small brushes, a bottle of spirit gum, and several items I didn’t recognize. Maybe he’d even worked on his latest mask right there at the desk, while I’d been sitting outside on the curb, watching his house the night before.

The other thing I did while I searched was to keep dialing Creem’s number. I didn’t really expect him to pick up, but I figured it was worth trying. He was the type who might like to take a parting shot at the cops, given the opportunity.

For the first hour, I got the same response, over and over—straight to voice mail. He’d probably shut the phone down to keep it from pinging off of cell towers and leaving a trail behind him.

But that doesn’t mean I was wrong about Creem. He must have tracked my incoming calls somehow, because the next time my phone rang, it was him, calling me back.

On his terms, of course.

CHAPTER

96

I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THE NUMBER ON THE ID AS I PICKED UP.

“Detective Cross,” I answered.

“It’s me,” Creem said. “The man of the hour.”

I banged my knee on his desk as I jumped up. Valente was just coming into the room, and I snapped my fingers to grab his attention.

“Dr. Creem,” I said pointedly. “I’m a little surprised to hear from you.”

Right away, Valente took out his own phone and started making a call, presumably to try to run a trace.

“I wanted to ask about Josh,” Creem told me.

“What about him?” I asked.

“Is he dead?”

Valente motioned at me to take my time and go slow with him.

“I’m not going to discuss that with you over the phone,” I said. “Tell me where you are. I’ll meet you anywhere you like. No other cops.”

Creem paused, maybe even just to smile to himself. He was enjoying this, no doubt.

“Don’t bother with this phone, by the way,” he said. “I bought it an hour ago and I’m throwing it away after this call.”

He was probably using a convenience store burner, or something like it. From a cop’s perspective, those are the worst. They can be impossible to track down.

I figured the best way to keep Creem talking would be to feed that oversize ego of his. It was the only language he seemed to speak.

“You know, there’s a massive manhunt going on right now,” I said. “You’ve given us quite the slip.”

“Any luck so far?” he asked.

“If there were—”

“Of course. We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Creem said.

I also knew better than to condescend to him. One thing about Creem—he wasn’t stupid. If I lost him now, something told me that would be it.

“I’d love to know how you pulled this off,” I said. “It’s been a fascinating case. You, Bergman, all of it. I assume you were in it together from the start.”

This time Creem sighed, almost nostalgically. “All the way back to college, in fact. We got a bit of a taste for it then, just like old Jack Sprat and his wife.”

“Excuse me?”

“He liked the boys, I liked the girls. And between the two of us, we licked the platter clean.”

His calm, collected pride in the whole thing gave me the creeps. Wherever he was headed, I didn’t think for a second he’d be able to stop himself from killing again.

“So what now?” I said. “You disappear, never to be heard from?”

“That’s the idea,” he said.

“Are you leaving the country?” I asked, but Creem demurred.

“I called because I wanted to know about Josh,” he told me. “If you don’t have anything to say about that, I’m hanging up.”

When I looked at Valente, he just shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t going well.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“Is he dead or not?”

“Yes,” I told him. It would all be in the news soon enough anyway.

“Where did he do it?” Creem asked.

“In his loft, on M Street,” I said, stalling.

“No. I mean, it sounded to me like he shot himself. Was it in the mouth?”

“Under the chin,” I said.

“Lord. Must have been a terrible mess.”

“It was,” I said. “Is that hard for you? He was your friend, after all.”

Creem paused again. I listened hard for any kind of telltale background noise, but there was nothing.

“Are you a doctor, Alex?” he asked then.

“I am. A psychologist,” I said.

“Ah. One for the books, then.”

“Now, I told you about Josh. Give me something in return,” I said. “Are there other victims we should know about? Tell me how many you’ve killed over the years.”

“I’m sorry,” Creem said, “but we’re out of time for today. Isn’t that what you shrinks always say?”

“Hang on. One more question.”

“It was fun while it lasted, detective, but I think we both know I’m already well beyond your reach. I wouldn’t go to too much trouble if I were you.”

“Creem, wait!” I said, but it was too late. He’d already hung up.

When I set down my phone, I could see on Valente’s face that he hadn’t gotten anywhere. Also that he was good and pissed by now. We’d just had a decent shot at Creem, and once again he’d slipped through our fingers.

Maybe for the last time.

CHAPTER

97

I TRIED CALLING CREEM’S NEW NUMBER BACK, BUT ALL I GOT WAS A GENERIC machine-generated voice mail. He’d probably destroyed the phone as soon as he hung up on me.

Right away, I turned my attention back to his home office. Maybe it would give us some clue about where he’d planned on running.

By all appearances, Creem was fastidiously tidy. Possibly even a little OCD. Everything about his house was well ordered, right down to the matching letterboxes, pencil cup, and stapler sitting at perfect right angles on the desk. It was easy to see as the outward manifestation of a man who needed to control every aspect of his universe—from the mundane physical details to the repetitive, hyper-precise way he’d cut up each of his victims.

Bergman’s murders had been self-similar as well, but there was a difference. With every kill, Bergman had been less controlled. Each one of those young hustlers had been stabbed and mutilated a little more than the one before. In retrospect, Bergman was the ticking time bomb, waiting to go off. Creem was more like the Swiss clock.

