“Good idea, but we can’t do it,” I replied. “Carney knows us.”
My wife threw up her hands in desperation. “So what do we do?”
“Unless Quintus finds a cooperative judge, we wait until Carney leaves for work, and then we break in.”
“Times like these make me fall in love with you all over again, Dr. Cross.”
I grinned and blew her a kiss. My phone rang. Sampson.
“John?”
“Okay, Alex,” the big man said, breathing hard. “I’ve got a few things. Carney was a marine, did a tour in Afghanistan. Suffered a minor head injury due to an IED. Recovered enough to pass the physicals for Force Recon, Special Forces, but was turned down for unnamed reasons. He took an honorable discharge, became a security guard in Albuquerque around the time of the first shooting, kidnapping, and drowning. And he was on rookie probation with Tampa PD two years ago when the second round of killings and kidnappings went down. He took the job up here four months ago, better pay, same seniority.”
“That’s enough,” I said. “Call Quintus, give him that.”
Fifteen minutes later, the captain called. “You got your warrant, Alex. Sampson’s on his way to pick it up. He’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops.”
The minutes ticked by, and I had to force myself not to imagine what might be happening up in that apartment while we waited. The emotional part of me said, Just go up there, knock down the door, and let the warrant come in behind you. Your word against Carney’s on when it was served. But a more rational voice in my head kept reminding me that we were so close to being legal that it wasn’t worth risking the fruit of the poisonous—
“There he is!” Bree cried. “Carney’s on the move!”
I looked up to see the young patrolman turn off the walkway to his apartment building and head away from us up the street dressed in civilian clothes: jeans, work boots, a plaid shirt, and a canvas jacket.
“He’s carrying something under his arm,” I said, grabbing a pair of binoculars and looking at him as he stopped beside a blue Chevy Impala and worked the key into the lock.
He opened the rear door, tossed in what he’d been carrying, then closed the door and circled the car.
“What was he carrying?” my wife asked.
“Empty, folded canvas duffel bags,” I said, lowering my binoculars as Carney climbed into the driver’s seat. “A bunch of them.”
Bree understood and looked ill. “We can’t wait for Sampson and the warrant, Alex. He’s going somewhere to drown those babies and Cam Nguyen before he goes to work.”
I agreed, started our car, and pulled out, saying, “Call John. Tell him to enter and search the apartment once he gets backup. And warn the captain.”
Chapter
69
Sunday saw Cross pull out of his parking space on Tuc
kerman Street and immediately followed half a block back.
“He’s trailing that blue Impala,” Acadia said.
“I’ve got them both,” the writer replied.
“Go right,” she said.
“I see it.”
The writer took the right, kept well back in traffic, six or seven cars behind Cross, who was six or seven cars in back of the blue Impala. Was that the murderer driving? The thought gave Sunday chills.
Acadia evidently felt much the same way, because she asked, “Do you think he’s like us?”
The writer glanced over, thinking once again how spooky it was that they thought so similarly, as if they were mirror images of the same person.
“He likes killing, certainly,” Sunday replied. “But I would imagine that it is compulsion and not enjoyment driving his darker activities.”