Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(10)

The cabinet had more of Edita Kravic’s personal files, one of which revealed that she was from Slovakia and had a green card. Another file showed an account with Bank of America with a balance of fifteen hundred dollars. She owed less than that on her Visa and American Express cards. I found her lease. I’d predicted the rent would be two or three grand a month; it was actually four thousand. But she wasn’t writing checks for the rent, or not any that I could see.

“She paid cash for everything,” I said when we got back to the car.

“Bought high-end stuff with it,” Sampson said. “Classic way to evade taxes.”

“Still doesn’t explain where the money came from,” I said. “There were no files from the Phoenix Club, no record of payments.”

“Maybe the club’s evading taxes too,” Sampson said, starting the squad car. “Where to?”

“Swing by Terry Howard’s place before heading back to the office.”

“Make the chief rest easier?”

“Exactly.”

We drove to a shabby, four-story apartment building off New York Avenue in Northeast.

“This the right one?” I asked.

“Google Maps don’t lie,” Sampson said.

The seedy neighborhood sobered me, made me realize just how far and how hard Tommy McGrath’s onetime partner had fallen since his days with the Major Case Unit. Terry Howard had had a formidable reputation for playing the tough guy. He had never been above intimidating a source to get what he wanted. In fact, he’d been accused of it multiple times, and because of that, and because Tommy had ultimately turned on Howard, we were here.

But the former detective who opened the door of his one-bedroom apartment didn’t look like a tough guy; he looked like a tired man pushing seventy rather than fifty-five. He wore a faded Washington Redskins ball cap, a plain black T-shirt, and jeans that sagged off him. The big frame I remembered was still there, but he’d gone soft and lost weight. His eyes were rheumy. He smelled of vodka.

“Figured I’d see you two before too long,” Howard said.

“Can we come in, Terry? Ask a few questions?”

“Not tonight, I got lots of jack shit to take care of. Sorry.”

I said, “You know we have to talk to you, and you know why. Now, we can continue standing here in your doorway where everyone on the floor will know your business, or we can come in, or we can take you down to the station. Any way you want to do this is fine by us.”

Howard’s bleary eyes got hard and beady. “In here.”

He stood aside. We walked into his sad little world. The apartment reeked of cigarette smoke. The muted television was tuned to a cable station rerunning classic baseball games. Beer cans and three empty bottles of Smirnoff vodka crowded the coffee table. The parakeet in the cage between the easy chair and the couch looked like a miniature plucked chicken. It had no feathers except for a crown of baby blue and orange.

“That’s Sylvia Plath,” Howard said. “She’s got issues.”

He laughed uproariously at that and then started coughing hard. He picked up a tissue, spit into it, and then said, “Aren’t you going to ask me where I was when Tommy got it?”

“We figured we’d dance with you awhile before that,” Sampson said.

Howard sobered, said, “No reason to. I was right here at the time the TV guys say he was killed.”

“Anyone see you?”

“Six of the fine ladies from my neighborhood Hooters were supposed to come over for breakfast and watch last night’s game with me on the DVR,” Howard said. “But, alas, they stood me up. Too bad. Good game. Senators demolished the Red Sox in interleague play. Harper went three for four.”

“So you have no alibi,” I said.

“Nope,” Howard said, going to the kitchen and pouring orange juice and vodka into a dirty highball glass. “But I know you can’t put me on upper Wisconsin because I wasn’t there. Hell, I can barely walk two blocks.”

“You must have wanted to kill Tommy at one time,” Sampson said.

“Man destroys your life, it crosses your mind,” Howard said, shuffling back and settling into a recliner. “But I did not pull the trigger on COD McGrath.”

“You own a Remington 1911?” I asked.

“I have always been a devotee of Smith and Wesson, so no.”

“Mind if we look around?”

“Hell yeah, I mind,” the disgraced detective said. “You got a warrant, Cross, have at her. Otherwise, and with all due respect, we’re done here. Me and Sylvia P. got another game to watch.”





CHAPTER


10


SAMPSON AND I didn’t argue with Howard. The former detective didn’t strike me as being physically or mentally capable of shooting McGrath. He seemed to have given up and was at some bitter peace with that.

So we left and returned to the office, where I found Bree and Muller waiting with Rico Lincoln and Martin O’Donnell, the other detectives Chief Michaels had assigned to the murder of Tom McGrath. Bree and Muller described their meeting with Vivian McGrath and we brought them up to speed on what we’d found at McGrath’s, Edita Kravic’s, and Terry Howard’s.

When we finished, I looked at Detective Lincoln, a tall, skinny marathoner who’d been smiling and acting impatient during our reports.