“Come inside, and please don’t be embarrassed or uncomfortable. I’m not a detective now and not here to judge you in any way. You need to talk. I’m available to listen. And, of course, nothing said ever leaves the room.”
The detective hesitated and then came inside. I followed her into my office, remembering the confident, smart, and attractive woman who’d helped save my family after they were taken by a madman named Marcus Sunday.
Aaliyah was from a police family. Her father, Bernie, had been a top detective in Baltimore, and she’d lived and breathed the job when we’d worked together. I knew some of the trauma she’d been through lately, and as I shut the office door, I prayed that I was up to the task of counseling her.
I got coffee for her and gestured to a chair. She sat down, her head tilted low and her upper torso and shoulders rolled forward, as if in surrender.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“You’ve seen the news? How should I feel?”
“Forget the news,” I said. “Lift your chin, straighten your shoulders, and give me your side of it.”
Conflicting emotions flickered on the detective’s face as she made a slight alteration in her slouch before telling me the story.
She and her partner, Chris Cox, had gone to a high-rent apartment complex off Judiciary Square to serve a warrant on and arrest one Drago Kovac. Kovac had immigrated to the U.S. from Serbia when he was nine, become an American citizen at fifteen, and become a car thief shortly thereafter. He wasn’t very good at his chosen field at first. Kovac was caught and convicted of grand theft auto twice before his eighteenth birthday. After that, he wised up and got sophisticated. He formed an auto-theft ring that worked the Miami-to-Boston corridor, boosting in-demand cars, chopping them up for parts, and then selling the parts over the Internet.
Kovac was now twenty-seven and operating his illegal enterprise from his luxury flat on Third Street in DC. Aaliyah, looking for spare parts for her Ford Explorer, had happened on one of his websites, which offered “gently used” parts for a third of what other sites and stores were asking. When she learned the company and Kovac were based in DC, one thing led to another, and then to a year of additional investigative work.
“We had him,” Aaliyah said. “I mean, this was a major criminal operation. Millions of dollars, and we had him dead to rights.”
“So you go to Kovac’s apartment building to serve the warrant,” I said, pushing her toward the awful truth.
“Yes.” Aaliyah sighed. “We went in at the exact same time arrests in this case were supposed to go down all over the East Coast. Synchronized, you know?”
But unbeknownst to Aaliyah and her partner, several warrants had been served early. When police in New Jersey went through the front door of a Kovac chop shop, one of his men got off a text warning of the raid.
“Seconds before we reached the tenth floor of his apartment building, Kovac and his men left his flat,” Aaliyah said. “Cox saw them at the far end of the hallway and ordered them to the ground. They ran, and when we pursued, they shot.”
“They definitely shot first?”
“No question,” Aaliyah said, a smolder of the old fire in her eyes. “Surveillance cameras back us up.”
“Okay. Kovac and his men shoot first. Then what?”
That glowing ember died in Aaliyah’s eyes. Her neck muscles went taut as piano wires before she said, “Then it all became a nightmare.”
Provoked into a gun battle, Aaliyah and her partner followed protocol and returned fire. Her first shot hit the meat of Kovac’s thigh. Her second and third shots missed the car thief, who, howling in pain, lunged into the stairwell.
“I was in pursuit when the wailing started behind the door at the end of the hall,” Aaliyah said, and she broke down sobbing.
I knew the rest. She and Cox caught and arrested Kovac and two accomplices, but at an unfathomable cost. The bullets that went wide of the car thief had gone through the door of the apartment belonging to the Phelps family—Oliver, a young, successful attorney; Patricia, a young, successful physician; and their twins, four-year-old Meagan and Alice.
Alice had been playing in the front hallway. The nanny had rushed to get her at the first shot.
“What are the odds, Dr. Cross?” Aaliyah asked, still weeping bitterly. “What are the odds of wounding the nanny and killing the girl?”
