Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(20)

Willow said, “I told you, Daddy. It’s a field trip. We’re going to a state park with a lake today. And on the last day of camp we’re going to a beach. We’re going to have a sandcastle contest.”

“That sounds fun.”

“Mom liked building sandcastles,” she said matter-of-factly.

Sampson saw mental snapshots of his late wife on her knees at the beach, delighted with life, showing a younger Willow how to keep the sand just wet enough to hold its shape but not so wet it fell apart. “She did like sandcastles, didn’t she?” he said.

“Mom liked everything.”

“And everybody,” Sampson said, his heart aching. “Your mother never met a stranger in her entire life.”

“I liked that about her.”

“I loved that about her,” Sampson said. They arrived at the church, where several of the senior counselors were herding a group of kids Willow’s age onto two yellow buses. “Go on, now. Mom would want you to have so much fun today that you’ll feel like you couldn’t have any more fun if you tried! And I want that too.”

Willow laughed. “Will you be here to pick me up?”

“Either me or Jannie,” he said and hugged her and kissed her again.

Sampson watched his young daughter climb on the bus—so tiny and yet so strong—get to a seat at a window near the back, and wave to him. Feeling his heart melt again, he waved back. He turned and started to go, moving around several other mothers and fathers walking their excited little kids to the buses.

There were more campers coming by car. They crowded the street in front of the church and were causing a mild traffic jam. Several drivers to the left and right of the knot began to honk their horns, one of them so insistently that Sampson paused and peered down the street.

From a young age, Sampson had known he had excellent eyesight. Doctors in army boot camp had confirmed that he was blessed with 20/12 vision, which meant that an object that people with normal vision saw clearly at twelve feet, he could see clearly at twenty feet.

The doctors also called him a “super-recognizer” because he had a near photographic memory for faces. Sampson couldn’t always attach a name to a face, but he could almost always tell you where he’d seen the face and why he remembered it.

So the moment Sampson saw the man in jeans and a black T-shirt leaning against a tree across the street and down the block, he knew who he was looking at: Hayden Brooker. He had not seen the man in nearly fifteen years, but Brooker’s face was etched deeply into his memory.

Sampson had known him in the army. Brooker had been a Delta Force operator with a reputation as a stone-cold killer. The last rumor Sampson had heard from mutual acquaintances was that after mustering out, Brooker had joined the CIA.

As an assassin.





Chapter





22


Los Angeles



With guns drawn, Ned Mahoney and I followed Patrick Loughlin through the open gate and into the estate belonging to the parents of the murdered FBI agent’s widow.

Built of rust-colored pavers, the driveway climbed steeply beneath the shade of giant palms. Terraced gardens with flowers abloom broke the lower grounds into tiers on both sides of the drive, which crested onto a flat area with more meticulously maintained gardens.

A riot of birds of paradise flowers surrounded a flowing fountain in the circle in front of the Reisings’ house, a rambling, white Cape with green trim and wings off both sides. Birds sang in the jacaranda trees, and somewhere chimes moved on the breeze.

“Ahh, Jaysus, no!” Loughlin cried and hurried toward a body sprawled in the driveway between the fountain and the front door. Male. Late thirties. Blue suit and tie. He had been shot between the eyes.

Loughlin’s face twisted and paled. “Special Agent Carlos Deeds. Nine-year veteran of the Bureau. Young wife. Two kids. Jaysus fricking—”

“We’ve got another, Pat,” Mahoney said, gesturing across the lawn to the left of the drive where a woman lay facedown.

Deeds’s partner, Special Agent Madeline Cruise. She’d been shot high in the back.

“Someone’s paying for this,” Loughlin said hoarsely. “I promise you that.”

“Call it in?” Mahoney asked.

The LA supervising special agent cleared his throat and said, “Let’s see the sorry lot of it before we call in the cavalry.”

We entered in full combat mode, guns up, sweeping back and forth as we went through the nineteen rooms in the mansion. We found Amelia White’s father, Jeffrey Reising, in his home office, dead of two gunshot wounds to the face. In the upstairs master bedroom, Reising’s wife, Jane, looked to have been executed with a single shot to the forehead as she slept.

We all kept it together until we found their three grandchildren, nine-year-old Ricky and the five-year-old twins, Kate and Anne, all dead in their beds, their throats slit.

Loughlin, who’d been a cop since the age of twenty, broke down. Mahoney, a twenty-four-year agent, had to lean against a wall.

I’d been a homicide investigator for most of my adult life but lurched to a bathroom and puked up my breakfast. I entered the kitchen a few minutes later, and it turned out to be a blessing that I had an empty stomach.

Amelia White had been gagged, stripped naked, and lashed to a ladder-back chair. The condition of her body—the cuts, bruising, and broken bones—all suggested that the disgraced FBI agent’s wife had been tortured before her throat was mercifully slit.