Текст книги "Alex Cross, Run"

Автор книги: James Patterson

Соавторы: James Patterson
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER

31

BEFORE ANYONE REACHED US, HUIZENGA SWUNG AROUND AND SHINED HER light up into the woods on the opposite bank.

“What is it?” I said.

“Shh!”

She put a hand on my arm and pointed. That’s when I heard it. Someone was moving through the woods, breaking twigs and going at a good clip over dead leaves and soft ground.

Huizenga started up that way a beat before I did.

“Whoever you are, this is the police. Stop right there! Don’t make me chase you!”

I’ve got legs almost twice as long as hers, and by the time I was up the bank and past the tree line, I’d already left her behind. My Glock was out in one hand, my Maglite in the other. Maybe this was just some homeless person we were chasing, or a curious kid, but if not—I wanted this guy, bad.

About twenty yards in, I stopped and listened. Whoever it was, they’d been heading toward the Sixteenth Street side of the park, but now he—she? he?—had turned and was running parallel to the creek instead.

Meanwhile, I could hear Huizenga on the radio, somewhere behind me.

“—any available units to Sixteenth Street, north of Sherrill Drive. We’ve got an unsub, on foot, possibly headed out of Rock Creek Park—”

I took off at a sprint again, catching a few low branches in the face as I went. The adrenaline was driving me as much as anything right now.

Again, the footfalls ahead of me changed direction—but this time I caught him with the beam of my light. It was a man, anyway, in dark clothes. That’s all I saw. He’d just disappeared up and over a small rise, straight ahead.

I was right behind him, and a few seconds later I spilled out onto the pavement of Sherrill Drive. The road curved here, in a hairpin turn on its way out of the park. There was no sign of the guy, though. Had he kept going, back into the woods? Turned and run up the road?

If I’d had another half second, I would have realized why I didn’t hear him running anymore. But the next thing I felt was something hard, slamming into the back of my head. My knees buckled, and what little vision I had in the dark blurred out completely. Pain shot down my neck and back as I hit the pavement.

I tried to jump right up, but it was no good. Everything spun. The ground turned sideways, and I was down again.

“Alex?”

I heard Huizenga now, moving through the woods behind me.

“Sixteenth Street!” I shouted back. “Keep going!”

I wasn’t even sure about that, but a guess was better than nothing at this point. All I could do was kneel there waiting for some sense of equilibrium to come back while the seconds ticked away—when seconds mattered.

By the time I finally caught up to Huizenga, our guy was gone, gone, gone.

CHAPTER

32

I MISSED A GOOD HALF HOUR WITH THE PARAMEDICS BEFORE HUIZENGA would let me get back to work. There was no concussion, just a gash and a bad headache. Even then she wanted me to go home, but she didn’t insist.

By the time I was back in the loop, Chief Perkins was on-site, along with Jessica Jacobs as well. Jacobs was the primary investigator on the Cory Smithe murder. By all indications, we either had one very busy psychopath on our hands, or more likely, two cases that had more to do with each other than we’d previously imagined.

Neither of the latest victims had been identified yet, but it had already been decided that MPD was going to hold a major press conference later that morning, to report out on the situation.

“Are we sure that’s a good idea?” I said. “I know I’m coming late to the conversation, but—”

“You also weren’t on the receiving end of the mayor’s calls,” Huizenga told me. “It’s done, Alex. This is our reality now. Let’s move on. Tell us what you’re thinking here.”

For better or worse, I’m the go-to profiler in the Homicide Division, not that there’s any official title to that effect. Either way, I’d already started working up a few new ideas.

“Assuming we’re talking about two killers,” I said, “I’d say they’re both white, like their victims, just going by statistics. Also bright, and well organized—but angry, too. Not necessarily about the same thing.”

It wasn’t such a stretch that murder and anger would go hand in hand, but that was the quality that struck me the most about all four of these homicides. None of them were simple or straightforward, in terms of methods. The knife work in particular had gone above and beyond the necessary, in terms of strictly taking lives.

That meant there was some emotion to it. Maybe some level of fantasy playing out here as well. And almost certainly some kind of high-functioning psychosis, which is the slipperiest aspect of all when it comes to pinning down any perpetrator.

Much less two of them.

I gave the others my spiel, and then shut up and listened again while D’Auria divvied the work to be done in the coming hours. If nothing else, we had a pretty good investigative machine up and running.

