Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(70)

Nolan had shifted and winced. “I don’t think I should answer that, actually.”

Mahoney leaned across the table. “Headless bodies, William. Blood from those bodies in your possession. Start talking or start thinking about what you want for your last meal.”

The stuntman wasn’t happy, but he spilled everything. He’d been the one who chloroformed Marty Forbes in that Fort Lauderdale motel room. He’d been the one who’d put an IV in Forbes’s arm and run drugs into him. He’d been the one who’d kept the maids away the entire four days Marty had lain in a chemical haze.

“I waited until Forbes was starting to come around, and then I left,” Nolan said. “Five days later, I get a UPS box filled with seventy-five grand in cash. I’m still not sure what I did to earn it.”

“You were part of a frame job that put Forbes behind bars for murders he did not commit,” Bree said.

“I didn’t commit them either!” Nolan said. “And I didn’t know about Forbes being in jail until ten days ago, when I was told to go see him but say nothing.”

Nolan claimed M had contacted him again back in February and offered him a month of work that would pay two hundred grand. For that he was supposed to stay at the Regal Motel and wait until he was told what to do.

“Still via this Panamanian e-mail account?”

“No,” Nolan said. “He made me switch to this phone application called Wickr.”

That’s when I believed everything Nolan said. I’d already been inclined to believe him when he said M had made contact with him through a Panamanian e-mail account, just like he had with Marty Forbes. But Wickr, the anonymous, disappearing digital-telegram system, was how M had contacted me, goaded me to—

“Stop!” Bree said, startling me from my thoughts.

The feed froze on the screen inside the Homeland Security offices. It showed a young Caucasian woman wearing a peasant dress and a woolen cap over blond dreadlocks. She was standing in front of locker C-2.





CHAPTER 89





LIEUTENANT PRINCE STARTED THE FEED in slow motion. At 2:29 p.m. on the same day that Nolan retrieved the claim check, a young woman went to the locker, pulled out a backpack and a woven purse. She put the purse over her shoulder and across her chest, bandolier-style, took the backpack, and left.

We could see the young woman from all angles, and she never seemed to reach up toward the top of the locker. Prince rewound the footage and found the same young woman earlier, at 12:40 p.m., when she first deposited her gear in C-2 and locked it.

Sampson said, “She could have put the claim check in there when she loaded the locker. You can’t see her hands for a good eight seconds there.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Keep going backward and speed it up.”

Prince gave her computer an order. The footage went in reverse again, this time at sixteen times normal speed. We had to concentrate, had to stare right at locker C-2 and nothing else. My iPhone buzzed, alerting me to a text. I ignored it.

“There,” Bree said, pointing at the screen.

“Got it,” Prince said and slowed the pace to normal speed. At 10:22 a.m., a man in a long, dark raincoat wearing a black cowboy hat with a clear plastic rain cover over it unlocked C-2. He retrieved a valise and left. The hat brim made it impossible for us to see his face. When he turned, I noticed the hat had some kind of band around the crown, but it was obscured by the rain cover.

I couldn’t see it earlier, at 9:54 a.m., when the cowboy entered the locker area the first time. He put the valise inside C-2, locked the door, and departed, never giving us a single view of his face.

“I don’t see when he could have planted the claim,” Bree said. “It’s all business. He puts the valise in and takes it out.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “But mark that place, Lieutenant Prince, and then keep going back in time.”

At 8:12 a.m. on the day Nolan got the claim check, a big man, African-American, wearing a blue sweatshirt, hood up, entered the locker area and looked around. He wore dark sunglasses and seemed agitated before going to C-2, unlocking it, and reaching inside it up to his elbow.

The big man’s shoulder moved as if he were groping for something, and then he pulled out a laptop computer in a sleeve. He tucked it under his arm and left.

“He definitely could have done it, right there,” Mahoney said. “Why else put something so small in a locker that big?”

“I agree, but let’s look when he puts the computer in there,” I said.

Prince ran the feed backward until finding the same guy at 6:48 a.m. He carried a large, heavy messenger-style bag then, and he put it in C-2.

Before locking it, however, he apparently reconsidered and then reached back inside the locker for the bag. From it, he took the computer in the sleeve and put it deeper into the box. Then he locked it and left with the messenger bag under one arm.

“Both times he could have done it,” Sampson said.

“He’s our guy,” Bree agreed.

“I think so too,” Mahoney said.

My phone buzzed a second time, then a third and a fourth. Exasperated, I dug it out, and looked at the screen, seeing two texts from Jannie and three from Nana Mama. All of them said the same thing: Call! Now! It’s important!

I said, “I have to take this.”