Cross Kill (Alex Cross 24.50)

I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. “And what was that?”

“She said she thought he was kind of a monster, Dr. Cross. Even then.”

Chapter 26

An hour later, I set in to wait on a bench in a hallway by the door to a loft space on the fourth floor of an older building off Dupont Circle.

I’d gotten into the building by showing my badge to a woman entering with groceries. I told her who I was looking for.

“Out running, that one,” she’d replied. “Every lunch hour. Quite a sight.”

I’d knocked on the door just in case, but there was no answer. I had a search warrant. I could have called for patrol to break the door down, but I hoped I could get more information by going patient and gentle.

Twenty minutes later, a fit Asian American woman in her late twenties came huffing up the staircase. Her black hair was cut short and her exposed arms were buff and sleeved in brilliantly colored tattoos.

Sweat poured down her face when she reached the landing and saw me getting off the bench. She didn’t startle or try to escape as I’d expected.

Instead she hardened, said, “Took you a while, Dr. Cross. The intrusion was almost six hours ago. But here you are. At last. In the flesh.”

“Kimiko Binx?” I said, holding up my badge and ID.

“Correct,” Binx replied, walking toward me, palms held open at her sides, and studying me with great interest.

The closer she got, I noticed a device of some sort, orange, and strapped to her upper right arm. When I saw it blink, I thought bomb, and went for my gun.

“What’s that on your arm?” I demanded, the pistol out, pointed her way.

Binx threw her hands up, said, “Whoa, whoa, Detective. It’s a SPOT.”

“What?”

“A GPS transmitter. It sends my position every thirty seconds to a satellite and to a website,” she said. “I use it to track my running routes.”

She turned sideways and held up her arm so I could examine the device. It was smaller than a smartphone, commercially made, heavy-duty plastic, with the SPOT logo emblazoned across the front of it and buttons with various icons. One said SOS and another was a shoe tread. The light blinked beside the shoe.

“So it tracks you?” I said.

“Correct,” Binx said. “What do you want, Dr. Cross?”

I held the search warrant up and said, “If you could open the door.”

Binx read the warrant without comment, fished out a key, and opened the loft. It was an airy work-and-living space with a view of an alley, a hodgepodge of used furniture, and a computer workstation that featured four large screens.

She moved toward the station.

“Do not go near your computer, Ms. Binx. Do not go near anything.”

Binx got aggravated and took off the SPOT device. “You want this, too?”

“Please. Turn it off. Put it on the table there, and your phone if you’ve got it. I’d like to ask you some questions before I call for my evidence team.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked, using her thumbs to play at the buttons on the transmitter.

“Why do you worship Gary Soneji?”

Binx didn’t answer, hit one last button, and looked up at me before setting the SPOT on the table with the light no longer blinking.

“I don’t worship Gary Soneji,” she said finally. “I find Gary Soneji interesting. I find you interesting, for that matter.”