CHAPTER
18
AFTER AALIYAH POURED out her anguish, her grief, her guilt and despair, she pulled her feet up under her on the chair, wrapped her arms around her knees, and stared off into the distance.
“In the end, I’ll always be the cop who killed a child,” she said hollowly. “No matter who I was before or who I become after, that’s who I will be.”
“To who? You?”
“I pulled the trigger, Alex. That’s what they’ll write after I die.”
“I empathize with the pain and regret you must be feeling, but you don’t know what the future holds for you. None of us do.”
She blinked slowly, said, “There is a way to know your future for certain.”
That got my attention and concern. “Have you thought about that, Tess?”
Aaliyah took a big breath and then shook her head. “No. Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Not at all. I’m just trying to find a way to process this, you know?”
There was little conviction in the detective’s voice, and she appeared preoccupied.
“Are you sleeping?” I asked.
“Some days it’s all I do.”
“Self-medicating? Alcohol? Drugs?”
“Honestly, I wish they’d work, but they don’t, so I don’t.”
“When does the civil suit go to trial?”
Aaliyah continued to avoid eye contact. “I don’t know what they expect to get from me. This has already cost me everything.”
I continued to watch her, thinking about the flat affect in her voice and expression, the defeated way the detective was holding herself, and some of the statements she’d made, especially talking about herself in the past tense.
“Tess, I think I’d feel more comfortable if, for your own safety, we take you somewhere to get a proper, in-depth evaluation of your current condition.”
Aaliyah raised her head for the first time in many minutes, gazed dully at me, and said, “I’m nowhere near the padded room.”
“Given what you’ve been through, suicidal ideations are cause for serious concern, Tess. This could be a medical issue that—”
“No one’s putting me in a psych ward,” Aaliyah said, getting to her feet angrily. “Least of all me.”
“Tess—”
“Sorry,” she said, heading for the door. “I thought I could trust you and I was wrong. Good-bye, Dr. Cross.”
After a long look at the situation I came to a decision, grabbed my jacket, went outside, and hailed a cab.
CHAPTER
19
WE PULLED UP in front of the DC Police Union building twenty minutes later. I paid the cabbie, went inside, and asked to see William Roth.
Did I have a meeting set up with Mr. Roth? the receptionist asked. No. Had I tried to call him? I’d thought it was a dire enough situation to come down to talk with Mr. Roth in person. It wasn’t until I told him it might be a matter of life and death that he called upstairs.
Mr. Roth was in an important meeting, the receptionist told me after hanging up the phone.
“You didn’t explain the gravity of the situation. Call back.”
The receptionist rolled his eyes, snatched up the phone again, and dialed. “He says break into the meeting. It’s that important,” he told someone.
The receptionist waited, waited, and then hung up and said, “Go on up, third floor, second door on the right. Roth’s not happy.”
“I don’t care,” I said, and I took the stairs up.
I knocked on the door and then entered an anteroom with a very irritated secretary at
her desk. “Mr. Roth has been working for this meeting for six months,” she said.
“Would it matter if someone you cared about was in danger?”
“Well,” she said, flustered. “I suppose so.”
“Where’s Roth?”
“Roth’s right here,” said a flushed, bald man who appeared in the open doorway behind the secretary. “This better be good. I’ve got people at the table I never expected to—”
“It’s Tess Aaliyah,” I said, walking past the secretary into Roth’s office. “You’re her rep, correct?”
“Aaliyah?” Roth said with mild disdain. “Dear God, what’s she done now?”
“You sent her to me this morning for an evaluation. I believe she’s depressed and possibly suicidal.”
“No,” Roth said, taking a seat at his desk. “I saw her last week. She was bummed but knew it wasn’t her fault that the little girl was playing in the front hall before the shooting started.”
“I don’t think Aaliyah cares. About anything. Which can be chemical, and which is why I need your help getting her into a psych ward for three days so she can be evaluated by medical professionals.”
