“The massage parlor killer,” Sunday said, feeling impressed and annoyed. Cross was indeed a worthy adversary, one to be respected, as all enemies must be if you intended to defeat them.
Cross had obviously taken the information from the Thierry Mulch letter and run with it a lot farther than he would have ever guessed. Dr. Alex had a suspect now. No doubt. For the first and only time since he’d decided to destroy Alex Cross, to make an example of the man, to demonstrate clearly the randomness and absurdity of life, the writer felt a pang of uncertainty.
If the detective could break open a case like this one—
“Here they come,” Acadia said.
Cross and his wife ran off the porch, past the Dumpster, down the steps to the sidewalk, and away toward their car. Fighting off the urge to smash something, Sunday started the Tahoe, waited a second, and then threw his vehicle into gear.
It had all been going so well up until the past couple of minutes, he fumed. The audio bugs he’d put in the dining room and the front room two nights ago had been performing flawlessly, and they’d heard things since that with a little creativity would prove invaluable in the days to come.
Sunday had learned, for example, that Bree Stone was obsessed with and hunting for a teenage runaway named Ava, and that she and Cross had evidently talked to the girl the night before. Cross’s son Ali, it turned out, was zombie mad, and the boy claimed to have smelled Sunday during his visit.
Was that possible? Did he have that distinctive an odor? Acadia said no, but he’d already changed deodorant and soap brands just in case.
They’d also learned that Cross’s daughter had made the track team and had a chip on her shoulder concerning the amount of family time Dr. Alex regularly missed. And dear Nana Mama would be spending as much time at St. Anthony’s as she was at home in the very near future, getting ready for the Easter celebration.
All this had been fantastic to learn. These facts had had his imagination running wild until Cross had gone up to his office and spotted the penholder out of place. That moment, caught on camera just before the fax machine rang, had been so perfect that Sunday had pumped his fist in victory and Acadia had clapped.
But then those police sketches had come in, and Cross had crowed about the killer being right in front of them the entire time, and had said nothing else!
“You probably should have put a bug in his car, sugar,” Acadia offered.
“Gee, you think?” Sunday said.
“I do,” Acadia said. “Where are we going?”
“Wherever they go, baby girl,” Sunday said. “I want to see this killer now as much as they do.”
“Kindred spirits?”
“Something like that.”
Chapter
68
Two hours later, feeling handcuffed and shackled, Bree and I sat in an unmarked car down Tuckerman Street from an apartment building in the Brightwood neighborhood of Washington, not far from where Joss Branson had been taken from the day care center.
We had Captain& Quintus on speakerphone and were engaged in a shouting match.
“What do you mean, you’re getting blowback?” I demanded.
“There are lives at stake here!” Bree insisted. “Babies’ lives!”
“You don’t think I know that?” Quintus shot back. “But all you’ve really got at this point are those drawings and the fact that Carney seemed to show up around the crime scenes.”
“Every crime scene! I saw him outside the spa, and the Lancasters’ house, and I swear I caught a glimpse of him in a Georgetown sweatshirt in the crowd outside the brothel. And Bree says she thinks Carney was the officer she ordered to help Mrs. Branson after she almost collapsed right after Joss was taken!”
“You’re sure he wasn’t dispatched to those scenes?” Quintus said.
“No, he was not, Captain,” I retorted. “The first night he told me and Sampson that he’d heard about the Superior Spa on his scanner while driving home. At the Lancasters’ he said he’d been dispatched for crowd control, but we just found out he was off-duty at the time.”
“It’s still not enough to perfect a search warrant. Find me more.”
“Find us another judge!” I shouted, and hung up, wanting to punch something. We knew Carney was in his apartment. I’d used a burn phone to call his landline and he’d picked up about fifteen minutes ago. Were the babies in there? Was Cam Nguyen?
“How about we send someone up, listen for crying?” Bree suggested.