Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(60)

I had Mahoney caw like a crow and moved quietly to him. We backtracked the way he’d come through the woods until I found what I was looking for: a well-used game path heading out to the timbered point.

I started to sneak out the path, but Ned asked if she could have been going for a boat or a canoe. I threw caution to the wind then and ran down the path, ducking under broken branches and leaping over logs. Ned stayed right beside me.

A rooster crowed and hens squabbled. The woods thinned into an opening with a majestic view of Lake Martin, golden in the late-day sun.

In the clearing, surrounded by blooming wildflowers, stood a small cabin built of hand-hewn logs with red-trimmed windows and a roof that looked like it was made of moss.

Beyond the cabin on the rocky point, there were two heavy chairs and a table crafted of logs and bent branches near a firepit. Everything, from the chicken coop to the gardens to the stacked firewood, was neat and cared for. Ned circled to one side of the cabin and I went to the other.

“Althea Lincoln?” he called out. “I’m FBI Special Agent in Charge Edward Mahoney. Please, ma’am, we mean you no harm. We just want to talk about Kay Willingham.”

There was no answer.

“My name is Dr. Alex Cross,” I called. “I was a friend of Kay’s. She told me you were the best friend she ever had, Althea. I saw her favorite picture of you as young girls in her house in Georgetown. I am grieving for Kay too, and we’re here investigating her murder, Althea. Please, we need your help to find who killed her.”

After several beats, Althea stepped out onto the cabin porch with her hands raised.

“Thank you, Althea,” I said.

Althea stared past me a moment, her eyes watering, then licked her lips and ran her hand over her bald head. She cleared her throat and said in a scratchy, hoarse voice, “She talked about you too, Dr. Cross. Said you were a good and honest man.” She cleared her throat again. “Sorry, I don’t talk much. And I still can’t believe my sweet Kay’s gone.”

“Neither can I. She was a force of nature.”

Althea smiled sadly, said, “That she was and always will be.”

“You’ll help us get justice for Kay?” Ned said.

“Justice?” she said with a bitter sigh. “I don’t believe in your form of justice, Special Agent Mahoney. But which hornet’s nest do you feel like kicking first?”





CHAPTER 67





“HOW FAR FROM HERE WAS Peggy Dixon attacked?” Bree asked Sampson.

It was about six in the evening, and they were standing in front of the building in the Douglas neighborhood of Southeast Washington, DC. It had been a warehouse once upon a time but now served as an incubator for start-up businesses, including the current tenants: an SAT tutoring firm, a data-mining venture, and a children’s-clothing designer.

“According to the landlord, the place was converted seventeen years ago and has been busy ever since,” Sampson said. “Forty people work here now. Could have been anyone who ever worked here.”

“Or in one of these buildings around us,” Bree said.

Sampson pulled out his phone, oriented himself, and pointed east. “The attack must have been about five blocks from here.” She thought about that. “We don’t have to look at everyone who ever worked here, just the men who did around the time of the attacks.”

Sampson nodded. “Difficult, labor-intensive, but not impossible.”

That sentiment changed after they’d driven north of the Suitland Parkway and gotten out in front of the large apartment building in Marshall Heights. It was seven stories high and had two wings, one on either side of a central courtyard.

“Must be three hundred people here,” Sampson said. “Turnover’s probably constant.”

“Again, we just need to look at the residents and workers who were here when the girls vanished,” Bree said.

Sampson gestured across the street at another apartment building and then another beside it. “We’re going to need manpower.”

“I know,” she said.

“You coming back to work, Chief?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Let’s go to the charter school and then to the Hernandez and Parker residences. I need to see this straight in my head.”

He glanced at his watch. “That’ll work. Jannie’s with Willow until eight.”

They drove past Harrison Charter to the Parkers’ apartment building and went from there to where the Hernandez family had lived. “We’re not talking a big area to select victims from, are we?” Bree said.

“No,” Sampson said. “Just three distinct small ones.”

“But it’s not like he focused on one area exclusively and then moved on to the next,” she said. “He returned to each locale. Fifteen years ago, Audrey Nyman, the first victim in the series, lived about a mile north of that apartment building. Victim two lived within nine blocks of the business incubator thirteen years ago. Victim three lived south of the apartment building eleven years ago. Number four was taken north of the incubator nine years ago and victims five and six were south and west of the incubator eight and six years ago.”

Sampson nodded. “He hunted every two years for quite a while. But then Dixon was attacked near the incubator two years ago. Elizabeth Hernandez vanished six months later when she was living near but not attending Harrison Charter. Eight months later, Maya Parker, also living close to but not attending Harrison, was taken.”