Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(37)

Higgins looked at me with disdain. “Who are you?”

“My name is Alex Cross.”

She was good, I’ll give her that. At my name, she barely took a breath before shaking her head. “Am I supposed to know you?”

I smiled, showed her my FBI contractor’s ID. “I’m a consultant to the investigation into the deaths of Kay Willingham and Randall Christopher.”

“And?”

Before I could answer, a waiter came over and asked what I wanted to drink.

“Oh, he won’t be staying,” Higgins said.

I smiled at her. “We can do it here, Ms. Higgins, or I can make some calls and you’ll be hauled out of here for questioning.”

Her nostrils flared, but she said, “Get him what he wants.”

“A Coke,” I said. “And I heard the steak sandwich is good.”

When the waiter was gone, she said, “I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation. I was looking forward to a nice lunch, maybe seeing some old — ”

“Stop,” I said. “You have a law degree and run a PR business, Ms. Higgins. That’s what it says on your office door, anyway, although I understand your real game is something entirely different.”

Indignant now, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Blackmail,” I said.

“Would you like to be sued?”

“Oh, I don’t mean you do the blackmailing yourself, though I suspect you’ve strayed close to that line more than a few times doing what you do.”

Higgins crossed her arms. “And what is it that you allege I do?”

“You deal in dirt, Ms. Higgins. Damaging information, the kind of leverage you need in a blackmail scheme or a plot to tear down or build up some politician. It’s why you’re here or in one of the other power-lunch venues around town every day, Monday through Friday. You’re trolling for business.”

“Wherever did you get the idea that I deal in dirt?”

“A dirty little bird told me.”

“You’ll have to do better than that or I’m going to ask you to leave, FBI or no FBI.”

“Clive Sparkman,” I said.

“That worm,” she said. “Don’t believe a thing he says.”

“Ordinarily, I don’t,” I said. “But he told me he was talking to you in the hours after the murders of Kay Willingham and Randall Christopher, and you said that you had so much on those two you could light up Sparkman’s site like ‘the Drudge Report on a down day for Democrats.’ Is that correct?”

Higgins’s focus drifted into the middle distance for a moment before she squinted and laughed. “Yes, I said something like that. I did! But I was doing what my little brother would call ‘yanking his chain.’ ”

“Sparkman’s chain?” I said.

“He’s easily played. I like to play with him. It makes him eager to please when I really need him.”

“To do what?”

She shrugged. “Float a theory. Roll out a hidden fact or two that might sway public opinion.”

“So you have nothing on Kay Willingham or Randall Christopher?”

She smiled sweetly at me. “Wish I did, but I’m afraid not.”

“Did you know her? Kay?”

“We met several times. I liked her, but we weren’t friends.”

“Really? Kay was friends with everyone.”

“I suppose she thought I knew things she did not want out in the open.”

“Did you?”

“Not really. I mean, not things that I would consider cause for scandal.”

“What about beneath your scandal threshold?”

“She liked men and women and often strayed outside her marriage, but that’s been reported. She may have had a nervous breakdown or two. That’s a persistent but unconfirmed rumor.”

“Did you send Clive Sparkman a photo of me and Kay Willingham?”

She ducked her chin and then laughed in wonder. “There’s a photograph of you and Kay Willingham?”

“It’s not like that.”

“It never is, Dr. Cross.”

I studied her. Higgins was practiced and polished in her gaze, but I was still picking up something that said I wasn’t getting the entire story. “Did you send the picture?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m going to go, then.”

“Not staying for the steak sandwich?”

“You take it — you look like you could use the iron,” I said, standing. “But in the meantime, whatever game it is that you’re playing, Ms. Higgins? Be very, very careful. I suspect there are forces involved you have not even begun to consider.”





CHAPTER 41





LATER THAT SAME AFTERNOON, Metro Chief of Police Bryan Michaels and Chief of Detectives Bree Stone were on the receiving end of a titanic venting from Commissioner of Police Wayne Dennison.

“I told you both time and again that my friend getting shot in the ass was part of something bigger, something sinister,” he said. “The Washington Post put it together before we did; rich people and politicians were getting shot at in the streets of DC before Phil and the congresswoman were actually hit. Where were we, Chief Michaels? Chief Stone? Where was Metro?”