“I sure do,” she said, and looked back at me – for permission, I think. In fact, everyone was staring at me now.
“How about we all three go?” I said, and got up to follow them out of the kitchen.
At the bottom of the stairs, Christine stopped and turned to me. Ali ran up ahead of us.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Honestly, it’s nothing more than it seems, Alex. Just a surprise visit. I’ve got a conference in DC this week – and I couldn’t stay away from Ali.”
I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. Christine had shown herself to be a very changeable person over the years, including the way she fought for custody so hard and then gave it up just as quickly.
“You could have called first,” I said. “You should have called, Christine.”
Ali practically screamed from the top of the stairs, he was so excited. “Come on, you guys!”
“Here we come, little man!” I called to him. As we started up, I spoke low to Christine. “This is going to be a onetime thing. Nothing more than that. Okay?”
“Absolutely,” she said, and reached back to give my arm a squeeze. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Chapter 48
THE NEXT DAY was jam-packed for me, and I honestly didn’t give Christine much thought as my morning and most of my afternoon slipped away.
I saw both Bronson and Rebecca at their respective hospitals, performed some follow-up interviews in Woodley Park, did a consultation with the DA’s office on a separate case, and, finally, took some much-needed desk time to try and chip away at my stack of overdue reports.
Then, around three, I was picking up a late sandwich at the Firehook near the Daly Building – and I got a call from Ali’s school.
“Dr. Cross? It’s Mindy Templeton at Sojourner Truth.” Mindy was a school secretary and had been there for years, including during Christine’s tenure as principal.
“I feel a little awkward about this, but Christine Johnson’s here to pick up Alexander, and she’s not on his caregiver list. I just wanted to get your permission before we let him go.”
“What?”
I didn’t mean to raise my voice so loud, but suddenly everyone in the coffee shop was turning to look at me. A second later, I was out on the sidewalk, still talking on my cell. “Mindy, the answer is no. Christine may not take Ali, do you understand?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I don’t mean to alarm you,” I said more evenly. “If you could just please ask Christine to wait, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Maybe fifteen minutes. I’m on my way right now.”
When I hung up, I was already running for the parking garage, my mind completely unsettled. What the hell was Christine thinking?
Had she been planning this all along?
And, for that matter, what was she planning?
As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t get to the school fast enough.
Chapter 49
“I’M HIS MOTHER, for God’s sake! I wasn’t doing anything wrong! I’m not one of your stalkers.”
Christine was defensive from the minute I got there. We had it out in the hall while Ali waited in the school office.
“Christine, there are rules about this kind of thing – rules you used to abide by. You can’t just show up and expect to–”
“What are you saying?” she snapped. “Brianna Stone, this woman I hardly even know, can pick my son up from school and I can’t? Half the teachers here still know who I am!”
“You’re not listening,” I said. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to squirm out of this or if she truly believed she was in the right. “What exactly were you planning to do with him anyway?”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said dismissively. “I was going to call.”
“But you didn’t. Again.”
“When I got him out of school, I mean. We were going to go for ice cream, and he would have been home for dinner. Now he’s all confused and upset. It didn’t have to be this way, Alex.”
It was like listening to an out-of-tune piano. Everything just seemed a little off. Even her clothes. She was dressed to the nines today, in a fitted white linen suit, sling-back heels, and full makeup. In fact, she looked absolutely gorgeous. But who was she trying to impress?
I took a deep breath and tried again to get through to her.
“What happened to your conference?” I said.
For the first time, Christine looked away from me. She stared over at one of the bulletin boards in the hall. It was covered in crayon drawings of cars, planes, trains, and boats, with the word TRANSPORTATION in construction paper letters across the top.
“Did you see Ali’s?” she said, pointing at his sailboat. Of course I had seen it.
“Christine, look at me. Did you even have a conference?”
She crossed her arms and blinked several times as she met my eyes again.
“Well, what if I didn’t? Is it such a crime that I missed my son? That I thought he might want to see his mommy and daddy in the same room, just for once? God, Alex, what’s happened to you?”
It seemed as if there were an answer for everything here, except my questions. The only part I really trusted was that she loved and missed Ali. But that wasn’t enough.
“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “We’re going to go get some ice cream. You can say your good-byes after that, and then you’ll see him again in July, like always. Anything else, and we’re going back to mediation. That’s a promise, Christine. Please don’t test me on this.”
To my surprise, she smiled. “Make it dinner. Just the three of us, and then I’ll get on my plane to Seattle like a good little girl. How’s that?”
“I can’t,” I said.
Her mouth tightened into a hard, straight line again. “Can’t? Or won’t?”
The answer was both, but before I could say anything else, the office door opened and there was Ali. He looked so all alone, and scared.
“When can we go?” he wanted to know.
Christine scooped him up just as she had the night before. To her credit, there was none of the thunderstorm in her eyes that I’d seen a second ago.
