Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(34)
“Witnesses?” Bree asked.
“One so far,” he said. “Lady she was running with. Another congresswoman. Tracey Williams. From Arkansas. She’s over there.”
He gestured with his chin across the crime scene toward a woman in running gear, her arms crossed, talking to a female uniformed officer.
Bree looked at me. “Can you call in FBI forensics? I don’t want any conflict on jurisdiction between Metro and Capitol Police to screw up the evidence.”
“Smart,” I said and made the call to Ned Mahoney as we walked around the crime scene, seeing a sizable smeared pool of blood on the brick sidewalk and growing crowds of onlookers across the street by the park.
A satellite news van rolled by with a cameraman hanging out the window.
“Keep them moving!” Bree yelled at the uniforms.
The female Capitol Police officer saw us coming and walked to meet us. “You can hear it from her, Chief,” she said, and she kept going.
Representative Williams, who was in her late thirties, was extremely agitated. We introduced ourselves and shook her trembling hand.
“I feel like I need a cigarette and I quit smoking ten years ago,” she said in a soft Southern accent. “Maybe a carton of cigarettes.” She tried to laugh before looking over at the bloody sidewalk in a daze. “That could have been me, and I left my phone at the apartment so I can’t call my husband and kids back home and tell them I’m all right, and I gave Elise’s phone to the EMTs… Jesus, why would someone do such a thing?”
Bree handed over her cell phone. “Call your husband, Congresswoman, and then we’ll talk.”
Williams hesitated but then took the phone and called her husband.
“I’m okay, but something’s happened,” she said. “I’m fine, really. I’ll call after I talk to the police and I’ll tell you everything. I love you. Kiss the kids.”
She smiled at us, her eyes glassy, and thanked Bree before describing how she, Elise McKenna, and a third freshman congresswoman lived together in a small apartment east of the Capitol. Four mornings a week, she and McKenna went for an early run.
They had taken their normal four-mile route and were roughly three miles into it when McKenna, who was leading, suddenly screamed and then sprawled on the sidewalk.
“I had no idea what had happened,” Williams said, tearing up again. “I ran to her, she was grabbing at her… butt cheeks and screaming she’d been shot. I saw the blood, used her phone, and called 911, and here we are.”
“You never saw the shooter?”
“I never heard the gun,” she said. “We were running and then she was down.”
“Traffic?”
Williams nodded, but looked puzzled. “Yes. I mean, I think so.” She turned to orient herself so she was facing east, then waved her left hand. “Yes, there was traffic, but I couldn’t tell you what cars they were or how many because I don’t think the shot came from Pennsylvania Avenue.” The congresswoman pivoted clockwise and gestured back across the intersection with Fifth Street toward a line of cars parked against the far sidewalk by the Capitol Hill United Methodist Church. “You ask me, it came from back there.”
“Why do you think that?” Bree asked.
Williams thought about that before she faced east again, shifted her torso and hip to her left and forward, northeast.
“Because Elise kind of did that before she screamed and went down,” the congresswoman said. “Am I free to go?”
“We can arrange a car if you don’t want to face the media horde,” Bree said.
“Kind of you, Chief, thank you, I’ll take you up on that offer,” she said. “I’m going to shower and head straight to the hospital to see Elise.”
Bree and I walked over to where the congresswoman thought the shooter must have stood, behind that line of cars parked by the church. Low on the church wall was newly painted graffiti that said Shoot the Rich!
My phone rang. I saw a number I didn’t recognize but answered anyway. “Cross.”
“The good doctor himself. This is Clive Sparkman.”
“How did you get this number?”
“A triviality,” Sparkman said. “I want to meet for breakfast. Now.”
“Forget it. Never,” I said.
“Suit yourself, then, Cross. Blow up your life when I’m giving you the opportunity to put out the fuse.”
CHAPTER 38
AN HOUR LATER, I WALKED into Ted’s Bulletin, a restaurant on Eighth Street in Southeast DC, four blocks from my home. I was sure Clive Sparkman was aware of that and was letting me know that he’d studied up on me, which only added to my general surliness at having to meet him to see what he planned to write about me.
Sparkman sat in the back booth on the left, facing the door. His face lit up when he saw me, and he stood to shake my hand.
“Dr. Cross,” Sparkman said. “I appreciate you coming on such short notice.”
“You didn’t give me much of a choice,” I said, but I shook his hand anyway.
Sparkman gestured at the booth. “Shall we?”
I slid into the booth, watching him the way I would a sleeping snake. He held my gaze. Was that amusement on his lips?