Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(84)

I got up quietly because Bree had been up even later than me and dressed for a jog to try and clear out the cobwebs. Outside, the heat was just starting to build again.

As I ran, I went over the idea I’d had the night before, that the Southeast serial rapist and killer who probably had Dee might also have murdered Kay and Christopher. One person — that figure who’d lurked in the shadows near the football stand that night — might have done it all.

But why shoot them? Killing a couple was not his usual modus operandi. He snatched single young women, raped them, and killed them. He didn’t gun down random people in school parking lots. So why now?

As I slowed to a walk and climbed onto the porch, the only answer I could come up with was that either Kay or Christopher had gotten suspicious about him. Maybe the killer realized it and cold-bloodedly executed them?

In the foyer, I grabbed a towel, wiped off my face and head, and put it around my neck before going into the kitchen. Nana Mama had already brewed a pot of coffee and was making omelets for Ali and Bree. Jannie was still upstairs sleeping, which was not unusual for a seventeen-year-old.

“Where to first?” I asked Bree as I poured a mug of coffee.

“Back to the Nathaniels’ house,” she said. “You?”

Before I could answer, my cell phone buzzed and rang on the counter. Another unfamiliar DC number. “Alex Cross,” I said.

I got no reply, only a choking noise.

“Hello?” I said. “Who is this, please?”

“It’s Elinore Paulson,” she finally said in a voice shot through with anxiety and loss. “Elaine Paulson’s mother. My grand-daughters are missing, Dr. Cross. They never came home last night and they’re not answering their phones.”





CHAPTER 97





AFTER I GOT OFF THE phone with Elinore Paulson, I informed Bree of what had happened and called Ned Mahoney. I thought that with three young women missing, two of them the daughters of a victim in a federal murder investigation, the FBI should take over the entire probe.

Ned agreed and said he’d pick me up in half an hour. Bree was on the phone with Commissioner Dennison, keeping him abreast of the situation and asking for help in getting all data from the twins’ cell phones.

I called the detectives who’d helped organize the civilian searches the night before and got Maria Newton, who was shocked when I told her.

“So he was right there in the streets with us?”

“It appears that way. When was the last time you heard from Tina and Rachel?”

“Hold on,” Detective Newton said. “Christopher, Tina and Rachel. Here’s the list of addresses they contacted and times. Last one, eleven ten p.m., they talked to a Marian Rodgers on Sixth Street in Southeast. Then they texted me at eleven twelve p.m. to say they’d found nothing and were going home for the night. They wanted to come back and help this morning.”

I was taking notes furiously on a pad on the counter. “Can you send that text to me with Marian Rodgers’s address?”

“Absolutely,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Dr. Cross, given what’s happened, I … I don’t know if I feel comfortable asking civilians to do more canvassing.”

“I’m with you,” I said. “We don’t want four missing girls on our hands. Besides, the FBI’s taking over now. They’ll want special agents going door to door. But, seriously, Detective, thanks for your efforts.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” she said sadly. “I just wish it had worked.”

I hung up to find Bree still on her phone. She gave me the thumbs-up, a good sign. With the GPS data, we’d soon know where all three were when they vanished. Upstairs, as I took a quick shower, I thought, One and then two more right away. That’s another break in his pattern. All the other girls were taken one at a time at long intervals. Why change now? And why take the chance of being caught grabbing two girls in the middle of a canvass, when there were all sorts of eyeballs on the streets? It’s such a brazen act.

Maybe he was showing us how clever and invincible he is. Or maybe he felt threatened with discovery and wanted to make a statement: He killed the girls’ father and their father’s lover, and now he has the dead man’s girls.

I couldn’t help but think of Jannie and what this was going to do to her. She knew Dee Nathaniel, Maya Parker, and Elizabeth Hernandez as acquaintances. But she was friends with Tina and Rachel Christopher. She was …

It hit me so hard then, I almost doubled over.

Jannie’s a possible target. She has to be.

I panicked at the thought that my daughter might also have been grabbed during the night. I turned off the water, jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, wrapped it around my waist, and charged out of the bathroom.

I threw our bedroom door open, ran across the little landing, and raced down the short hall to Jannie’s room. I opened the door without knocking and felt queasy almost immediately.

Jannie’s bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in.

“Jannie?” I shouted. “Jannie!”

The bathroom door across the hall opened a crack, and Jannie looked out, saw me in the open doorway to her bedroom, and frowned.

“No need to shout, Dad,” she said. “I’m right here and I’m on time. Weight training’s not for an hour. What’s with the towel?”