Cross the Line (Alex Cross 24)

10

Sampson and I didn’t argue with Howard. The former detective didn’t strike me as being physically or mentally capable of shooting McGrath. He seemed to have given up and was at some bitter peace with that.

So we left and returned to the office, where I found Bree and Muller waiting with Rico Lincoln and Martin O’Donnell, the other detectives Chief Michaels had assigned to the murder of Tom McGrath. Bree and Muller described their meeting with Vivian McGrath and we brought them up to speed on what we’d found at McGrath’s, Edita Kravic’s, and Terry Howard’s.

When we finished, I looked at Detective Lincoln, a tall, skinny marathoner who’d been smiling and acting impatient during our reports.

“You got something you’d like to share, Rico?”

“I do,” Lincoln said. “I mean, we both do.”

“You first,” O’Donnell said.

Lincoln got on his computer and linked it to a large screen on the wall. The screen jumped to a traffic-camera perspective of upper Wisconsin Avenue. Cars in both northbound lanes came at the camera head-on so we could see each vehicle and its passengers best at a distance. With the rain, it was hard to get a good look through the windshields, especially the ones in the right lane.

Lincoln sped the video up, watching the data in the lower corner, and then paused at the time stamp reading 7:20 a.m.

“Tommy McGrath and Edita Kravic are gunned down at seven twenty,” he said, and he hit Play. “Coming at you in the northbound right lane, dark-primer four-door sedan, stripped, almost looks like it’s about to be repainted.”

“That Treasury agent called it,” Sampson said.

“Watch now,” Lincoln said.

The car was passing, rain spattering its windshield, and you couldn’t see a thing. Lincoln froze the screen when the front of the car was almost out of view. He pointed to the left side of the windshield. Up on the dashboard, there was a red Washington Redskins ball cap.

“We saw Howard wearing a red Redskins cap just like that not an hour ago,” Sampson said.

It was true. Same hat.

Lincoln said, “Something else.”

The detective advanced the frames so the windshield of the car and then the tinted driver-side window disappeared. When he stopped the film again, we had a side-angle view through the open rear window.

We could see the silhouette of a person with a wild mop of hair sitting in the middle of the backseat.

“Okay?” I said.

Lincoln advanced the film two frames. Here, the shadows were different. Three-quarters of the face was revealed.

I stared for a second and then said, “Raggedy Ann?”

“That was our reaction,” Detective O’Donnell said. “At first we thought we had the wrong car and the cap on the windshield was just chance.”

Lincoln said, “But the more we thought about it, the more we became convinced that there wasn’t a third person in the backseat. A scarecrow was sitting there. See the shadows here and here? That’s the shoulders of a dark coat. See the lapels?”

“I get it,” I said. “Why’s Raggedy Ann wearing a coat?”

“Exactly,” Lincoln said.

Rubbing my chin, I said, “I agree that’s our shooter’s car. Have pictures of it at the best angles sent to every officer on the force.”

“On it,” Lincoln said, and he started typing.

Bree fought off a yawn. I fought off a yawn too and then nodded at O’Donnell, who said, “I started going through Chief McGrath’s work files. Right away, I found a threatening e-mail.”

He typed on his computer, and the screen changed from the close-up of the Raggedy Ann doll to a July 3 e-mail to McGrath from TL.

You push too hard, we gonna push right back. Only it’s gonna be lethal this time, Chief McG.