Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(54)

It didn’t sound like a man who was angry and ready to commit murder. To me and to Bree, it sounded like a man trying to make peace with himself and his old partner. If he’d killed McGrath and then committed suicide, why would he have left such a note? He’d obviously written it before McGrath’s death, so wouldn’t he have retrieved it and destroyed it before he killed himself? Or had he just forgotten it?

The most cynical slice of me played with the idea that Howard had put the letter there as a way to throw us off the scent, but that didn’t make sense in light of the suicide. Wouldn’t he have left some kind of diatribe condemning McGrath?

So maybe Howard didn’t commit suicide. In that scenario, whoever killed McGrath had also killed Howard and then framed the disgraced detective for McGrath’s murder.

It wasn’t the perfect crime. But it was close. That is, if we could prove it.

I got out of the shower and dried off. Bree came into the bathroom.

“Chief Michaels is going to need harder evidence than that letter to officially reopen the case,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Can you help grease the wheels at the gun house?”

“Sure. How fast?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks. By the way, how’d your day go?”

I briefed her as I pulled on clothes.

When I finished, she sighed. “So we’re no closer to finding Tommy’s killer or the road-rage shooter.”

“Or the vigilantes, for that matter. Whoever they are.”





CHAPTER


62


THANK GOD FOR Alex and Ned Mahoney, Bree thought the next afternoon as she and Muller hurried down a hallway to the Gun Room, the area of the FBI’s crime lab that was dedicated to the Firearms/Toolmarks Unit. The backlog for FBI testing was weeks long, and yet here they were in Quantico, marching in the front door on less than three hours’ notice.

“We’re here to see Ammunition Specialist Noble,” Bree told the receptionist who was inspecting their visitors’ passes.

The receptionist made a call, and several minutes later a petite woman in her late forties wearing a blue skirt, a white shirt, a white lab coat, and reading glasses on a chain came out to meet them.

“Judith Noble,” she said crisply. “You have friends in high places, Chief Stone.”

“We’re lucky,” Bree said. “And thank you for agreeing to help us.”

“Not agreeing wasn’t an option,” she said coolly. “What can I do for you?”

Bree handed over the evidence bag containing the .45-caliber bullets found in Howard’s storage unit as well as the bullets that had killed Howard, Tommy McGrath, and Edita Kravic.

“We need a comparison done,” she said. “Just to make sure we’ve gotten all our ducks in a row.”

The ammunition specialist glanced at her watch and nodded. “Long as things don’t get too complicated, I can do that.”

Noble led them back to her workstation, which was immaculate.

“How do you get any work done?” Muller said. “I need a proper mess to think straight.”

The ammunition tech said, “Thank God you’re not in my field, Detective Muller. Defense attorneys would crucify you on the stand.”

“Why’s that?”

“Firearms testing is like engineering,” Noble said, putting on gloves. “This is about precision, not chaos.”

“Like I said, I wouldn’t get a thing done,” Muller said and he smiled at Noble in a way that Bree found kind of strange.

Noble did not respond, merely took out the three bullets that had killed Tommy McGrath, the two that had struck Edita Kravic, and the single shot that had ended Terry Howard’s life.

“They’re all a match for this gun,” Muller said, handing over the suicide .45 in an evidence bag.

“Says who?”

“I dunno,” Muller said. “Someone here.”

“I can call up the report,” Bree said, pulling out her phone.

Noble held up her hand. “I believe you. So all you’re looking for is confirmation that the ammunition in this box matches these six rounds?”

“Exactly,” Bree said.

“It should be easy,” the tech said. “We have everything Federal makes in the SAF, the standard ammunition file.”

She looked at the end of the box. “Personal-defense grade, two hundred and thirty grain. Pretty standard for a forty-five semiautomatic.”

Noble opened the box, took out one of the fourteen remaining bullets, looked at it, and frowned. “That doesn’t match.”





CHAPTER


63


“WHAT?” MULLER SAID. “You haven’t even looked at the others.”

“I don’t need to,” Noble said, miffed. “The unfired cartridges here might indeed match the killing rounds, but they do not match the labeling on the Federal box.”

“No markings around the primers, right?” Bree said.

Noble cocked her head in appreciation and nodded. “That is correct, Chief Stone. All commercially made handgun ammunition has a stamp indicating manufacture and caliber on the brass around the primer.”