Detective Cross (Alex Cross 24.50)

“You can narrow it down,” I said.

“How’s that?” Bree asked.

“Your bomber likes trash cans. Three of the four IEDs were in them. The cleaners I just spoke to said they were working from the front entrance north. They swept, vacuumed, and picked up trash bags in the main hall and on the first level of shops. Those garbage bags are in cleaning carts. Two are in the shopping hall and food court. One in the main hall. I’d take the dogs to those carts first, and then sweep the second floor of shops and the Amtrak ticketing and the train platforms. Metro station after that.”

The FBI bomb squad commander looked to Bree. “That work, Chief?”

“It does,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Cross.”

“Anytime,” I said.

Ned Mahoney showed up, along with two FBI bomb-sniffing canines and the entire Metro bomb unit.

“We’ve got to stop meeting this way, Chief,” Mahoney said, bleary-eyed and drinking a cup of Starbucks.

“Our secret’s out,” she said.

“He’s escalating,” I said. “The interval between attacks is getting shorter. Twenty-four hours between the first and the next two. And now fifteen hours since then?”

“Sounds right,” Mahoney said, nodding. “How much time did he give us?”

“Two hours eighteen minutes,” Bree said. “Six a.m.”

Denton said, “If Dr. Cross is right and he hid it in a garbage can, we’ll find it a lot sooner than that.”

“Unless he’s using Yugoslavian C-4 again,” I said.

“Which is why we’ll treat every garbage bag or can as if it’s a live bomb.”

The first dogs went inside at 3:39 a.m. We went in after the bomb squads entered, and stood in the dramatic vaulted main hall of the station, listening to the echoes of the dogs and their handlers.

None of the K-9s reacted to the garbage carts the cleaners had abandoned. But Denton prudently had them turned over, dumping the trash bags, which she covered with bomb mats.

She couldn’t do that to every remaining trash bag in the station. Instead, she told her agents to don their protective cowls. They would retrieve every public garbage bag left in the rest of the building and put them in piles to be matted.

They cleared the second floor of the shops first. I noticed and pointed to a Washington Post newspaper box. The headlines read: A CITY ON EDGE. FEARS OF MORE TO COME.

“He was reading from the paper,” Bree said.

“Following his own exploits,” I said. “Enjoying himself.”

The dogs cleared the Amtrak Hall.

“It has to be out on one of the platforms then,” I told Bree and Mahoney. “The cleaners said they almost always do them last.”

Mahoney ordered the search personnel onto the platforms. We went through a short tunnel to Platform 6 and watched as the German shepherds loped past dark trains, flanking Platforms 1 and 2 to our far left, going from garbage receptacle to garbage receptacle, sniffing at the open doors to the coach cars.

Bree checked her watch.

“We’ll find it,” she said. “There’s only so many places he could have—”

The tracks to both sides of Platforms 4 and 5 were empty. There was nothing to block the brilliant flash of the bomb exploding in a trash can at Platform 4’s far north end, or the blast that boxed our ears and forced us to our knees.

It was 4 a.m. on the dot.

Chapter 17

Later that afternoon, I opened the door to Kate Williams, who actually greeted me before going into my basement office. She took a seat before I offered it.