Valente was going to work IDs on both victims. Jacobs would run the 6 a.m. briefing at headquarters. Chief Perkins was going to be with the mayor’s people for the next few hours, and then D’Auria would be the face of the department for our press conference, while the rest of us stood behind him in a show of force. Sometimes, it is about appearances, and Washington was going to need some reassurance that MPD was on this.

Huizenga and I were both going to start pulling teams together, to go back through every report and witness account, and reinterview every first responder on all four of these murders. We’d also need to start from scratch on our victims’ profiles. Maybe there was some connection, some cross-reference we’d missed. There had to be.

Something was attaching these cases to each other. We just had to figure out what it was.

CHAPTER

33

JUST AFTER THE SUN CAME UP, I STOLE AN HOUR I DIDN’T HAVE AND SWUNG back by the house before Ava left for school. Jannie and Ali were already gone when I got there, but Bree had told Ava she’d write her a note for being late. We had to talk.

There were plenty of reasons to be concerned. The smiling, happy Ava from Kinkead’s the other night had turned out to be a momentary bit of sunshine. Most of the time these days she was sullen, withdrawn, and almost impossible for me to get through to. What I’d just seen the night before only added another layer.

“I wasn’t high,” she insisted, almost as soon as we sat her down in the living room. “I wasn’t! Serious.”

“You were pretty out of it, Ava,” I said.

“Whatcha want me to say? Swear to God, okay?”

I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. I wanted to, desperately, if only to establish some kind of mutual trust. But Ava was also an easy liar, and that wasn’t a pattern I wanted to reinforce. I wanted her to use those smarts of hers for something more than a quick lie and squirming out of trouble.

“Why were you still dressed, in the middle of the night? Did you sneak out?” Nana asked.

For the first time, some of the fire went out of Ava’s eyes. She jutted out her jaw and looked at the floor, answering and not answering at the same time.

“We can’t have that, Ava,” Bree told her. “Not even a little.”

“I know,” Ava said. “But I wasn’t on anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Either way,” Nana said, “things are going to change around here. No more running out to the store, or whatever it is you’re doing with your friends around Seward Square. No more dawdling on the way home from school like you’ve been doing. And absolutely no leaving the house by yourself at night. Don’t test me on that, Miss Ava.”

“Whatever,” she said, and started up. “Can I go now?”

“No, you can’t go,” Bree told her. “Sit down.”

Ava sat back again and folded her long arms over her chest. She was two years younger than Damon but just as tall and lanky.

“Ava, do you understand where all this is coming from?” Bree said. “We love you. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you. If it did, that would be like something bad happening to us. Does that make any sense?”

Ava tossed off another shrug, but I could see her getting smaller, the longer this went on. She was breathing through her nose, and if I wasn’t mistaken, trying not to cry.

So far, I’d been holding back. The truth was, Ava responded better to Nana and Bree than she did to me. But I didn’t want to stay silent anymore. I pulled the hassock around and sat down right in front of her. She was going to hear me.

“Do you want to be part of this family?” I asked her.

“Huh?”

“I’m not saying you have a choice about where you live right now. You’re kind of stuck with us for the time being,” I went on. “But what I am saying is that there’s a family in this house, if you want one. Do you?”

Nana, Bree, and I had all agreed that we’d wait until the end of the school year to think seriously about adoption, either way. The foster system was still overseeing Ava’s case, and maybe I shouldn’t have said anything yet. But then again, I was the one who’d been dragging his feet.

Ava seemed to fold in on herself a little more, pulling her arms tight around her own thin frame. When I saw the first tear start down her cheek, I didn’t think about it. I just wrapped her up in a hug and held on tight.

At first, she stiffened up. But then, all at once, she broke. It was like she’d turned into a rag doll in my arms, and she started sobbing like I’d never heard her before. Nana reached over and put a hand on Ava’s back. Bree did the same from the other side, and none of us said anything for a long time.

In fact, Ava was the first one to speak.

“I miss my mom,” she said against my chest. That was all she got out before she started crying, even harder, as if just saying it was its own kind of pain.

“Of course you do,” I said, rocking her gently. “I would, too.”

It was heartbreaking. Nobody had ever shown Ava what it meant to really be there for her. She’d had a nonexistent father, and a mother whose drug addiction was stronger than their own relationship had been. But she was also the only mother Ava had ever known. I would have been more concerned if she didn’t miss her.

We still had a lot of talking to do, and a lot of issues to address together—eventually. For the moment, though, it seemed like what Ava needed more than anything was to cry.

Maybe it was even a step in the right direction.

CHAPTER

34

OUR PRESS CONFERENCE WAS SCHEDULED TO START AT TEN THAT MORNING. For something as big as this, we use the largest all-purpose space at headquarters, which also happens to be the lineup room. The only difference was that we were the ones lining up this time.

