Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(65)

Bree thought about that. “Why was she in the panic room?”

“Her son, Dimitri, had had an operation two days before and needed to sleep somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed,” I said. “She put in an appearance at the beginning of the party and then went down to be with her son. She was there when the attack began.”

“Did she recognize Hobbes or the woman?”

“Said she’d never seen either of them before.”

“Where are Elena and the son now?”

I shrugged. “Mahoney’s got them stashed in a safe house. I suspect he’ll be questioning her for days if not weeks before she goes into witness protection. Which brings us back to this guy.”

I showed her a picture on my phone of a dead man in his late thirties, handsome, with a thick shock of dark hair and a bullet hole in his chest.

“Who is he?”

Sampson said, “According to Elena Guryev, his name is Karl Stavros, and he’s the owner of, among other businesses, the Phoenix Club.”

“Wait,” Bree said. “Where Edita Kravic worked?”

“One and the same,” I said. “So what are the odds that Tommy McGrath was onto something criminal going on in that club that Edita told him about?”

“I’d say very good,” Bree said. “Very, very good.”

“I think the answer to who killed Tommy is in that club,” Sampson said.

“We’ll need warrants,” she said.

“The Feds are filing,” I said. “Ned promised we’ll be part of any search, but it’s not going to be today.”

I yawned. So did Sampson.

“You two look like hell,” Bree said. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

Sampson got up and left without any argument.

I held up my hands. “No, I’m good. Nothing a cup of coffee won’t fix.”

“That’s a direct order, Detective Cross. Home, nap, and then I’d bet Nana Mama would appreciate you going to Ali’s interview for the Washington Latin charter school this afternoon.”

“Is that today?”

“It is. Five o’clock.”

“Then heading home as ordered, Chief Stone. See you at dinner?”

“If I’m lucky,” she said. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” I said, and I went out her door fantasizing about my bed and a two-hour coma.





CHAPTER


78


BREE WATCHED ALEX leave, feeling a little cheated not to be an active part of Tommy McGrath’s murder investigation, or not really, anyway.

If Alex and Sampson were right about the Phoenix Club, the case was essentially in the FBI’s hands now. Even though Mahoney had promised that DC Metro would be part of any search, the FBI would be calling the shots.

Bree tried to put it out of her mind and deal with the barrage of paper that now dominated her working life. But after ten minutes of scanning a series of administrative memos, she couldn’t take it anymore.

She had to do something that engaged her mind, that wasn’t mundane, that would do some good. Wasn’t that what being a cop was? Doing some good?

Bree pushed the paper pile aside and found copies of the murder books for Tommy McGrath, Edita Kravic, and Terry Howard. She started back through them, trying to suppress any preconceived ideas she had about the case, trying to see it all anew, with a beginner’s mind.

As she reviewed the investigative notes and forensics reports, she realized that they’d all been looking at the case as a revenge killing of some kind, done by Howard or someone else who had a beef with McGrath, and maybe with Edita Kravic too.

Bree consciously tried to erase that filter from her mind and played with possible other motives. Bree started by asking herself who would benefit from Tommy McGrath dying. Or from Edita Kravic dying, for that matter.

Someone inside the Phoenix Club, she supposed. Karl Stavros? He was the owner. If Stavros thought Tommy was onto him, maybe he’d had Tommy and Edita killed to protect himself and the alliance.

She started down through a list of the evidence gathered at their apartments and, after the encryption codes were broken, from their computer hard drives. For almost an hour and a half, she studied each item in turn and tried to see it as a benefit or a loss to a killer. She ran a search for the Phoenix Club on McGrath’s hard drive and got nothing. She ran a search on Edita Kravic and got the same.

Then she started through McGrath’s financial affairs. The late COD had had $325,000 in his retirement account, $12,000 in his checking account, and zero debt. McGrath didn’t own a home, had paid cash for his car, and paid off his credit cards every month.

His will was brief, drafted four years before. To Bree’s surprise, it named Terry Howard as his sole heir. If Howard was not alive at the time of McGrath’s death, the modest estate was to go to McGrath’s wife, Vivian.

Bree thought about that. Tommy McGrath still cared about his old partner enough to leave him his money. Could Howard have known and killed him to collect? Or could Vivian have …

She dismissed that out of hand. McGrath’s estranged wife was loaded, worth multimillions. Why would she kill Tommy for a measly three hundred grand and change?

She turned to the last page of the will and saw a reference to a document in the appendix that caused her to pause. Bree dug deeper into the financial files and found the document she was looking for. She flipped through it and then stopped at one item, thinking: Now that might be something worth killing or dying for.