Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(73)

The murders were arranged in order of occurrence from left to right. The Hodgeses, the Landaus, the Carpenters, the Elliotts, and the Kanes.

Sampson and Mahoney found me studying the evidence that Tull had considered worthy of inclusion on the wall.

“Anything jump out at you?” Ned asked, going to the laptop and lifting the lid.

“Yes,” I said, waving at the right side of the wall. “He left room for more cases. He’s got strips of paper cut there on the desk just waiting for a name.”

Mahoney gestured at a sticky note on the wall above the desk. “Laptop password: FamilyMan.”

“That right?” Sampson said, coming over.

“He’s got multiple applications and files open here,” Mahoney said and started working the trackpad.

I left the wall for the moment and came around behind them; I saw a Microsoft Word document labeled family man notes. Before I could scan it, Mahoney clicked on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

We looked at the list of what appeared to be his monthly budget items: Car payments. Mortgage on a house in Maine. Credit cards.

Something odd caught my eye: Cold/Cold $57. I pointed. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know, but he’s got an Arlington storage unit,” Sampson said, gesturing to the last item on the list.

“Costs three fifty a month so it’s got to be a good size,” I said while Mahoney clicked on the Google Earth icon at the bottom of the screen.

We gaped when the app came up and showed that Tull had been searching in the Lake Barcroft area.





CHAPTER 81


AFTER TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS WITH our phones of the Google Earth search and the budget spreadsheet with the name and address of the storage unit, we left the computers to the FBI criminalists, who bagged them for transport to Quantico for further analysis. We searched the rest of the house and came up with nothing.

Mahoney opted to stay on the scene when Sampson and I announced our intention to go see what Tull had hidden in Arlington.

“That storage facility is on the way to Lake Barcroft,” Sampson said.

“It is,” I said.

Indeed, Greenbriar Storage turned out to be just a short detour off the most direct route to Lake Barcroft and the Allison family home. Edna Martinez, the fifty-something owner, was working in the office when we entered. She remembered Thomas Tull.

“I’m in two book clubs,” she said and cackled. “How could I not know him?”

“Did you hear he’s under arrest?” Sampson asked.

Ms. Martinez’s shock was complete. “Thomas Tull?”

“In connection with the Family Man murders,” I said. “We need to get into his storage unit, please.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“Do you have a fax number? We’ll get the warrant for his town house amended to add the storage unit.”

The owner of the facility became more helpful, giving us her fax number and telling us she’d call the woman who cut the locks off her units.

By the time we watched the amended warrant print out on her fax machine, a forty-something woman named Lenora Sands had arrived with a special carbide saw designed to cut the curved locks that Martinez demanded clients use on each unit.

Sands led us to unit 1204 E, a six-by-ten-foot space with a red roll-down door and a stout lock that the carbide tool cut like it was butter. It fell at our feet. Sands bent down to pick it up, but I stopped her.

“Could be evidence,” I said.

“Oh?” she said.

“You never know,” Sampson said, putting it into a bag.

The locksmith seemed interested in seeing what we found, but we politely asked her to leave while we did our work. “Of course,” she said and walked off.

I waited until she’d rounded the corner before squatting and rolling up the door. After taking a long look at the room, I turned to John and said, “I’ll go get her.”

Luckily, I caught up to Sands in the parking lot. “Lenora, have you ever cracked a safe?”

She closed one eye, said, “Make?”

“I think it said Liberty.”

“Helps. Tumbler?”

“Digital pad.”

She cocked her head in reappraisal. “That helps too.”

Sands climbed into her van and soon emerged with a small black carrying case that said liberty safe on it. “My husband and I are their certified techs in this area.”

“Good to know.”

“People forget their codes all the time,” the locksmith said.

We returned to the storage unit. Sampson had climbed over a couch, a kitchen table, and several chairs and was rummaging through boxes stacked on the far wall.

“Anything?”

“Lot of books and knickknacks.”

“Lenora says she can get us into the safe.”

“I’ll check the filing cabinets,” he said and climbed over a credenza to four filing cabinets along the rear wall of the unit.

Sands struggled but reached the black safe at the back and soon had a notebook computer plugged into the underside of the digital keypad. She gave the computer a series of commands, then looked up and around.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m not getting a clear satellite signal through … oh, now it’s talking.”