Everything was hopping when I got there. We had at least eighty reporters in chairs, and maybe twenty news cameras across the back wall. Channels Four, Five, Seven, and Nine were all going live, I was pretty sure. The nationals were probably here to test the waters, and see what might be worth putting on the teleprompter for Diane Sawyer or Brian Williams that night.

At the front, on a small, low stage, the podium was already covered with a sloppy bouquet of microphones. A heavy blue curtain had been drawn across the one-way glass.

It looked like D’Auria was getting ready to start, so I went and took my place behind him with the other primaries—Huizenga, Jacobs, Valente, and Chief Perkins. It was a deliberate image for the cameras, to be sure. Washington was going to need to know—and see—that MPD was on top of these murders.

At ten o’clock exactly, our public information officer, Joyce Catalone, closed the secure door to the hall and nodded at D’Auria to go ahead. He stepped up to the mikes and started right in.

“Good morning, everyone. I’m Commander Tom D’Auria with the Metropolitan Police Department. I’ve got a prepared statement regarding the events of the last twelve hours, and then we’ll have some time for questions.”

D’Auria quickly covered the basics, without getting too specific about methods, weapons, or the exact location where the bodies had been found. It was too early to make any of that publicly available. He did indicate both victims by name, though—Larissa Swenson and Ricky Samuels. That part was news to me. They’d been Jane and John Doe, the last I’d heard.

D’Auria also indicated that Mr. Samuels was a known sex worker, like Cory Smithe before him; but he didn’t make any mention of the physical similarity between Ms. Swenson and her equivalent “partner victim,” Darcy Vickers.

I would have made the same call. Gay hustlers are a specific group of people who might be able to use information like this to protect themselves. By the same token, there’s no effective way to warn and protect a city’s worth of attractive blond women. Protect them against doing what, exactly? It’s a fine line between what’s useful at this point, and what just stirs up panic. Sometimes you have to make your best guess and roll the dice.

As soon as D’Auria reached the end of his statement, the questions started flying. At first they were the usual logistical kind of inquiries. Were the bodies found near each other? Yes. How near? No comment. Did we have any evidence of a connection between the two victims? No comment. Would MPD be updating the press that afternoon? Yes, if there was anything to tell.

But then, after about five minutes, D’Auria called on Bev Sherman from the Post, and things took a turn.

“Commander, you mention two possible serial cases associated with these murders—”

“I didn’t say serial,” D’Auria cut in. “Let me be clear. We have what appear to be second homicides by the same perpetrators, in two previously unrelated cases.”

“Fair enough,” Bev went on. “My question is about a third incident. The Elizabeth Reilly murder?”

My ears pricked up at that one. Technically, all these cases were on my plate, but I’d just been down to Shellman Bluff. I’d met the Reillys. I’d held that baby girl.

“What about it?” D’Auria asked.

“A new blog by the name of The Real Deal has been quite critical of MPD lately, and the Elizabeth Reilly investigation in particular. Most specifically, The Real Deal has been focusing on Detective Cross, who I know is coordinating on all three of these cases. I was wondering if the detective himself would care to comment?”

All around the room, people started tapping away on phones and iPads, presumably looking up The Real Deal. I also felt a good number of eyes turning my way.

D’Auria held the floor, though. “Bev, I’m not going to respond to rumors on a blog I’ve never heard of,” he answered. “That’s something we’ll have to look into.”

“Let me be more specific,” Bev jumped in before he could move on. “Detective Cross, would you be willing to comment on some of the allegations—for instance, that you violated department policy by moving Ms. Reilly’s body before a proper examination? Or that you were out socializing on Saturday night while the investigation, arguably, should have been gearing up?”

I was stunned, and thrown off guard, and most of all, steaming goddamn mad. Where was this coming from? What was this blog I’d never heard about before? And who the hell had been watching me and my family go out to dinner?

I had about eighteen responses for Bev, none of them fit to print in her paper. Chief Perkins didn’t look too pleased, either. He was giving Joyce Catalone a signal to wrap this thing up.

“I can only repeat what Commander D’Auria already said,” I finally answered. “Until we get a look at the material in question—”

“So, you’re not familiar with The Real Deal?” someone else asked.

“Believe me, I will be in about ten minutes,” I said. It got a few chuckles around the room, and then Joyce was there at the podium.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that’s all we have time for this morning. The investigative team has other business to attend to, but we will be updating you throughout the day, if there’s anything to tell.”