From his desk, I worked my way around the office, opening drawers, checking files, and even lifting up furniture to look underneath. It wasn’t until I got to the black lacquered media console by the door that I found anything at all out of place.

There, at the back of the cabinet behind a boxed set of date-ordered AMA journals, I found three matching pewter photo frames. It looked like they’d been thrown back there, rather than placed in any kind of deliberate way.

When I pulled them out, I saw the glass was mostly gone, with several shards sitting on the floor of the cabinet itself. Each photo was of the Creem family. There was a group shot in front of a massive Christmas tree; one picture of Miranda Creem, standing on a beach somewhere; and a hinged double frame, with side-by-side school photos of Creem’s two daughters.

All three women—Miranda, Chloe, and Justine Creem—were attractive, tall, and blond, I saw. If anything, the two girls were an even closer match to Creem’s slate of victims than their mother was.

And then there was the undeniable kicker. Each photo had been pierced with some kind of sharp object, like someone had driven a pair of scissors right through them. Three times each. Everything in threes.

That’s who he was trying to kill, wasn’t it? Creem had been methodically—and symbolically—erasing the three women who had left him after his scandal. If he’d gone straight for them, it would have been too suspicious. So he did the next best thing. He went after a theoretically endless supply of surrogates, maybe as a way of keeping himself from actually having to kill his own family.

Or maybe he was just building up to it.

I ran upstairs to find Valente. He was in the second-floor master bedroom, going through Mrs. Creem’s desk when I got to him.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Where’s Creem’s family right now?” I said.

“Rhode Island. They’ve been staying at her parents’ house in Newport, last I heard. Why?”

I held up one of the mutilated photos to show him.

“Because I don’t think he’s done yet,” I said.

CHAPTER

98

“Bus 53 leaving for New York, Bridgeport, Providence, and Boston WILL be boarding in ten minutes. Ticketed passengers should proceed to the loading area at this time.”

Elijah Creem stood at the bathroom mirror in a downtown Philadelphia bus station, looking at himself and making sure he was good to go for the next leg.

He touched the back of his neck, where the latex was invisibly spirit gummed to his skin. He patted the dark wig and adjusted the undergarment. It was a whole new appreciation, really, for what women went through. The makeup was no problem, but the body shaper alone was an all-day ordeal.

Still, it was incredibly effective. It wasn’t himself he saw looking back from the streaked, dirty mirror. It was a vaguely unfortunate woman of a certain age, with liver-spotted skin and a small but pronounced wattle under her chin. Even the yellow smoker’s teeth were individually rendered veneers. If Creem had ever had a masterpiece, this was it.

So far, nobody had even batted an eyelash in his direction. Not the old fatty who sold him his bus ticket at Union Station, and not the numbnut kid who sat next to him all the way from DC. The whole getup had allowed him to sail right out of Washington unnoticed, even if it was on a goddamn Greyhound bus. This wouldn’t be the last indignity of his little tour, but hopefully it would all be worth it in the end.

Rhode Island. Florida. South America. That was the idea. He’d already arranged passage on a Trinidadian cargo ship out of Miami. After that, it was just a skip to the mainland. Once he made his way to Buenos Aires, he could start to feel out the surgery community to see who might be safe to approach about some major work.

It wouldn’t be too much trouble lying low in the meantime. He had eleven million in gold, held in a numbered account at Banco Macro. Plenty to live on, if he was careful. And with US extradition priorities being what they were, he’d be more than safe. It was all about the drug wars now. Nobody paid attention to someone like him once you reached a certain distance.

Meanwhile, as long as he was stateside, Elijah Creem knew full well how to stay invisible—even standing in the middle of a public ladies’ room.

When the bathroom door opened, Creem let his hand fall away from his face. He took a plum-colored lipstick out of the purse he carried—one of Miranda’s cast-offs—and busied himself with it at the mirror.

He kept his eyes forward, watching the young woman’s reflection as she passed behind him and let herself into one of the toilet stalls. She was blond, and pretty, in a trashy sort of way. The kind of girl you might see riding alone on a Greyhound bus.

Was she perfect? Not by any stretch, but it sent a slight itch through Creem’s palm, all the same. As he put the lipstick back in the purse, he let his fingers graze over the handle of a number eighteen scalpel, tucked into one of the side pockets.

As the girl’s yellow panties slipped down to gather around her sandals near the floor, he turned slowly to face the row of stalls. He checked the entrance again.

It was tempting. So tempting. It had been too long since he’d been able to use a real instrument.

Still, the bus station was crowded. He had a transfer to make. And there would be plenty of opportunity to use the scalpel, soon enough.

“Hey!” The girl’s voice cut right through his thoughts. “Someone’s in here!”

Creem looked down to realize he’d already put a hand on the stall door. His size twelve canvas espadrilles were no doubt showing under the partition wall.

“Oh!” he said. “Sorry!”

His affected voice was something less than ladylike, but it passed well enough. He could see the girl now, just a sliver of her through the crack, hunched over and reaching to hold the stall door closed between them.

“You can relax, sweetheart,” he added. “You’re safe.”

She didn’t offer any response, and really, why would she? There was no way for her to know that, on this particular day, she was the luckiest little piece of trash in Philadelphia.

As Creem reached the bathroom door, he turned back one more time.

“You know, you might think about those bags under your eyes before they get away from you,” he said.

“What?” the girl called back.

But Creem was already gone.