Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(11)

“You got something you’d like to share, Rico?”

“I do,” Lincoln said. “I mean, we both do.”

“You first,” O’Donnell said.

Lincoln got on his computer and linked it to a large screen on the wall. The screen jumped to a traffic-camera perspective of upper Wisconsin Avenue. Cars in both northbound lanes came at the camera head-on so we could see each vehicle and its passengers best at a distance. With the rain, it was hard to get a good look through the windshields, especially the ones in the right lane.

Lincoln sped the video up, watching the data in the lower corner, and then paused at the time stamp reading 7:20 a.m.

“Tommy McGrath and Edita Kravic are gunned down at seven twenty,” he said, and he hit Play. “Coming at you in the northbound right lane, dark-primer four-door sedan, stripped, almost looks like it’s about to be repainted.”

“That Treasury agent called it,” Sampson said.

“Watch now,” Lincoln said.

The car was passing, rain spattering its windshield, and you couldn’t see a thing. Lincoln froze the screen when the front of the car was almost out of view. He pointed to the left side of the windshield. Up on the dashboard, there was a red Washington Redskins ball cap.

“We saw Howard wearing a red Redskins cap just like that not an hour ago,” Sampson said.

It was true. Same hat.

Lincoln said, “Something else.”

The detective advanced the frames so the windshield of the car and then the tinted driver-side window disappeared. When he stopped the film again, we had a side-angle view through the open rear window.

We could see the silhouette of a person with a wild mop of hair sitting in the middle of the backseat.

“Okay?” I said.

Lincoln advanced the film two frames. Here, the shadows were different. Three-quarters of the face was revealed.

I stared for a second and then said, “Raggedy Ann?”

“That was our reaction,” Detective O’Donnell said. “At first we thought we had the wrong car and the cap on the windshield was just chance.”

Lincoln said, “But the more we thought about it, the more we became convinced that there wasn’t a third person in the backseat. A scarecrow was sitting there. See the shadows here and here? That’s the shoulders of a dark coat. See the lapels?”

“I get it,” I said. “Why’s Raggedy Ann wearing a coat?”

“Exactly,” Lincoln said.

Rubbing my chin, I said, “I agree that’s our shooter’s car. Have pictures of it at the best angles sent to every officer on the force.”

“On it,” Lincoln said, and he started typing.

Bree fought off a yawn. I fought off a yawn too and then nodded at O’Donnell, who said, “I started going through Chief McGrath’s work files. Right away, I found a threatening e-mail.”

He typed on his computer, and the screen changed from the close-up of the Raggedy Ann doll to a July 3 e-mail to McGrath from TL.

You push too hard, we gonna push right back. Only it’s gonna be lethal this time, Chief McG.

“TL?” Sampson said. “That Thao Le?”

“Has to be,” Bree said, sitting forward.

Muller said, “I thought Le got convicted in Prince George’s last year.”

“Got off on appeal four months ago,” O’Donnell said, showing us an investigative file he’d found in McGrath’s desk. “Tommy had evidently been running a solo investigation into Le’s activities since his release.”

“What did he find?” Bree asked.

“That Le was back in the game. Associating with known criminals and members of his old gang. Drugs. Women. Loan-sharking. Extortion.”

“Why wouldn’t Tommy have told someone?” Sampson asked.

“Nailing Le was personal with Tommy,” O’Donnell said. “He even wrote about it. He thought Le was the one who’d planted the evidence in Terry Howard’s case, and even though Terry hated him, Tommy was out to prove it.”

“So maybe Tommy got close enough to spook Le into making good on his threat,” Bree said.

“Where’s Le now?” I asked.

“No clue yet,” O’Donnell said. “But the last two times Le was picked up on weapons charges, he was carrying a forty-five-caliber Remington 1911.”





CHAPTER


11


I WAS UP before dawn, startled awake by a dream where a pistol-packing Raggedy Ann drove a motorcycle down Rock Creek Parkway, which was littered with fifty-dollar bills. The cash almost covered the corpses of Edita Kravic and Tommy McGrath.

I eased from bed, letting Bree sleep. We’d gotten home after midnight, wolfed down leftovers from the fridge, and gone straight to sleep.

After a shower, I went downstairs to find my ninety-one-year-old grandmother making breakfast.

“You’re up kind of early, Nana Mama,” I said, kissing her on the cheek.

“Big day ahead for you,” she said. “I wanted to make sure it starts right.”

“We appreciate it,” I said. I poured myself some coffee and got the papers from the front porch.

The murder of Tommy McGrath and Edita Kravic led the front page of both the Washington Post and the Washington Times. Chief Michaels was quoted as saying DC Metro had lost one of its best men and that the department would be relentless in its pursuit of the killers. He announced the formation of an elite task force to investigate the murders, and he named me as team leader.