He grinned at me and I saw that he’d lost another front tooth. I gestured at my own. “When did that happen?”
“Last night,” he said. “Nana Mama said it happened too late for the tooth fairy to come.”
“I heard she had strict rules,” I replied. “The tooth fairy, I mean.”
My youngest son nodded as if that were the most logical thing in the world and then went down the stairs toward the racket my grandmother was making as she whipped up breakfast.
Fifteen minutes later, after a quick shower, a shave, and a change of clothes, I turned the bathroom over to Bree and left our room. I stood on the landing at the top of the staircase, looking into Ali’s room and watching him pull on a sweatshirt. All I could think about was Joss Branson and Evan Lancaster and whether some insane couple was going to drown them today and strangle a prostitute for no reason that I could figure.
“C’mon, little man, I’ve gotta move,” I said.
“I’m moving!” Ali cried as he pushed his feet into his sneakers.
I shifted my attention to the staircase at the end of the hall that climbs to my attic office and frowned. Sawdust? I almost went over to see, but then Ali bounded out of his room, saying, “I’m ready!”
He threw his arms around my legs, smiled up at me, revealing his missing front teeth again, and said, “We gotta move!”
“That’s right,” I said, and hugged him to me.
We went out the front door with cries of “See you after school!” to Nana Mama. The builders were just arriving for the day, and I had a brief conversation with Billy DuPris, our contractor, who informed me that the plywood walls were going up around the addition today and the roof tomorrow.
“Dad, I’m going to be late,” Ali said.
“Gotta move,” I told DuPris, and we headed south toward Sojourner Truth, which is about seven blocks from my house.
As we walked, Ali held my hand, and my thoughts drifted to Ava and how she’d begged us to forget her. I noticed a panel van from a vacuum repair company parked on the opposite side of the street and thought someone in the neighborhood must have gotten into the business, because I’d seen it parked there before, sometime in the past—
“Dad?” Ali said.
“Huh?” I replied, looking down at him and realizing we’d gotten to the end of the block and had to cross the street. “Oh, sorry.”
“Dad, you think a lot,” he said as we walked on.
I smiled and said, “Sometimes too much.”
We walked in silence for the next five blocks. When we were almost to the school, Ali said, “I think a lot sometimes.”
I looked down at him in wonder. You never knew what my son was going to say next. “Sometimes?”
“Yeah.”
“You thinking now?”
“A lot.”
“What are you thinking about?”
He fell silent.
“Zombies?” I guessed.
His head bobbed and he looked up at me, said, “And how they smell.”
“Right. Not like something dead.”
“Well, I don’t know about all zombies. Just the one that was in the house.”
“How could I forget?”
My son stopped outside the fence that surrounds the school playground and said, “You don’t believe me, but I figured out what he smelled like, I mean who he smelled like.”
“And who was that?”
“That guy who came to my school and talked to us about his company,” Ali said, and curled up his nose. “He smelled weird, just like the zombie.”
That stopped me. “What was this man’s name?”
“I don’t remember,” Ali replied. “Just that he smelled weird. I could ask Mrs. Hutchins, though, and have her tell you.”
“You do that,” I said, and mussed up his hair. “Nana will be here when school gets out.”
Chapter
66
I watched my little boy until he’d joined a group of his buddies gathered at the tetherball pole and then hurried home, trying to figure out what I was going to do first. The vacuum cleaner van was gone and a dark-blue Chevy Tahoe with tinted windows and District plates had taken the parking spot.
The sound of nail guns greeted me as I climbed the stairs up to the house, only to find Nana Mama coming out the front door in a tizzy.
“If they’re going to do that all day, I’m leaving,” she announced.
“Smart idea.”
“Father Hannon asked for my help, anyway,” she replied. “Getting ready for Good Friday and Easter services.”
“Need a lift?”
“Absolutely not,” she said, and went on down the stairs.
In the dining room, Bree was eating cereal and looking morose.
“Thinking about those babies?” I asked, pouring myself coffee.
“And Cam Nguyen,” she replied, her face pinched. “I can’t stand feeling helpless like this, knowing that—”
My cell phone rang.
“Got your fax on?” Sampson asked by way of greeting.
“Think so. I can check.”
Sampson said we had artists’ sketches on the way: the profile view from Irina Popovitch, who’d witnessed the brothel slayings, and the head-on perspective that Harry Barnes had gotten of the killer leaving the Superior Spa.
“Quintus’s sending over the artists’ sketches any minute.”
“You seen them?”
“Not yet. When are you going in?”
“Straightaway,” I said, and hung up.
Already heading for the stairs and the fax machine in my attic office, I called to Bree, telling her about the sketches about to come in.
“Be right up,” she called after me.
I’d no sooner climbed to the attic and stepped into my office than I noticed something off. I couldn’t place it at first but then saw that a penholder Damon had made for me when he was seven had been moved from beside the phone on my desk to the far end of the credenza. In the ten years I’d had it, I’d never moved it more than an inch.
