Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(27)

“Depends.”

“Can you run a U.S. Army captain named Arthur Abrahamsen? Works as a liaison between the Pentagon and the Hill.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Abrahamsen’s a big road racer, sponsored by the military, and he’s taken an interest in Ali. I just want to make sure he is who he says he is.”

“For you, Alex, anything,” Mahoney said.

I took a shower and was dressing when my phone rang.

“U.S. Army captain Arthur Abrahamsen, defense intelligence liaison to the House Armed Services Committee. West Point graduate. Two tours in Afghanistan. Heck of a bicycle racer. Your kid’s lucky he’s taken an interest.”

“Thanks, Ned.”

“What are uncles for?” he said and hung up.

I put on my shoes, feeling a little down. I appreciated someone of Captain Abrahamsen’s caliber helping Ali, and I’d had male coaches and teachers who’d been big influences on me. But there was also a certain sadness in realizing that Ali, my baby boy, was moving to a time where he’d rely on me for guidance less and less.

My cell phone rang again. This time it was Keith Karl Rawlins.

“The Ethereum stopped moving,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Where is it?”

“In two hundred and fourteen accounts spread out all over the world. Some of it has been downloaded to so-called hard wallets, but I have the codes for them. Not a Bitcoin of it has been spent, though. As far as I can tell.”

“So it’s just sitting there?”

“Correct.”

“We know who owns the accounts?”

“Shell companies of one sort or another. I haven’t been getting far in that regard. But I might have something else for you. There’s an idea I’ve been toying with, and I wanted your input. Can you come to the lab at Quantico?”





CHAPTER 33





LESS THAN THIRTY HOURS AFTER I spoke to Rawlins, John Sampson was driving us down a winding backcountry road in western Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, not far from the village of Graves Mill. I had an iPad in my lap and was studying an OnX Maps app that showed the land on both sides of the road, the property boundaries, and the names of the properties’ owners.

We’d gone past a couple of new subdivisions before entering farmland interrupted by fingers of timber spilling out of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Beautiful country,” Sampson said.

“Perfect place for a troll to build his troll hole.”

“Mahoney said he calls it an anthill.”

“I read the reports. Sounds more troll than ant to me. His property line is coming up in a mile.”

“Left or right?” Sampson said.

“Right side for three miles and west all the way to Shenandoah National Park. It’s a big piece. Seven hundred and fifty-some acres.”

“He’s got the money to do whatever he wants.”

“And get away with it,” I said.

It was the money, almost thirty million by some estimates, that had brought the landowner to our attention. Or at least, the money was part of what made him stand out for us. Or what helped us sift him out from the others.

Not long ago, it had felt like our investigation had ground to a halt. Then I’d gotten that call from Keith Karl Rawlins.

When I got to Quantico, the FBI contractor asked me if I’d done a behavioral profile of M. The question surprised me because, strangely, I had not, even though creating those kinds of profiles was what I had done at the FBI.

Why hadn’t I considered doing a profile before?

Before I could come up with an answer, Rawlins proposed writing an algorithm designed to sift for the kind of person M most likely was, based on my behavioral assessment. But he added that he didn’t want me to do the assessment the way I normally did.

Instead, the computer wizard asked me, John, and Ned to create a string of search words that described our suspect in as much detail as possible. We did, starting with wealthy.

Given the scope of what we believed M had been involved in, including tracking down and killing the human traffickers, the three of us agreed that he had to be rich. But why would he ask for ransom for Mrs. Jenkins? We couldn’t answer that but left the wealthy filter in there nonetheless. Cold-blooded was another term we wrote down, along with forward-thinking and amoral.

We came up with a total of thirty-seven distinctive traits that summed up our understanding of M. I have to admit that much of what Rawlins did with those words afterward went right over my head. But his digital sieves began to sift, and eight hours later he had a list of fourteen possible candidates.

We’d narrowed it down to the five who lived within a day’s drive of one of the murder scenes. Two of those we discarded almost immediately; they were old men and in jail for prior heinous crimes. The third and fourth men were only mildly interesting.

But the fifth man? The more we dug into his past, the more he looked like the jackpot suspect we’d been searching for.





CHAPTER 34





JOHN AND I PARKED AT the pull-off into a field that was roughly two hundred yards from the northwest corner of the sprawling property. Mahoney parked behind us and got a drone and a laptop from his trunk.

“This legal without a warrant?” Sampson asked.