Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(57)

“I wondered where that went,” Condon said.

“Stolen?”

“Or I left it at the gym. Either way, my DNA will be all over it.”

Mahoney opened the cardboard box. There was a large envelope inside and a .45-caliber Remington model 1911.

“That yours?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Nice gun, though I prefer a Glock in a forty caliber.”

“Me too, actually,” Mahoney said, opening the envelope.

He pulled out several pages of architectural drawings and diagrams.

“Yours?” Sampson asked.

Condon looked them over and shook his head. “No. What are they?”

Mahoney shrugged and gave them to me. I studied them and almost handed them off to Sampson before it dawned on me what they were.

“These are drawings of the attack locations,” I said. “This one’s the factory where they killed the meth makers. And this one shows an aerial view of the tobacco-drying sheds and the road coming down the middle.”

Condon said, “Before you say anything, there is no way those are mine. This was supposed to be a diversion. Kill me and plant evidence. Keep you guys off the trail of the real vigilante crew.”

The more I thought about it, the more I thought Condon was right—unless, of course, he’d shot his dummy-on-a-rope and put the evidence in his saddlebag to keep us from suspecting he was part of the vigilante group.

For the time being, however, I was going to trust him.

“So whoever they are, they think you’re dead,” Sampson said.

“A fair assumption,” Condon said.

“Let’s let them think it,” I said.

Mahoney looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “What for?”

“Make them believe that they’ve succeeded and the investigation has shifted to looking at Condon’s circle of mercenary friends.”

“And we start quietly looking for a victim of a dog bite,” Sampson said.

“Among other things,” I said, trying to wrap my head around this entire incident. Why implicate Condon? Why not someone else? Why attempt to kill him?

The only solid answer I came up with was that they knew of Condon’s past and had decided he would be the perfect fall guy.

“I thought of that while I was waiting for you to get here,” Condon replied. “But maybe it was more than that. Maybe they were trying to kill me because I do know something about your vigilantes. Two of them, anyway.”





CHAPTER


67


THAT MORNING, AS Alex, Sampson, and Mahoney were talking to Condon, Bree was struggling to make connections between the late chief of detectives Tom McGrath, Edita Kravic, and a competition pistol shooter.

She had the late Terry Howard’s service records up on her computer screen. Four times during Howard’s career, he’d failed his annual shooting qualification test. On his best day, he was evaluated as an average shot.

Hardly the competitor, Bree thought and shut the file.

But lots of police officers did compete. It kept their marks-manship sharp. So she couldn’t discount the possibility of a cop or a former cop or a former military guy, perhaps someone McGrath and Howard knew, being the shooter.

Her desk phone rang.

“Stone,” she said.

“Michaels,” the police chief said. “I’m not happy.”

“Chief?”

“I’m hearing rumors that you’ve reopened the McGrath case.”

“True,” she said, her heart starting to race.

“Goddamn it, Stone, I’m going to get crucified over this. Howard’s our guy. You said so yourself.”

“I believed it then, Chief,” she said. “But not now.”

She recounted her visit to the FBI lab and finished by saying, “So I think the way we look at this is, we take some lumps for jumping to the wrong conclusion, but we’ll get applauded when it comes out we were dogged enough to recognize our mistake and find the real killer.”

Chief Michaels sighed, said, “I can live with that. Any suspects?”

“Not yet.”

“We’re at square one on a dead cop?”

“Definitely not,” she said. “We’ve got new leads we’re actively working.”

“Keep me posted, will you please?”

“You’ll be the first to know everything, Chief,” she said, and he hung up.

Bree set her phone down, thinking that that had gone smoother than she’d expected. Maybe she was getting better at the job, not as rattled by every crisis.

After Sampson and I got back from talking to Condon, I stuck my head into Bree’s office. “We’ve had a couple of breaks you need to know about.”

Bree smiled. “I could use some good news.”

“Oh, we’ve got lots of news,” Sampson said, coming in behind me. “Can’t figure out if it’s good or bad.”

As we told her about our trip to Nicholas Condon’s place, the planted evidence, and the possibility that the sniper knew two of the vigilantes, I sent two pictures to a screen on Bree’s wall.

One photograph showed a wiry man in a nice suit with a face that was a fusion of Asia and Africa. He had a quarter-inch of beard and was leaning against a car, smoking a cigarette— he looked like the kind of guy who would fit in anywhere. The other picture showed a U.S. Army Green Beret officer with pale skin and a battle-gaunt face.