“Terrorist, assassin—seems to work both sides of the street. Anyone who pays him. He’s the most violent killer I’ve ever seen, Bree. He likes to hurt people. And there are others like him. It’s a name they have for killers for hire: Tiger.”
“So he took Nana and the kids? He did this? You’re sure about that?”
“Yes,” I said as the phone rang again. “And that’s him.”
The phone kept ringing—and I began to pace around the house, going from room to room, thinking about my family all the while. Rosie followed me everywhere.
In the kitchen, Nana’s favorite cookbook was still out—The Gift of Southern Cooking. I checked and saw it was open to a starred recipe for chocolate-pecan cake.
Nana’s famous gabardine raincoat was draped over the back of a kitchen chair. How many times had she told me, “I don’t want another raincoat. It took me half a century to get this one worn in right”?
I walked around Ali’s room.
I saw his Pokémon cards laid out carefully on the floor. His beloved plush toy Moo. A hand-painted T-shirt from his fifth birthday party. A copy of Ralph S. Mouse spread open on the night table.
When I got to Jannie’s room, I sat down heavily on the bed. My eyes ran over her precious collection of books. And the wire baskets brimming with hair accessories, lip glosses, fruit-scented lotions. Then I spotted her reading glasses, prescribed only a month or so ago. That got to me. There was something so vulnerable and telling about her new glasses sitting on the desk.
I sat there holding Rosie and heard the phone ring again. Bree picked it up.
She said, very quietly, “Fuck you.”
And she hung up on whoever it was this time.
Chapter 132
I WAS GOING to get my family back. I had to believe that. But was it true? What were the real odds that I would? They were definitely getting worse.
From six-thirty until close to seven that morning, I sat out on the front porch and tried not to go completely crazy. I thought about taking a drive, to see if it would relax me.
But I was afraid to be away from the house for any length of time.
At a little past seven, the phone hang-ups stopped and I got about an hour of sleep.
Then I showered and dressed and called in one of the patrolmen from the street. I told him to take any calls for me and gave him a cell number where I could be reached.
At nine, Bree and I attended an emergency meeting at the Daly Building.
I was surprised to find about a dozen officers inside the conference room. These were top people too, the best in Washington. I understood that it was a show of support and concern for me. Most of the detectives were people I’d worked with on other cases. Chief of Detectives Davies, Bree, and Sampson had reached out to officers with street connections who might help locate my family.
If anyone could.
Chapter 133
FROM THERE, THE day got stranger and stranger for me.
At eleven o’clock, I faced a smaller group inside a windowless conference room at CIA headquarters out at Langley. The atmosphere in the room couldn’t have been more different from the one at Daly. Everyone except me wore a suit and tie. The body language was stiff and uncomfortable. No one wanted to be there except me—I needed their help.
A case officer from the National Clandestine Service named Merrill Snyder greeted me with a firm handshake and the unpromising line “Thanks for coming to see us, Dr. Cross.”
“Can we start?” I asked him.
“We’re just waiting for one more,” Snyder said. “There’s coffee, soft drinks.”
“Where’s Eric Dana?” I asked, remembering the leader’s name from the last time I’d been out to Langley.
“He’s on vacation. The man we’re waiting on is his superior. Sure you don’t want some coffee?”
“No, I’m fine. I don’t need any more caffeine this morning, trust me.”