“Guess what, honey? We’re going to go out for some ice cream. You, me, and Daddy, right now. What do you think of that?”
“Can I get two scoops?” he asked right away.
I couldn’t help laughing – for real. “Always the broker, aren’t you, little man?” I said. “Yeah, two scoops. Why not?”
As we left the school, Ali took each of us by the hand, one on either side, and it was smiles all around. But it still wasn’t lost on me that Christine hadn’t committed to a thing.
Chapter 50
BY THE TIME I finally got to the Hoover Building for my five thirty meeting, it was quarter after six. I signed in and took the elevator.
The Information Sharing and Analysis Center where Agent Patel worked could have been anywhere in corporate America, with its ugly tan-and-mauve cubicle maze, low ceiling tiles, and fluorescent box lights. The only tip-off was the endless computers, at least one internal and two outside machines at every desk. The real sci-fi-looking stuff – the enormous servers and surveillance banks – was elsewhere on the floor, behind closed doors.
Patel jumped when I knocked on the half wall of her work space.
“Alex! Jesus! You scared me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “And sorry I’m so late. I don’t suppose Agent Siegel’s still around?” I wasn’t keen to end my day with him, but in the name of collaboration, here I was.
“He got tired of waiting,” she said. “We’re supposed to meet him in the SIOC conference room.”
She called his extension and left a message that we were on our way, but when we got there – surprise, surprise – no Siegel. We waited a few more minutes and then started our meeting without him. Fine with me.
Chapter 51
PATEL QU
ICKLY BROUGHT me up to speed on the True Press e-mails. Actually, there wasn’t that much to tell, at least not at this point in her investigation.
“Based on the header, the IP address, and what I got from the registry over at Georgetown, Jayson Wexler’s account was open and active at the time both messages were sent,” she told me.
“Which is not to say that Wexler sent them himself,” I said.
“Not at all. Just that they either originated from or somehow passed through his account.”
“Passed through?”
“It’s possible someone used an anonymous remailer from a remote location, but really they’d have no reason to. A stolen laptop that never turns up is a perfect dead end, forensically speaking. You’re better off looking for any witnesses to the theft itself.”
“We canvassed up, down, and sideways where Wexler claims the computer was taken,” I told her. “Didn’t get anywhere. And the closest surveillance cameras are DDOT’s, over on K Street. There’s nothing from the park at all. No one saw a thing – which is a little odd.”
Patel sat back, twiddling a pen between her fingers. “So should I keep going? Because there’s more bad news.”
I ran my hand over my mouth and jaw, an old tic of mine. “You’re just full of sunshine today, aren’t you?”
“Technically, this is Siegel’s piece, so you can’t hold it against me,” she said. I liked working with Patel. She seemed to keep her sense of humor no matter what, and the humor was dark and deep.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I can take whatever you’re dishing out here.”
“It’s about this ‘Patriot’ moniker they used in one of the e-mails. Ever since True Press ran the story, the name seems to have stuck, in a really scary way. We’ve got people at both ends of the spectrum foaming at the mouth, from the radical antiglobalization types all the way over to the hard-right survivalists. The Bureau’s already working up contingencies around the possibility of tribute killings.”
She ran a simple open-source search on her laptop. Less than a minute later, I was looking through pages of results – websites, blogs, vlogs, chat rooms, mainstream commentary, fringe press – all of it giving credence to the supposed “patriotism” behind these sniper murders.
I’d certainly seen this kind of thing before. Kyle Craig alone had legions of fans, or disciples, as he liked to call them. But Patel was right. This had the potential to be something else again – a whole grassroots movement of people who saw nothing less than America at stake, and nothing short of wholesale violence as the only solution with a chance of working.
“Best way to stir the crazy pot?” she said over my shoulder. “Wrap your dogma in an American flag and wait to see who bites. Like I said – scary.”
Chapter 52
AROUND SEVEN THIRTY, Patel and I finally got up to go. As we did, though, she turned away from the door and toward me. The sudden look in her eyes was all but unmistakable – and it was scary in a whole other way.
“Have you ever had homemade chana masala?” she asked.
Still, I didn’t want to be too presumptuous. “Homemade? Never.”
“Because I’m a pretty good cook, despite appearances.” She gestured at her nondescript gray slacks and white blouse. “I think everyone here assumes I’m just some wonk who goes home to her seven cats and a Lean Cuisine every night.”
“I doubt that,” I said. Patel had always struck me as a classic diamond in the rough. She was the kind of woman who arrived at the office Christmas party all done up and dropped every jaw in the room.
“So, my car’s in the shop,” she went on. “I was thinking if you could save me the cab fare home, I’d pay you back with dinner.” Then she really threw me. Patel reached over and put her hand on top of mine. “Maybe even dessert,” she said. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re full of surprises,” I said, and we both laughed, a little nervously. “Listen, Anjali–”
“Oh God.” Her hand fell away. “It’s never good when they start with your name.”
