Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(68)
“We’ll want to interview all the teachers at Harrison and his administrative staff,” Sampson said.
Bree popped her head in. “Not now. We have to leave pronto. Some billionaire celeb was just shot in the ass outside the International Hotel.”
CHAPTER 77
THE PROTEST WAS STILL LOUD and raucous when we reached the International Hotel, a five-star luxury establishment in what used to be the Old Post Office building at Eleventh and Pennsylvania Avenue. The length of the avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill had been closed for the legally permitted march, just one of dozens that take place in the nation’s capital every year.
Most of the marchers were moving right along, but there was a knot of them across Pennsylvania Avenue protesting a meeting of top Wall Street financiers at the hotel. Many of them carried signs and placards with catchy slogans like TAX THE RICH, THE CHANGE IS NOW, and THE BANKERS DID IT.
According to DC Metro Lieutenant Meagan Reynolds, who met us in the hotel driveway, the Protest March for Social Justice and Economic Change involved roughly one hundred thousand people who had peacefully gathered outside the White House and then started walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill.
“Things went smoothly on the march until most of the protesters had left Lafayette Park and maybe a quarter of them were past the International heading east,” Lieutenant Reynolds said. “At that point, Rex Dawson shows up on foot on the north side of Pennsylvania, coming south on Eleventh, back to the hotel. He’s dressed incognito except for the Hawaiian shirt.”
“Stop,” I said. “Incognito except for the Hawaiian shirt?”
Reynolds looked at me like I was clueless. “You don’t watch Snake Pit?”
“I don’t watch investor shows.”
“Well, Dawson’s on it. He wears flamboyant tropical shirts and is really arrogant. So, anyway, before the ambulance takes him, he tells me he’s got sunglasses and a San Diego Chargers hat when he starts to cross Eleventh Street against the left-to-right flow of protesters heading to the Hill. He gets bumped hard, loses the sunglasses and the hat.
“Dawson keeps going, but people start recognizing him. And a lot of people don’t like Dawson, especially in this crowd. So they start yelling at him, and he starts yelling back at them. There’s a couple of shoves. A lot of anger. He reaches the traffic island, still in a crowd, and gets shot in the right glute by a small-caliber gun at close range.
“Dawson thought someone kicked him. He threw a couple of punches and got away from the crowd. He evidently didn’t know he’d been shot until he reached the hotel lobby and felt his pants wet with blood.”
“Where is he?” Bree asked.
“GW,” Reynolds said. “He says he never saw the shooter.”
I looked up at the International Hotel and saw several security cameras aimed at the protest. “Let’s get the footage from those cameras, every angle, and fast.”
“I’m on it,” Sampson said and went into the hotel to find the security chief.
Bree kept asking Reynolds questions. I half listened, watching the flow of marchers and that knot of hard-core protesters still there on the other side of the avenue, exercising their right to voice their opinion.
The three signs I’d noticed before and others in the same anti-rich vein were still bouncing up and down in that crowd of eighty, maybe ninety protesters. I was about to turn away when I saw a flash of a different sign at the back of that knot of protesters.
“Alex?” Bree said. “John says he’s got the tapes waiting for us.”
The sign pivoted and I could see it clearly now: a distinctive and familiar graffiti that read SHOOT THE RICH.
“He’s right there across the street!” I shouted to Bree and Lieutenant Reynolds.
“What?” Bree said and came up beside me.
I lost my visual on the sign and stared over there. “Someone in that crowd at our ten o’clock just flashed the Shoot the Rich sign at us.”
“Where?” Lieutenant Reynolds said.
“Keep watching,” I said.
“I see ‘Tax the Rich,’ ” Bree said.
“No, he’s there. He’s taunting us, hoping the graffiti turns up on the security — ”
“I see the sign!” Lieutenant Reynolds said. “Our one o’clock.”
I scanned the crowd and the signs.
Then Bree shouted, “I’ve got him too. Dark bandanna, dark cap, and sunglasses! Reynolds, get him surrounded!”
CHAPTER 78
I’D SPOTTED HIM AGAIN BY then and was already moving north across Pennsylvania, trying to keep my eye on him and hearing Lieutenant Reynolds in my earbud ordering officers to move into position one block north and one block south of Pennsylvania Avenue on Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth. They were checking the identification of anyone leaving the area.
A group of protesters with signs blocked my view for several moments. When I got beyond them, the SHOOT THE RICH sign was gone again, and I didn’t see anyone wearing a dark bandanna, sunglasses, and dark cap.
“I’ve lost him,” I said into my lapel mic.
“I’ve lost him too,” Bree said in my earbud.
My eyes scanned back and forth, looking for the sign and not seeing it, only that TAX THE RICH placard I’d seen multiple times. I went straight at the spot where I’d last seen the shoot the rich sign, using my height to look at every protester in that area. There were a surprising number of grandmotherly types scattered throughout the crowd, which otherwise was a cross-section of diversity.