Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(22)

As the speaker dropped, Emily must have had a moment of clarity and horror before the current blazed through the electrochemical machine that was her body, short-circuiting her broken heart.



“The Boston PD said Emily’s death was an accident,” Tull wrote, “but my gut said it was murder.”

My cell phone rang. Bree.

“How’s New York?” I asked.

“Making headway, actually,” she said. I heard the sounds of a restaurant in the background. “But having a dinner here isn’t half the fun it would be with you.”

“Well, I wish I were there,” I said. “Where are you eating?”

“La Grenouille,” she said. “My target often eats here, but not tonight.”

“What are you having?”

“Haven’t ordered yet, but I’m thinking the saffron lobster bisque to start, then the oxtail in burgundy sauce, and a lemon tart with meringue for dessert.”

“You’re liking this whole expense-account thing.”

“I am.” She laughed. “One of the best perks of this job. How was your day?”

I told her in general terms about the visit from Thomas Tull’s editor and her contentions about the author and his previous three books.

“You’re going to read them all?” Bree said. “They’re doorstops, aren’t they?”

“Close,” I replied.

“Anything jump out at you yet?”

I looked at the cover of Electric. “Maybe. He sells it as pure nonfiction, but some of the details and the way he describes the murders seem fictionalized to me, or at least speculative.”

“How so?”

“At times, he kind of zooms in and puts you right there in the scene as the crime unfolds. But of course, that can’t be an exact replication.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Bree said. “He’s probably extrapolating from the available evidence, and that’s always a somewhat subjective call.”

“I’m going to take a look at the other books before I snooze. Got to be up early for Jannie’s race.”

“She excited?”

“Actually, she’s calm, cool,” I said. “Nana, Ali, and I will be nervous wrecks. And Damon’s coming!”

“Oh, a family reunion without me.”

“I’m FaceTiming you the race.”

“Not the same, but it will have to do.”

“I’ll call you when they’re heading to the blocks,” I promised. “Around eleven a.m.”

“Oh, here comes my waiter. Love you.”

“Love you too,” I said. I hung up and glanced at the wall clock before picking up Tull’s second book.





CHAPTER 22


CERTAIN ASPECTS OF Noon in Berlin echoed Electric.

Early on, for example, the killer left little or no evidence at the scenes. And the police bungled the initial investigations before Tull entered the picture, retraced their steps, and found previously unknown clues or hidden aspects of the victims’ lives that opened up a new avenue for the probe and gained him insider status.

Noon in Berlin, however, was written in a completely different tone than the first book. And the story was an unexpected tale of eroticism and savagery that shocked me again and again in the hundred pages I read that night.

Tull wrote that he’d learned of the story while he was on tour for the German-language debut of Electric.

The Berlin victims had all died as couples—illicit lovers, in fact, some straight and some gay, all of whom had had their trysts at noon in various hotels and pieds-à-terre around the German capital.

The first couple was discovered in a one-bedroom apartment in southeast Berlin not far from Treptower Park. Edgar Bruner was found naked, gagged, and tied to the four posts of the bed. His Russian mistress, Katya Dubosholva, was collapsed on top of him and also naked. Each had been shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart from a gun normally used by veterinarians, wild-game biologists, and the like to subdue dangerous animals. Tull wrote that “each dart at that crime scene contained enough tranquilizer to take down a bull elephant.”

Apparently, within a second of being shot, the mistress had fallen on top of her lover, pinning him, before she died of a heart attack. Then her lover was shot. At close range.

The second couple in the series, both suburban women, were married to men and had children. They were killed in an apartment in west Berlin, not far from Tiergarten and the zoo, shot with the same kind of tranquilizer dart as the first couple as they lay beneath the sheets.

Tull was allowed to observe the investigation in part because of the success of Electric. He learned that the Berlin police had focused heavily on CCTV cameras, trying to spot the killer on the way to and from each apartment. When that proved fruitless, the lead investigator, Inspector Ava Firsching, began to focus on the tranquilizer and its origin.

Her rationale was simple and smart. Inspector Firsching figured the killer had to have access to drugs normally used to tranquilize large animals. She and Tull went to the Berlin Zoo and talked to veterinarians and handlers. They learned that tranquilizer darts often contain benzodiazepines, a class of drugs that depress the nervous system.

“Administered at proper doses,” Tull wrote, “these drugs will not kill humans or animals. But increase the doses or combine them with alcohol or opiates, and the risk of death rises dramatically. In toxicology screens that Inspector Firsching ordered, the German national crime lab found high doses of the benzodiazepine midazolam mixed with higher doses of the opiate fentanyl. The lethal cocktail caused almost immediate cardiac and respiratory failure.”