“You want me to commit Aaliyah?” Roth said incredulously. “No, absolutely not. Even if I had that authority, and I don’t, absolutely not.”
“Aren’t you supposed to look after her, represent her?”
“In the shooting, yes, but this? No.”
“The depression and suicidal thoughts followed from the shooting,” I said firmly. “She needs help. More than I can give her.”
“You tell her that?”
“I did.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was upset but fine and nowhere near the padded room.”
“There you go, then,” Roth said, getting up. “I have a meeting to run.”
I blocked the door and said, “You don’t care about Aaliyah’s well-being?”
“I care,” Roth said. “But if you want her in a psych ward, convince her doctor or someone in her family to recommend it. Or get the department to make it a stipulation of her suspension revocation. Any way you try to do it, though?”
“Yes?”
“Expect her to fight.”
CHAPTER
20
AFTER SEVERAL UNSUCCESSFUL attempts to reach her, I spoke with Esther Dodd, an attorney for the police department. It was obvious by her curtness that Ms. Dodd was none too happy to take my call, probably due to the murder charges pending against me. She listened impatiently and dismissed out of hand my request to have Aaliyah undergo psychiatric evaluation as soon as possible as a stipulation of her rejoining the force.
“She’s on suspension with a lawsuit pending,” the attorney said. “That puts Detective Aaliyah in limbo and gives us very few options, especially since your evaluation was done on behalf of the police union. With all due respect, it holds no weight from a legal perspective. Good-bye, Dr. Cross.”
I tried to find Aaliyah’s doctor next and lucked out when a friend in the human resources department checked some old records and gave me a name, Dr. Timothy Cantrell. I looked Cantrell up and found he was not only an internist but affiliated with GW Medical Center and its famous tropical medicine division. I called Cantrell’s office but found that the physician, a member of Doctors Without Borders, was currently out of the country, working in Brazil to stem a yellow fever outbreak.
I was frustrated but refused to give up without making every effort.
At 2:12 p.m., after making the long drive, I turned down Francis Street in the small town of Arbutus, a suburb of Baltimore, and soon found a small blue-and-white bungalow with a neatly tended yard.
A raw northeast wind had picked up and caused me to shiver as I ran up the walk and knocked at the door. A tall and very put-together redheaded woman in her late fifties answered the door.
I introduced myself, and her features softened.
“I’ve seen you on the news,” she said. “Tess and Bernie say you’re innocent, wrongfully charged.”
Her name was Christine Prince. She was Aaliyah’s father’s girlfriend and was happy to tell me that Bernie had gone off surf-fishing, his passion in retirement. I asked when he’d return, and she said that he’d gone to one of his favorite spots out on Assateague Island, so he probably wouldn’t be back until around midnight.
After a few moments’ hesitation, I asked if she knew where on Assateague he went to fish.
“You’re going all the way out there?” she said after showing me on a map.
“I need his advice, and I think he’d want to give it to me sooner rather than later.”
“Tess?” she said softly.
“You’re a mind reader, Christine,” I said. “Thank you for the help.”
Two hours later, I pulled into Assateague Island State Park. The ranger station was closed, and I found Bernie Aaliyah’s Jeep Wagoneer parked right where his girlfriend said it would be.
When I got out, the wind clipped me, and the sky spat rain. I dug in the trunk of my car and came up with an old rain jacket and a pair of calf-high rubber boots I kept around for crime scene work. I put them on, and with my hood up to block the wind, I walked up the trail, through the dunes, and onto the beach.
The Atlantic was gray and roiling. But to my left, there were surfers out on the swells, clad head to toe in black neoprene, and to my right, there were six or seven anglers. I stood there, looking at the anglers one at a time, until I saw an older man limp fast toward the crashing surf and then use his powerful shoulders to whip out a heavy fishing rod with a big pink lure.
