Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(67)

Bree, Sampson, and I nodded to each other. We were getting somewhere.

Bree asked, “Did Elizabeth ever go with you when you cleaned it?”

“Many times. She used to do her homework there while I vacuumed at night.”

I said, “When was the last time that happened? I mean, when you and Elizabeth were both there?”

“Oh,” she said. “It has been a long time since I stopped cleaning the incubator. When Elizabeth was twelve, maybe? So about six years ago?”

Bree asked Analisa if she remembered anyone staying late at the incubator, anyone who might have talked to Elizabeth or taken an inordinate amount of interest in her.

She thought about that. “You know, many young people would be there one night and not so many another, and yes, some talked to Elizabeth. But I don’t remember a man being creepy with her, if that is what you mean. And she never told me something like that or I would have told the detectives when she disappeared.”

“Did you ever run into anyone from the incubator at the school?” Sampson asked. “Someone who stood out?”

Analisa pursed her lips and her eyes shifted down and to the left. Then she shook her head. “No. I mean, just Mr. Randall.”

“Wait, stop,” I said. “Randall Christopher was at the incubator?”

“Sí, it’s where he started the charter school.”





CHAPTER 76





ANALISA CONFIRMED THAT SHE AND Elizabeth would often see Randall Christopher at the incubator working late to put the charter school together. Sampson did an internet search and, sure enough, found a brief story from years ago describing the idealistic young educator out to build an education system of his own design.

“I think the last year he was there, he had two classes of kids at the incubator,” Analisa said. “Then he moved somewhere else for a year before the city decided to sell the Harrison property and he stepped in.”

“Do you think that’s why Mr. Christopher got involved in the search for Elizabeth and Maya?”

“I don’t know about Maya,” she said. “But yes, he told me he was organizing the search because of those nights when he helped her with her math at the incubator.” She glanced at the clock. “I’m sorry. I must be at work at three.”

“Where do you work?” Sampson asked, turning away from the computer.

Analisa smiled. “I am a hostess in a restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental. It is wonderful. No more cleaning and they are very kind, give me time off to do my real work in Guatemala. I’ll see you next week, Dr. Cross?”

“Our regular time,” I said, walking her to the basement door. “I look forward to it.”

“I do too,” she said, stepping through, then turning. “Be careful. Like I said, I feel like you will find him soon.”

“We’re on alert,” I promised. I smiled and shut the door.

Back in my office, Bree showed me a text forwarded from Jannie. Bree had asked Jannie to ask Christopher’s daughters if they knew the apartment building in Marshall Heights.

Tina had replied: We lived there four years before moving to our new house.

Suddenly, because he was the only person we could link definitively to all three locations on Sampson’s map, the dead principal became a prime suspect in the series of rapes and murders that had shaken Southeast DC for almost fifteen years.

“Lot of flags flying,” Sampson said.

Bree nodded. “He worked at the incubator and lived at the apartment building at the time of many of the earlier rapes and killings. He ran Harrison Charter when the last few victims were taken, including Maya Parker and Elizabeth Hernandez.”

I said, “And he got involved in the searches for both of them. Organizing them, insinuating himself into the investigation.”

“Classic serial-killer move,” Sampson said.

Bree said, “He could easily have guided the civilian searches away from where he did not want people to go.”

“Concerned citizen, school principal, family man, upstanding member of the community,” I said. “Pretty good cover for a serial killer.”

Sampson said, “If Christopher was the killer, we have to at least consider that someone figured it out and shot him to death. Kay was an innocent bystander.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We need to rule Christopher in or out as the serial killer before we can determine who killed him.”

“I’ll start a list of questions to answer,” Sampson said, turning to the keyboard.

“Number one,” Bree said. “Where’s his lair?”

Sampson said, “Alex, you searched his house. If Christopher’s our guy, he kept his trophies or souvenirs somewhere, probably where he took his victims.”

“Agreed.”

Bree said, “Elaine Paulson said Christopher had multiple short-term affairs over the course of their marriage. What if he didn’t? What if he was just actively hunting at those times?”

Sampson said, “Could Elaine have known who he really was?”

“Good point,” I said. “We’ll need to talk to her to match her recollection of the affair time frames to when the victims were taken and then — ”

Bree’s cell phone rang. She looked at it. “It’s Dennison. I have to take this.” She walked out of the office, the phone to her ear, saying, “Yes, Commissioner?”