Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(71)

She smiled, gave me the thumbs-up, and said, “Officer Wells was still there. She remembered Adam Edmunds because he mouthed off. She didn’t take a picture of his ID, but she said she knows it was a George Mason University graduate-student ID card because she asked him what he was studying.”

“What’d he say?”

“Conflict analysis and resolution,” she said.

“George Mason has a school for that?”

“It does.”





CHAPTER 81





WE CAUGHT UP TO ADAM EDMUNDS at the George Mason University School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Virginia Square Campus in Arlington. Edmunds was on his way out of an evening lecture on using meditation and tai chi as a path to inner peace and laughing with five earnest-looking young women on the Birkenstock and Patagonia end of the spectrum.

Seeing that he was also carrying the bulging yellow pack from earlier in the day, Ned Mahoney walked up to him, showed him his credentials, said, “Adam Edmunds. FBI. You are under arrest.”

The young women all gasped and looked at Edmunds.

“Arrest?” he said. “For what?”

“Three counts of attempted murder, including one attempt on a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Now the women were acting as if an oily creature had suddenly invaded their safe space. “Attempted murder?” one said.

Edmunds shook his head. “I’ve never tried to kill anyone in my life.”

“Try doesn’t matter,” I said. “You shot all three of them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “And I want a lawyer.”

I took his backpack, opened it, and pulled out the green khaki hat, the blond wig, the long-sleeved shirt, and, finally, a crude weapon, a. 22-caliber zip gun, a single-shot weapon so small, it could be concealed in the palm of your hand.

“Oh,” I said. “And we have you on camera in front of the International Hotel.”

Mahoney began to read him his rights.

Edmunds finally lost it. “You can’t charge me with attempted murder. I shot them in the ass, for God’s sake!”

All five of the women’s jaws dropped. One said, “He was just talking about that!”

“He was!” cried another. “Telling us about Dawson getting shot at the march.”

“And you were all laughing about it!” he shouted at them. “Hypocrites. You know that when it comes right down to it, conflict resolution is a no-win. All in all, peaceful change rarely happens. You’re living in a fantasy. At some point, someone has to take a stand and act. People take notice when corrupt politicians and fat-cat lobbyists and billionaire criminals like Dawson get shot in the ass. They take notice and they laugh just like you did or they cheer. And maybe, just maybe, they read up on these rich guys and see them for who they are. And in their own way, they start shooting the rich in the ass — metaphorically. And that shift in perception, everybody doing their best to shoot the bad rich in the ass, that’s how you make lasting change — enough pain to get them aware of common pain, not some woo-woo conflict analysis and resolution.”

“You’re sick and delusional!” one shouted as we put handcuffs on Edmunds.

“No, I’m not, Lynn,” he shouted back. “I fought in Afghanistan, remember? I know what real conflict resolution looks like.”

Lynn and her fellow students were appalled at that.

“You said you came here because of your war experience,” another young woman said. “You said you came here to find a way to peace. If that’s not true, why the hell are you here?”

“You really want to know, Maggie?” he said. “I had the GI Bill, and the woman-to-guy ratio in the school was like thirteen to three, and one of those three was a gay guy.”

The five women were completely shocked.

“You’re an asshole, Adam,” Maggie said.

“Total,” Lynn said and they all walked away.





CHAPTER 82





BY THE TIME BREE AND I had delivered Adam Edmunds to the federal holding facility in Alexandria, filed our reports, and driven home, it was after midnight. We slept in the next morning and got up for a late breakfast with Nana Mama and the kids.

“You’re not working today, are you?” Nana Mama asked.

“Not if I can help it,” I said, yawning.

Bree said, “I think you deserve a day off after the hours you put in yesterday.”

“Agreed,” I said and poured myself another cup of coffee, realizing I owed someone a favor. After we’d eaten omelets and a fresh fruit salad, I got my phone and went out on the front porch. The temperature today, the first day of September, was tolerable but climbing.

I found the number I was looking for and punched it.

Clive Sparkman answered. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“I didn’t have anything solid to tell you before.”

“And now you do?”

“You are speaking to a ‘source close to the investigation,’ ” I said. “And you cannot release this until later in the day.”

“Of course. Which investigation? Higgins’s murder?”