Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(68)

Beyond them, in the center of the basement was a stone wall the height of the room and about twenty feet long. Hallways ran off into the dark on both sides of the wall, which wept, water trickling down the stones into a narrow cache for the fountain.

“I’m guessing the wine cellar’s behind that wall.”

“Left or right hallway?”

I shone my light to the right over the cream-colored carpet, seeing where it was compressed from use and noticing a red-wine stain.

Around the right corner of the rock wall, we found a heavy whitewashed oak door with a wrought-iron thumb latch. Once again, we operated as if we were in the middle of an intense training session.

The door creaked when I pulled it, revealing a two-door wrought-iron gate with the letter A crafted into its face. Beyond it was a terra-cotta tile floor, a tasting table with two chairs, and four walls filled top to bottom with wine bottles.

There had to have been four thousand bottles there, maybe more. But no one was in the wine cellar that we could see, and there was no apparent exit.

Sampson drew up the rod holding the gate into the floor and pushed it open as it made a protesting creak. “This is Detective Sampson of MPD. Mr. Allison? Can you hear me? If you can, please come out.”

I stepped in after John and we stood there, listening to the sounds of our breathing and nothing else for several long moments. Then we heard the distinct sounds of steel bars being thrown. A section of the back wall of the wine cellar swung slowly out about twenty degrees and threw flickering soft light into the wine cellar.

Before we saw anyone, we heard a young boy cry, “You were right, Dad! It worked perfect! He had no idea.”

“I want to sleep, Mama,” a little girl said, coming out from behind the secret door. She was no more than four, with curly blond hair; she was dressed in jammies, holding a blanket, and sucking her thumb.

Seeing us, she turned back against the thigh of the tall, pretty woman in a flannel nightshirt and robe. She sighed and then smiled at us. “Thank you, Detectives. I don’t think I have ever been so frightened in my life. Is he still here?”

“He’s not here,” said a bruiser of a man in a plain white T-shirt, blue gym shorts, and flip-flops. Two identical twin boys about ten exited behind him. He put down the camping lantern he carried and thrust out his hand. “Stan Allison. My wife, Polly. He’s gone, right?”

“We haven’t cleared the upper floors, sir.”

“He’s gone,” he said. “The creep found the redundant electric line that feeds the safe room and cut it, but I picked him up on a battery-powered pressure sensor leaving through the back door off the kitchen.” He looked at his watch. “Nine minutes ago.”

“He didn’t find the safe room?” Sampson said.

“He had no clue,” Allison said and chuckled. “He stood right where you are at one point, and he had zero idea we were eight feet away. I told you it was worth building, Polly.”

She sighed and nodded, looking exhausted. “I’m a believer, Stanley.”

“We’ll get the electric company out here to get your power on,” Sampson said.

“I can take care of that,” Allison said and tried to bulldoze by us.

“Wait, wait a second, sir,” I said. “Our dispatcher said you were watching him on camera. Did you see him?”

“See him?” Allison laughed. “We saw him a lot, recording the whole time, but he only took that hood off the once and then only for two seconds. But I got something.”

He dug out his cell phone, thumbed it, and showed it to us.

Family Man was turning away from the camera, which looked diagonally down at him from high up in a kitchen corner. The camera must have caught him repositioning the hood and the night-vision goggles for comfort; he held both with gloved hands an inch above a thick shock of curly, sandy-brown hair.

You could see only an eighth of his face and even that was in considerable shadow. But the image struck me and Sampson the same way.

“Tull,” we both said.





CHAPTER 75


TWENTY MINUTES LATER, WE left the crime scene to a crew of FBI agents and forensic techs and were racing in our cars back across the Potomac to Georgetown. Sampson and I got there shortly before four a.m.

Mahoney, who had come from Baltimore, was already parked across the street from Tull’s rented town house and was climbing from his car. A light shone outside the writer’s green front door.

We stood in the empty street.

“Where’s the Audi?” Sampson said, gesturing to the parking spot where the writer usually kept his blazing-fast coupe.

“Maybe he’s been out for a race along the George Washington Parkway,” I said.

“Or a time trial around Lake Barcroft,” Sampson said. “Do we have a warrant?”

“It’s being reviewed by a grumpy federal judge who isn’t very happy with me for waking him up,” Mahoney said. “But I think we’ll be inside before long.”

He’d no sooner uttered those words than we heard the rumble of a powerful engine coming toward us from the north. Headlights slashed the road.

“It’s him,” Mahoney said, and we all hurried to the other side of the street and the darkest shadows we could find.

Tull came in hot, overshot the parking space, and made a mess of parallel parking. The Audi’s front right quarter panel still jutted out a considerable way into the road when he jerked open the door and climbed out.