Alex Cross, Run (Alex Cross 20)

“And, were you out to dinner that ni

ght, like it says?”

I could feel the heat coming up into my face. “I’m sorry, Chief, but what the hell does it matter?”

“In and of itself? It doesn’t. But if he’s telling the truth, he can say whatever he wants,” Perkins told me. “The last thing I need is a questionable subpoena on a guy like this, especially if he’s got any kind of audience.”

“If he doesn’t now, he will after that press conference,” Huizenga said, closing her laptop. “Stand by for the shit storm, everyone.”

“See what you can find out on your own,” Perkins said. “Pull whoever you need for this, but please, Alex—step lightly. We’re fighting a war of public perception right now. Approval of the department’s at an all-time low.”

Chief Perkins is no hysteric. He usually doesn’t give a hoot about public perception, especially not at the expense of an investigation. But the reality was, we were operating at expanded levels these days, and that hinged on a good relationship with the mayor, who had his own political angles to consider. The fact that he and his people had stayed away from the press conference meant they were already feeling skittish about this.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Perkins said. “It is what it is.”

“Not a problem,” I told him. “I’ll find him anyway.”

That was the answer the chief needed right now, and hopefully the one that was going to keep me as far from under his thumb as possible.

I just hoped it was also true.

CHAPTER

36

PULL WHOEVER YOU WANT. THAT’S WHAT THE CHIEF HAD SAID. SO I STARTED close to home.

Even on my way down the stairs, I was on the phone with Bree, asking her to take a look at The Real Deal, and meanwhile, to keep digging on the Elizabeth Reilly case.

When I hit the third-floor hall, I called Sampson. He was in court that day, but I left a long message and asked him to swing by the house later on if he could. Both of them were already invested in Elizabeth’s murder. I didn’t see any reason not to make it official.

As soon as I was back at my desk, I pulled up The Real Deal’s contact page again and fired off a quick e-mail.

To whom it may concern: Please contact me at your earliest convenience. Thank you, Detective Alex Cross, MPD.

I was going to play it civil for the time being. I’d even play it nice if I had to, but only as a means to an end. This guy had been putting eyes on me and my family, and that’s a line you don’t cross.

Next up, I wound my way around the little warren of cubicles in our office to find Jarret Krause at his desk. Krause was one of Major Case Squad’s newbies, a Flatbush, Brooklyn, boy whose wife had taken a job working in their congressman’s DC office the previous fall. Already he’d made a name for himself, tracking down two very slippery violent offenders online—one serial rapist who connected with his victims on Facebook, and an eighteen-year-old thug from Shaw who had robbed and killed a seventy-year-old liquor store owner, then tried to sell a case of Cristal on Craigslist. Someday, these punks are going to wise up to their own virtual footprints. In the meantime, we’ve got guys like Krause to go around and scoop them up.

“’Sup, Alex?” he said, when I showed up over the wall of his ridiculously tidy cubicle. For that, I was giving him another six months.

“Have you heard of this blog, The Real Deal?” I asked.

“Yeah.” His fingers hit the keyboard in front of him and he brought it up. “This guy sucks,” he said. “And he’s seriously hating on you, too. How can I help?”

I was a little surprised at how much Krause already knew, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Bad news travels about as fast as sound around that department.

“I need a name,” I said. “The blog’s hosted at DC Access, but Perkins doesn’t want to do an admin subpoena if we can avoid it. I was hoping—”

Already, Krause was scanning pages. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s hitting all the major platforms. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“I’d appreciate it,” I said.

“You want me to stop there, or keep going?” he asked.

I wasn’t going to say no. “Define ‘keep going,’ ” I said.

“Well, for instance—this.” He came back to the latest blog entry, and pointed at the screen. “Twenty-six comments since seven this morning. These are the people you want to keep an eye on. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re going to be nobodies. But then once in a while, one of them will know something they shouldn’t, like a bullet caliber, or time of death, or whatever. That can be gold.”