I looked down, saw a few tiny specks of sawdust, and then startled when my cell phone buzzed, alerting me to a text. It was from Ali’s teacher, Mrs. Hutchins. My head snapped back when I read it.
Our speaker last Thursday was Mr. Thierry Mulch.
Thierry Mulch? The same guy who’d sent me that letter with the—
The fax machine rang, connected, and started to print. I just stood there staring at the message and then stared at the penholder.
Over the sound of Bree coming up the stairs, I remembered Ali saying, “He smelled weird. Just like the zombie.”
Had someone, Thierry Mulch, been in my house the night before last? Had Mulch moved my penholder?
Bree knocked, entered, said, “Sketches?”
Preoccupied, I gestured toward the fax, unable to shake the idea that the crazy man who’d pointed out the connection to the earlier massage parlor killings had been to my son’s school, been close enough that Ali had smelled him, and then might have broken into my—
“This guy looks familiar,” Bree said, excited.
“What?” I said, looking over to see her studying two drawings laid out on my desk. “Where?”
“I can’t place him yet,” she said, then tapped on the drawings. “But I know I’ve seen him somewhere in the last week or so.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I swear.”
I came around the desk beside her, wondering if I was going to be looking at the face of Thierry Mulch. I saw the two perspectives of the killer, one in a hoodie looking right at me, and the other wearing a suit and in profile.
Both drawings showed a baby-faced character in his late twenties.
Immediately I had the sense that I’d seen him before as well, but I couldn’t place him at first. But then, in the blink of an eye, I saw him dressed differently and was assaulted by the images of several encounters I’d had with him recently, and felt no doubt.
“Tha
t creepy cold-blooded sonofabitch,” I whispered. “He was right there in front of us the entire time.”
Part Four
Reckless Hearts
Chapter
67
In utter disbelief, Marcus Sunday sat in the front seat of the blue Tahoe down the street from Cross’s house, gaping at the live feed from the attic office streaming on Acadia’s computer.
On-screen, Cross’s wife said, “Who?”
“I’ll explain on the way downtown,” Cross said, grabbing up the drawings and exiting his office with Bree right behind.
“What’s going on, Marcus?” Acadia said, confused. “Who was right there in front of them?”
“The massage parlor killer,” Sunday said, feeling impressed and annoyed. Cross was indeed a worthy adversary, one to be respected, as all enemies must be if you intended to defeat them.
Cross had obviously taken the information from the Thierry Mulch letter and run with it a lot farther than he would have ever guessed. Dr. Alex had a suspect now. No doubt. For the first and only time since he’d decided to destroy Alex Cross, to make an example of the man, to demonstrate clearly the randomness and absurdity of life, the writer felt a pang of uncertainty.
If the detective could break open a case like this one—
“Here they come,” Acadia said.
Cross and his wife ran off the porch, past the Dumpster, down the steps to the sidewalk, and away toward their car. Fighting off the urge to smash something, Sunday started the Tahoe, waited a second, and then threw his vehicle into gear.
It had all been going so well up until the past couple of minutes, he fumed. The audio bugs he’d put in the dining room and the front room two nights ago had been performing flawlessly, and they’d heard things since that with a little creativity would prove invaluable in the days to come.
Sunday had learned, for example, that Bree Stone was obsessed with and hunting for a teenage runaway named Ava, and that she and Cross had evidently talked to the girl the night before. Cross’s son Ali, it turned out, was zombie mad, and the boy claimed to have smelled Sunday during his visit.
Was that possible? Did he have that distinctive an odor? Acadia said no, but he’d already changed deodorant and soap brands just in case.
They’d also learned that Cross’s daughter had made the track team and had a chip on her shoulder concerning the amount of family time Dr. Alex regularly missed. And dear Nana Mama would be spending as much time at St. Anthony’s as she was at home in the very near future, getting ready for the Easter celebration.
All this had been fantastic to learn. These facts had had his imagination running wild until Cross had gone up to his office and spotted the penholder out of place. That moment, caught on camera just before the fax machine rang, had been so perfect that Sunday had pumped his fist in victory and Acadia had clapped.
But then those police sketches had come in, and Cross had crowed about the killer being right in front of them the entire time, and had said nothing else!
“You probably should have put a bug in his car, sugar,” Acadia offered.
“Gee, you think?” Sunday said.
“I do,” Acadia said. “Where are we going?”
“Wherever they go, baby girl,” Sunday said. “I want to see this killer now as much as they do.”
“Kindred spirits?”
“Something like that.”
Chapter
68
Two hours later, feeling handcuffed and shackled, Bree and I sat in an unmarked car down Tuckerman Street from an apartment building in the Brightwood neighborhood of Washington, not far from where Joss Branson had been taken from the day care center.
We had Captain& Quintus on speakerphone and were engaged in a shouting match.
“What do you mean, you’re getting blowback?” I demanded.
“There are lives at stake here!” Bree insisted. “Babies’ lives!”
“You don’t think I know that?” Quintus shot back. “But all you’ve really got at this point are those drawings and the fact that Carney seemed to show up around the crime scenes.”