It’s a thin charade, but absolutely preferable to letting the press conference spiral out of control. We’d come in trying to play offense, and already we were back on our heels.

Things weren’t looking so good for the department right now. And maybe even worse for me.

CHAPTER

35

FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE PRESS CONFERENCE LET OUT, OUR CORE TEAM WAS up in Chief Perkins’s office on the fifth floor.

“What the hell just happened down there?” Perkins wanted to know.

“We got coldcocked by some random blogger,” D’Auria said. “A million nobodies tapping away out there, and you never know which one’s going to blow up until you’re picking shrapnel out of your ass.”

Perkins didn’t keep a computer in his office, so Huizenga opened her laptop on the big round conference table. After a quick Google, she had The Real Deal up in front of her, and we all gathered around.

“Oh God,” she said. “One of these.”

The blog had a simple masthead—THE REAL DEAL, in a plain black font. Beneath that was a subheading, “Who’s Policing the Police?”

In the margin, there was a numbered list of twenty-three MPD officers, each one clickable to some other page. I recognized several names right away. They were all cops who had been arrested in the last year, for anything from petty theft to domestic abuse, and even one murder. There was also a small map of the city’s police districts, with different colored dots, presumably corresponding to various types of crimes.

The most recent blog entry was dated that morning. Its title was “America’s Most Dangerous City?” Beneath that, “Murder Season in DC.” And then, “Detective Cross: Asleep at the Wheel?”

“Looks like this guy’s got a crush on you,” Huizenga said. My name was clickable, like the others, and she hovered her pointer over it. “You mind?”

“I can hardly wait,” I said.

What opened up then was a whole page dedicated to yours truly. It included my CV with the department, an old ID photo, a list of current and previous cases, and several other small images.

The first of those was a picture that had been taken from below, on Vernon Street, just as I’d gone to pull Elizabeth Reilly’s body out of the window where she’d been hanging. Her face was even fuzzed out, in some kind of twisted nod to journalistic propriety.

The other picture showed Kinkead’s restaurant from the outside. Beneath that was a screen capture of a tweet that had apparently been sent to go with it:

Three dead, and where’s DC’s favorite cop? Out to dinner. More like out to lunch! Priorities, anyone? #incompetentcops.

Finally, there was a long screed at the bottom, all about how I was the wrong one to be coordinating on these cases, and blowing it at every turn, apparently.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Valente asked.

The blog did have a contact page, but when Huizenga pulled it up, it gave us everything but a name. You could e-mail The Real Deal with questions, tips, or other thoughts about the job MPD was doing. There were invitations to follow The Real Deal on Twitter, or like it on Facebook, or “join the conversation” on something called NewsNet. For someone who had just gotten started, this so-called reporter was clearly going all in.

And I was starting to think I knew who he was. Or at least that we’d met.

“We need to get him out in the open,” I said to Perkins. “Let me run a subpoena on the blog’s ISP records, and see who’s attached to the account.”

I was remembering the bearded jag-off from the morning Cory Smithe’s body had been found. This was the guy with no press credentials who had refused to give me his name.

Perkins shoved back in his chair.

“Alex, I’ve got to ask you. Did you pull Elizabeth Reilly’s body before the ME reached that scene?”

“I did,” I told him. I wasn’t going to start tap dancing for the chief right now. It was all in the report, anyway.

“And, were you out to dinner that night, like it says?”

I could feel the heat coming up into my face. “I’m sorry, Chief, but what the hell does it matter?”

“In and of itself? It doesn’t. But if he’s telling the truth, he can say whatever he wants,” Perkins told me. “The last thing I need is a questionable subpoena on a guy like this, especially if he’s got any kind of audience.”

“If he doesn’t now, he will after that press conference,” Huizenga said, closing her laptop. “Stand by for the shit storm, everyone.”

“See what you can find out on your own,” Perkins said. “Pull whoever you need for this, but please, Alex—step lightly. We’re fighting a war of public perception right now. Approval of the department’s at an all-time low.”

Chief Perkins is no hysteric. He usually doesn’t give a hoot about public perception, especially not at the expense of an investigation. But the reality was, we were operating at expanded levels these days, and that hinged on a good relationship with the mayor, who had his own political angles to consider. The fact that he and his people had stayed away from the press conference meant they were already feeling skittish about this.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Perkins said. “It is what it is.”

“Not a problem,” I told him. “I’ll find him anyway.”

That was the answer the chief needed right now, and hopefully the one that was going to keep me as far from under his thumb as possible.

I just hoped it was also true.