Double Cross

“Look who it is. Alex Cross.”

“Hey there, Tony. I thought they retired cops as old as you. Bree Stone around anywhere?”

Tony reached for his radio but then changed his mind. “Straight down the hall,” he said, and pointed. Then he handed me a pair of latex gloves. “You’ll need these.”

Chapter 13

I FELT A LITTLE SHIVER of anticipation, then kind of an unpleasant chill. Was it that easy to step back into the line of fire, or whatever this was? At the front door to apartment 12F, a small Asian man I recognized as an MPD techie was dusting for prints. That told me it would be relatively calm inside. Chemical elements aren’t introduced until the evidence-collection teams are finished.

I found Bree standing all by herself in the middle of the living room, looking pensive and far away.

A line of dark streaks, probably the victim’s blood, ran across the ivory carpet. A sliding glass door was open to the terrace, and a light breeze rustled the curtains.

Otherwise, the living room looked pretty much undisturbed. There were built-in bookshelves on every wall, and they were filled with hardbacks, mostly fiction, several of them by the victim herself, including foreign editions. Why a crime writer? I wondered. There had to be a reason, at least in the killer’s mind. Was that train of thought correct? Maybe, maybe not, but I was definitely analyzing the scene.

“How’s it going?” I finally spoke.

Bree’s eyebrows went up in a How did you get in here? kind of way, but she skipped the chitchat entirely. I had never seen her on the Job before, and she was a completely different person.

“Looks like he came in through the front door. No sign of forced entry anywhere. Maybe he posed as a serviceman of some kind. Unless she knew him. Her clothes, and her purse, are here.”

“Anything missing?” I asked the natural question.

Bree shook her head. “Nothing real obvious. Doesn’t look like she was robbed, Alex. She was wearing a diamond bracelet and earrings when she went over the railing. So maybe you can take it with you.”

I pointed at the streaks on the carpet. “What do you know about these?”

“The ME says the victim’s knees were bloody before the fall-and get this: she was wearing a dog leash when he tossed her off the balcony.”

“Somebody on the radio said it was a rope. I was thinking noose, but that didn’t totally make sense to me either. A dog leash? That’s interesting. Bizarre, but interesting.”

Bree pointed toward an archway and a formal dining room beyond, with lots of glass cabinets full of dinnerware. “Bloodstains start back there and then end here in the middle of the room. She was crawling, and she was under duress.”

“Like a dog. So he needed to humiliate her, and in public. What could she possibly have done to him? How could she deserve this?”

“Yeah, sure feels like it was personal. Maybe a boyfriend, or somebody who fantasized about her?” She breathed in and out slowly. “You know, this probably would have been your case if you were still on the force. High profile, high crazy factor.”

I didn’t tell her that the same thought had occurred to me about a half dozen times already. The weird cases usually funneled my way. So was Bree the new me? Suddenly I wondered if our meeting at the party had been as “accidental” as it had seemed at the time.

“Anyone else live here?” I asked.

“Her husband died two years ago. There’s a housekeeper, but she was off this afternoon.”

I rocked back on my heels. “Maybe the killer knew that.”

“I’ll bet he did.”

It was interesting, the way Bree and I fell into it. The really strange part was that it didn’t feel strange at all. I kept noticing different little things. A needlepoint pillow that said Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all. A Hallmark greeting card propped up on the mantel. I looked at it, saw it was unsigned. Was that anything? Probably not. But maybe. You never know.

Bree and I walked out on the terrace together.

“So, he’s got every opportunity to kill her in private, but he marches her out here, throws her off the balcony instead,” Bree said, talking more to herself than to anyone else. “That is so messed up. I don’t know where to go with it.”

I looked out at the view-a couple of other luxury apartment buildings across the street; the National Zoo down a bit to the left; more trees than you would see in most big cities. Very pretty, actually-the twinkling lights at night, the patches of dark green dramatically lit.

Straight below us was the U-shaped driveway, a working fountain, and a wide sidewalk out front. Plus hundreds of spectators.

Then something hit me. Or, rather, something I suspected suddenly felt true enough to say out loud.

“He didn’t know her personally, Bree. I don’t think so. That’s not what this is about.”

Bree turned and looked at me. “Keep going.”

“He didn’t kill her personally, if that makes any sense. What I mean is that this was a public execution right from the start. It was all about having an audience. He wanted as many people as possible to watch him kill her. This was a performance. The killer came here to put on a show. At some point, he may have even stood down there and picked this terrace out for the murder.”

Chapter 14

AND THEN THERE WERE three of us.

My friend Sampson had walked into the living room, all six foot nine, 240 pounds of him. I knew Sampson was probably surprised to see me, but he played it deadpan, the usual for the Big Man.

“You looking to rent?” he asked. “Place is available, from what I hear. Probably go cheap after today.”

“Just passing through. Neighborhood’s a little too rich for my pocketbook.”

“Passing through doesn’t pay the same as consulting, sugar. You need a better business plan.”

“So what have you got, John?” Bree asked. She called him John; I’d been calling him Sampson since we were kids. Both ways worked fine, though.

“Nobody seemed to notice our boy come in or out of the building. As we speak, they’re running all of today’s surveillance tapes. Such as it goes, this place is fairly tight, securitywise. Unless he can walk through walls, I’ll bet he’s going to show up somewhere on one of the tapes.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think this one minds having his picture taken,” I said.

Just then, a uniformed cop called from across the room. “Excuse me, Detective?”

All three of us turned.

“Uh, ma’am? Detective Stone? There’s a question for you. From CSI in the back room.”

The three of us followed the uniform down a narrow hallway into a den. It was lined with more books, and French litho-graphs in expensive-looking frames, plus several vacation photos. The apartment seemed to have quality furnishings everywhere-everything highly polished, oiled, or fluffed. A cardboard box full of liquor delivered from Cleveland Park was sitting by the door. Was the killer the delivery guy? Was that how he got in here?

A tapestry love seat was arranged in the corner, along with a television on a console. The cabinet doors were open to show a combination DVD player and VCR underneath.

I noticed another Hallmark greeting card on a shelf. I looked, and this card was also unsigned.