“Every crime scene! I saw him outside the spa, and the Lancasters’ house, and I swear I caught a glimpse of him in a Georgetown sweatshirt in the crowd outside the brothel. And Bree says she thinks Carney was the officer she ordered to help Mrs. Branson after she almost collapsed right after Joss was taken!”
“You’re sure he wasn’t dispatched to those scenes?” Quintus said.
“No, he was not, Captain,” I retorted. “The first night he told me and Sampson that he’d heard about the Superior Spa on his scanner while driving home. At the Lancasters’ he said he’d been dispatched for crowd control, but we just found out he was off-duty at the time.”
“It’s still not enough to perfect a search warrant. Find me more.”
“Find us another judge!” I shouted, and hung up, wanting to punch something. We knew Carney was in his apartment. I’d used a burn phone to call his landline and he’d picked up about fifteen minutes ago. Were the babies in there? Was Cam Nguyen?
“How about we send someone up, listen for crying?” Bree suggested.
“Good idea, but we can’t do it,” I replied. “Carney knows us.”
My wife threw up her hands in desperation. “So what do we do?”
“Unless Quintus finds a cooperative judge, we wait until Carney leaves for work, and then we break in.”
“Times like these make me fall in love with you all over again, Dr. Cross.”
I grinned and blew her a kiss. My phone rang. Sampson.
“John?”
“Okay, Alex,” the big man said, breathing hard. “I’ve got a few things. Carney was a marine, did a tour in Afghanistan. Suffered a minor head injury due to an IED. Recovered enough to pass the physicals for Force Recon, Special Forces, but was turned down for unnamed reasons. He took an honorable discharge, became a security guard in Albuquerque around the time of the first shooting, kidnapping, and drowning. And he was on rookie probation with Tampa PD two years ago when the second round of killings and kidnappings went down. He took the job up here four months ago, better pay, same seniority.”
“That’s enough,” I said. “Call Quintus, give him that.”
Fifteen minutes later, the captain called. “You got your warrant, Alex. Sampson’s on his way to pick it up. He’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops.”
The minutes ticked by, and I had to force myself not to imagine what might be happening up in that apartment while we waited. The emotional part of me said, Just go up there, knock down the door, and let the warrant come in behind you. Your word against Carney’s on when it was served. But a more rational voice in my head kept reminding me that we were so close to being legal that it wasn’t worth risking the fruit of the poisonous—
“There he is!” Bree cried. “Carney’s on the move!”
I looked up to see the young patrolman turn off the walkway to his apartment building and head away from us up the street dressed in civilian clothes: jeans, work boots, a plaid shirt, and a canvas jacket.
“He’s carrying something under his arm,” I said, grabbing a pair of binoculars and looking at him as he stopped beside a blue Chevy Impala and worked the key into the lock.
He opened the rear door, tossed in what he’d been carrying, then closed the door and circled the car.
“What was he carrying?” my wife asked.
“Empty, folded canvas duffel bags,” I said, lowering my binoculars as Carney climbed into the driver’s seat. “A bunch of them.”
Bree understood and looked ill. “We can’t wait for Sampson and the warrant, Alex. He’s going somewhere to drown those babies and Cam Nguyen before he goes to work.”
I agreed, started our car, and pulled out, saying, “Call John. Tell him to enter and search the apartment once he gets backup. And warn the captain.”
Chapter
69
Sunday saw Cross pull out of his parking space on Tuc
kerman Street and immediately followed half a block back.
“He’s trailing that blue Impala,” Acadia said.
“I’ve got them both,” the writer replied.
“Go right,” she said.
“I see it.”
The writer took the right, kept well back in traffic, six or seven cars behind Cross, who was six or seven cars in back of the blue Impala. Was that the murderer driving? The thought gave Sunday chills.
Acadia evidently felt much the same way, because she asked, “Do you think he’s like us?”
The writer glanced over, thinking once again how spooky it was that they thought so similarly, as if they were mirror images of the same person.
“He likes killing, certainly,” Sunday replied. “But I would imagine that it is compulsion and not enjoyment driving his darker activities.”
Acadia nodded. “No choice in the matter. Not like us at all.”
“A different subspecies,” he offered.
“Fascinating,” she replied.
They trailed the blue Impala and Cross’s unmarked car north out of the District onto Maryland Route 97, which winds through the subdivisions of Wheaton, Glenmont, and Aspen Hill. It wasn’t until Olney that farmland appeared.
There was less traffic on the road here and Sunday had to lag so far back that he lost sight of the blue Impala, and then of Cross’s car after they’d both taken a left off the rural highway at Sunshine, heading west on Damascus Road.
He could see well down the road. They were gone. “Where’d they—”
“They must have gone to that reservoir back there,” Acadia said. Sunday stomped on the parking brake and spun the wheel going forty. They went into a screeching U-turn that threw them into the opposite lane. He released the brake and hit the gas, looking for the road to—
“There it is!” Acadia cried. “Triadelphia Reservoir Road.”