The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross 25)

I opened the outside door as quietly as I could, slipped out into the night, and went along the side of my house, creeping under our bedroom window. The light went out up there, and I trotted down the sidewalk to a waiting car.

I climbed into the passenger seat. John Sampson was at the wheel.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, and then he smiled and put the car in gear.

“You going to explain why we have to sneak around?” I said.

“I am,” Sampson said, and he told me about Emily McCabe, Sally Sweet, the video Sweet saw on Neal Parks’s computer, and how the clip had ended before the strangulation was complete.

“You believe her?” I said.

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Warrant?”

“We got blowback on the ask,” Sampson said. “Can’t get a search authorization based solely on the hearsay of a prostitute eager to avoid jail time. But I figure blonde lives matter, and think we should have a chat with old Neal Parks sooner rather than later.”

“Why me?” I asked. “What about Fox?”

Sampson shook his head wearily. “She’s threatening to file a complaint against me for squeezing her leg hard when she refused to follow my lead during my interrogation. She has total disregard for rank. Even dissed Bree on the deal.”

“So things are going well between you?”

“Oh, yeah, just peachy,” he said. “Which is why you’re here.”

“For a talk?”

“I figure we rattle Parks’s cage a little. S

ee if we can shake anything loose.”

I knew I should ask him to pull over and get a taxi home. Bree would have a fit if she found out I was out with one of her detectives and both of us were defying her direct orders. But still, it felt so good and achingly familiar to be rolling with Sampson late at night that I blocked out my promise to Bree.

We cruised through the city, heading for a saloon Neal Parks liked to frequent after eleven o’clock at night. The Parrot was a serious dive bar by DC standards; it occupied the first floor of a shabby six-story building near the Maryland state line. Parks lived on the fourth floor.

“Convenient if you’re an alcoholic,” Sampson said.

“Is he?” I said.

“No idea,” he said, parking down the street. “Sally says he sits in a booth and handles business there until the Parrot shuts down. Runs the whole thing off his phone. Cyberpimp.”

“How are we going to see the video clip of Emily McCabe?”

“I thought about just going up there to watch it for ourselves,” Sampson admitted, climbing out of the squad car. “But we risk fruit of the poisonous tree. If we can get a warrant, we don’t want that clip excluded at trial.”

Trial, I thought, getting out the other side. My own day in court was fast approaching, and yet I seemed to be doing everything I could to avoid facing the issue head-on. What was that about?

“There’s an alley exit, and the front door,” Sampson said, gesturing down the block at the neon-blue macaw flickering above the bar’s entrance.

“I’d take the back,” I said, “but I’m unarmed.”

John stopped, stooped into the car, and retrieved a small Ruger nine-millimeter, which he handed to me. “I’m coming in the back,” he said. “You go in, make him, and wait.”

I looked down at the pistol a moment, knowing this was the worst idea I’d had in weeks, but I stuck it in my waistband at the small of the back and pulled my shirt down over it.

We split up. I strolled up the street and entered the Parrot. The place was a pleasant dive doing a healthy business, considering the hour. On the jukebox beyond the two pool tables, Lenny Kravitz was singing “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” The bar itself was to my left; a row of booths lined the opposite wall.

Photos, paintings, and posters featuring parrots were everywhere, and two live African gray parrots croaked and fluttered in a large wire cage near the center of the saloon. One of the parrots climbed the cage wall using its talons and beak. As I passed it on the way to the bar, the parrot cocked its head and goggle-eyed me a moment before squawking, “Five-O! Five-O!”