Cross Kill (Alex Cross 24.50)

“That why you built a high-security website about Soneji and me?”

“Yes,” she said, sitting down calmly. “Other people find you two interesting also. Lots of them. It was a safe way to handle our common passion.”

“Your members cheered when they found out my partner, John Sampson, was shot,” I said.

“It’s a private forum of free expression. I didn’t approve of that.”

“Didn’t you?” I said angrily. “You provided space for sickos to plot terror in the name of a man who committed utterly heinous acts and died ten years ago.”

“He’s not dead,” Binx said flatly. “Gary Soneji will never die.”

I remembered the coffin coming up out of the ground in New Jersey, wondered how much longer the FBI’s DNA testing would take, but said nothing of the exhumation of her idol.

Instead I said, “I don’t get this, smart woman like you. Virginia Tech graduate. Write code for a liv

ing. Paid handsomely. Yet you get involved in something like this.”

“Different strokes,” she replied. “And it’s my personal business.”

“Not when it involves the shooting of a police officer. Nothing’s personal.”

“I had nothing to do with that, either,” Binx said evenly. “Nothing. I’ll take a lie detector.”

“Who did, then?” I asked.

“Gary Soneji.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe Claude Watkins?”

Binx shifted her eyes ever so slightly to look just over my right shoulder before shaking her head.

I said, “Watkins’s name is on your company’s incorporation documents.”

“Claude’s a limited partner. He lent me some start-up money.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You know his background?”

“He had problems when he was younger,” she said.

“He is a sadist, Ms. Binx. He was convicted of carving the skin off a little girl’s fingers.”

“He was chemically imbalanced back then,” she said defiantly. “That was the diagnosis of both the state and his personal psychiatrists. He took the drugs they recommended, paid his dues, and moved on. Claude’s a painter and performance artist now. He’s brilliant.”

“I’m sure he is,” I said.

“No,” Binx insisted. “He really is. I can take you to his studio. Show you. We’ve got nothing to hide. It’s not far. He rents space in an old factory down by the Anacostia River, west bank.”

“Address?”

She shrugged. “I just know how to get there.”

I thought for a moment, said, “After my team gets here, you’ll take me?”

She nodded. “Be glad to. Can I take a shower in the meantime? You can search the bathroom if you need to. I assure you it’s nothing but the usual.”

I stared at her for several beats, and then said, “Make it quick.”

Chapter 27