“I’m in a relationship. We’re getting married.”
She nodded and started gathering up her stuff. “You know what they say about all the good men, right? Taken or gay. In fact, that’s going to be the title of my memoir. Think it will sell?”
This time we laughed for real. It cut right through the tension, which I think was nice for both of us.
“I appreciate the invitation,” I said, and meant it. If this were some other time in my life, I definitely would have been eating chana masala that night. Maybe dessert, too. “And I can still give you that ride if you want.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She tucked her laptop under her arm and held the conference room door for me. “If I’m not cooking, I’m going to stick around here and get some more work done. Meanwhile, if you wouldn’t mind forgetting we ever had this conversation–”
“What conversation?” I gave her my best wide-eyed innocent face on the way out. “I can’t remember a thing.”
Chapter 53
AFTER SOME REHEATED supper that night, and long after the kids had gone to bed, I got a call from Christine.
The second her name came up on the caller ID, I felt torn in a big way. I couldn’t just ignore her, but the last thing I wanted right now was more talk. The only reason I picked up in the end was to keep her from possibly coming over to the house again.
“What is it, Christine?”
Right away, I could hear she was crying. “It was wrong, what you did today, Alex. You didn’t have to push me away like that.”
I was already walking from the bedroom up to my office, and waited until I’d closed the door behind me to go on.
“I kind of did,” I said. “You showed up out of the blue and, even worse, you lied. More than once.”
“I only lied because I thought our son deserved to see his family together!”
It was as if we’d started fighting in record time, which was saying something for us. The whole thing made me feel exhausted. It brought back the terribleness I’d felt during the court case over Ali.
“Ali sees his family together every day,” I said. “Just not his mother.”
She sobbed again. “How can you say a thing like that?”
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Christine. I’m just telling it like it is.” My patience, meanwhile, was hanging at the other end of a very thin thread. Christine had brought this on herself with her terrible inconsistency as a mother.
“Well, don’t worry, because you got your wish. I’m at the airport.”
“My wish is that we could all be happy with the choices we’ve made,” I said.
“Just as long as you’re happy first, isn’t that right, Alex? Isn’t that how it’s always been?”
And then my thread snapped.
“Do you remember leaving me?” I said. “Do you remember how I begged you to stay in Washington? Do you remember leaving Ali? Damn it, does any of that even register with you anymore?”
“Don’t you curse at me!” she shouted back, but I wasn’t finished.
“So now what? You think just by showing up here, you can change everything that’s happened since then? It doesn’t work that way, Christine, and I wouldn’t change it if I could!”
“No.” Her voice was constricted now. Tight as a drum. “Apparently not.”
Then she hung up on me. I was stunned but also a little relieved. Maybe this was some kind of test, to see if I’d call back, but I wasn’t even remotely tempted. I sat on the office couch, staring at the ceiling and trying to collect myself again.
It was almost shocking, to think how much I’d loved Christine, once. Back then, there was nothing I wanted more than for all of us to be a family forever. Now, it felt like someone else’s history.
And I just wanted Christine out of my life.
Chapter 54
IT WAS JUST short of midnight when Agent Anjali Patel stepped out to the curb on E Street in front of the Hoover Building, cran
ing her neck, searching for a cab. As soon as he saw her, Max Siegel pulled around the corner and lowered the passenger-side window.
“Someone call for a taxi?”
She gave him a nice view of cleavage as she bent down to see who it was. “Max? What are you doing here? It’s late.”
“Sorry about earlier,” he said. “Had to run out unexpectedly. I just came back for my car, but maybe I could give you a ride and you can fill me in.”
Her glance up the street said everything. Not a cab in sight, not much traffic at all.
Max Siegel’s coworkers seemed to prefer him at a distance, which was exactly according to plan. Distance afforded him the privacy he needed and could always be broached if and when he wanted it to be. Like right now.
“Come on,” he said. “I won’t bite. I won’t even talk about Cross behind his back. Promise.”
“Um… sure,” she said with a practiced smile, and got in.
Her perfume was lemony, he noticed. Or maybe it was her shampoo. Nice anyway. Feminine. She gave him an address in Shaw.
Then she proceeded to chatter on about the case, making sure to fill up any spaces that might have otherwise been left open to the awkwardness of small talk between them.
Siegel drove fast, goosing the yellow lights where he could. He hadn’t been with a woman since the real estate agent, and damned if he wasn’t getting a little hard just thinking about her.
When he turned onto her block, he mashed the gas pedal once more and then coasted to a stop in front of a dark storefront just past her yellow-brick townhome.
“Hey, that was it,” she said, looking back. “You missed my place.”
Chapter 55
KYLE LOOKED BACK, too. The block was still clear of any traffic or pedestrians.
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