I thought the lure’s arc would die quickly in the wind, but it had just the right angle, and it punched through, landing in the water far offshore. As I started toward him, he pumped the rod tip up and down several times, paused, then did it again. When I passed his chair, his cooler, his tackle box, and two Coleman lanterns yet to be lit, he twitched it a third time.
“Bernie Aaliyah?” I said.
The old man startled and looked over his shoulder at me, huddled in my rain jacket and hood. “I know you?” he said.
I pushed back the hood. “Alex Cross, sir.”
Tess’s father’s face broke into a toothy smile. “So you are. Been a long time, Dr. Cross. I’ve been following your career from way back.”
“I followed yours when I was at Johns Hopkins, sir,” I said.
“Hold on, let’s do this proper,” Bernie said, sticking the butt end of his fishing rod into a piece of white PVC pipe buried in the sand. “There, now.”
He turned awkwardly, due to a gunshot wound to his pelvis that had ended his remarkable career in Baltimore Homicide, but he shook my hand with the vigor of a man half his age.
“To what do I owe the honor of you driving all the way to hell and gone to see me?” Bernie asked.
“It’s about Tess,” I said. “It’s serious.”
CHAPTER
21
AFTER I DESCRIBED my concerns and the evidence to support them, Bernie Aaliyah was quiet for several moments, standing there, looking off toward the waves crashing in the falling light.
“I saw my daughter three days ago,” he said at last. “Tess was still grief-stricken, still remorseful, but I didn’t see suicidal, Dr. Cross. And I certainly will not go to court over her wishes.”
“I don’t discount your observations, Mr. Aaliyah,” I said. “And maybe you don’t want to legally compel Tess to undergo a full psych evaluation. But you could convince her to commit herself. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I’d rather stand here with my tail between my legs than stand next to you at a grave.”
Before Aaliyah’s father could reply to that, there was a sharp popping noise. We both turned to see his surfcasting rod bending hard, the line straight and quivering.
“That’s a good one!” he cried, scrambling over to the fishing rod and grabbing it before it could come free of the PVC pipe.
Bernie held the rod tight about two feet from the bo
ttom, the butt still in the pipe. He leaned back, testing the weight of the fish and its strength.
“Oh, Jaysus,” Bernie said. “He’s gonna go forty minimum, maybe fifty!”
The reel started to whine. Aaliyah’s father reached down and adjusted the drag to let the unseen fish run. He let it tear out a hundred yards and saw the line slacken before he snatched up the pole from the PVC pipe and reset the drag.
“Bernie,” I began.
He barked, “I’ve been waiting on this quality of fish for two years running, Cross. So you can either leave or wait until I’m done here.”
I held up my hands. “Don’t let me get in your way.”
So I stood back and watched the retired homicide detective engage in an epic battle on the beach. Every time Bernie was able to pull and crank the fish closer to shore, it would make another run that left him gasping.
“He could go sixty,” Aaliyah’s father said with a grunt twenty minutes into the struggle. “Big, big striper.”
Thirty-five minutes into the fight, he said, “Maybe seventy pounds. My God, what a pig of a fish!”
Fifty-two minutes into the battle, Bernie had the striper in the surf thirty yards right in front of him. We saw the leader and a flash of a big fin before the pig of a fish rolled over and started to shake its head against the pressure of the line and the hook.
Then the fish ran, leaped up out of the water, head still shaking, and crashed sideways into the surf. I was shocked at the size of it. So was Bernie.
“Jaysus H,” he said in awe. “He has to be pushing the world rec—”
The striper thrashed once more. There was a twanging noise as the line snapped in two. Bernie staggered and fell back into the sand.
I felt bad and expected him to be mad, curse his luck, or at least cry out in dismay. But Aaliyah’s father just sat there in the sand, holding his fishing rod, staring at the surf and what could have been.
After several minutes, he said, “You get a chance at some things only once in this life, and sometimes they slip right through your hands. I’ll support you, Dr. Cross. One way or the other, I’ll see to it that Tess gets the help you say she needs.”