Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(26)

“He could have walked somewhere,” Bree said. “Taken the Metro.”

“Not the way he was coughing and wheezing the last time I saw him,” I said.

“Where’s his apartment?”

“The third floor, back.”

We walked around into the alley and located Howard’s apartment and the fire escape. I picked Bree up; she grabbed the ladder and pulled it down. We climbed up the three flights and stopped outside the kitchen window.

The sink overflowed with dishes. Liquor and beer bottles crowded the small table and just about every other surface. A second window was raised slightly and looked into a small dining area and part of the living room where Sampson and I had spoken with Howard. We could see the television was on, tuned to ESPN.

“Call his number again,” I said.

Bree did, and almost immediately I heard the jangle of an old-fashioned rotary phone coming from the apartment. The ringing stopped.

“Voice mail,” Bree said.

“That’s probable cause to do a well-being check, don’t you think, Chief?”

She hesitated, and then said, “No fruit of the poisonous tree.”

Nodding, I pushed up the sash and climbed in, calling, “Terry Howard? It’s Alex Cross. We’re just checking on your well-being.”

No voice replied, but almost immediately I heard a bird squawking.

“That’s Sylvia Plath,” I said, helping Bree and Muller inside. “His neurotic parakeet.”

“Howard always had a twisted sense of humor,” Muller said.

We moved deeper into the apartment, past a dining table buried in stacks of old newspapers to the parakeet that was pacing back and forth on its perch, screeching, bobbing its head, and pecking viciously at its featherless skin, clearly agitated.

We stepped into the living area and saw why.

Terry Howard sat in his easy chair facing the television; a film of blood and gore spattered the ceiling and walls around him. He had apparently put a gun in his mouth and shot himself. A sizable chunk of his skull was gone. A bloody, red Redskins cap was on the floor beside him.

An empty bottle of Smirnoff and a Remington 1911 .45-caliber pistol, the same kind of gun that had killed Tom McGrath, lay in his old partner’s lap.

On the floor beside him, there was a note scrawled in ink.

Rot in hell, Tommy McG, it read. You and your lying bitch of a girlfriend.





CHAPTER


28


“CASE CLOSED?” SAMPSON asked as we drove past the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Northern Virginia.

“Bree thinks so,” I said. “So does Michaels. Tough one to swallow, but there it is.”

“You’re not sold?”

“Just trying to understand the entire situation before we declare it a revenge killing and a suicide. Take a right.”

Sampson did, and then he made a left, and we were into big-money properties, sprawling estates, some with high walls and security gates. It was dusk and lights were blinking on.

“Coming up on your right,” I said.

Sampson slowed, put on a blinker. We drove up a narrow road maybe a hundred feet long with gardens on both sides. At the end of it was a guardhouse, a turnaround, and a steel security gate set in a high wall.

The polished brass sign on the guardhouse read THE PHOENIX CLUB. PRIVATE. MEMBERS ONLY.

We’d no sooner reached the turnaround than a big, muscular dude stepped out in a blue polo shirt with the Phoenix Club logo on the chest and a Glock pistol holstered at his waist.

He held up his hand and came to the driver-side window.

“Are you members?” he said in a thick Eastern European accent.

“No,” Sampson said, and he showed his police badge and ID. “We need to talk to someone about Edita Kravic.”

“I don’t know her,” the man said, seeming unimpressed that we were cops.

“She worked here, and now she’s dead,” Sampson said. “So go inside and call whoever would know and tell them we’re not leaving until we speak with someone about her.”

The guard stared at Sampson. Sampson glared back. Then the security guy bit his lip and went into the guardhouse.

Twenty minutes later, the gates opened and out came a golf cart driven by a bald man in a finely tailored blue suit. He stopped the cart and got out. He was in his thirties, with slightly cauliflower ears, pale blue eyes, and extraordinarily large hands with knuckles that had been broken a few times.

“I am Sergei Bogrov,” he said, taking my hand and then laying his other mitt-like hand on top of mine, swallowing it. “I help manage the club. How may I help?”

“Edita Kravic,” I said. “She worked here.”

Bogrov’s face fell and he let go of my hand. “Yes, we hear this. Very sad. She was well liked by the staff and members.”

“What did she do?”

“She taught a hybrid of yoga and Feldenkrais therapy.”

“Level Two Certified Coach?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Bogrov said. “She also worked in the spa as a masseuse. She was an excellent one.”

“Good money in that?” Sampson asked.

“If the member is a generous tipper, it can be,” he said.

“So, what is the Phoenix Club?” I asked. “Health spa and …”