Deadly Cross

by Patterson, James

  She went to a drawer and began rummaging around. She returned with a card for Capital City Limo, which I took a photograph of. Sampson took the business card and left the room.

  I asked Dee, “And that was the last time you saw Maya? In the limo?”

  “When they dropped her off here,” her mother said. “Right?”

  Dee nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “Maya didn’t deserve it. She was one of the good ones, you know?”

  “Your mother said you were part of the search for her,” Sampson said.

  “Everyone was part of it after Randall Christopher got involved.”

  Her mother shook her head. “It’s a damn shame a fine man gets shot to death like that. We knew him. I mean, he was the one who assigned us our search areas and we reported back to him.”

  “We didn’t find a thing,” Dee said, growing angry. “That’s why I wished me and Maya had done that TFT course. If she had been trained, that guy would be dead, and she’d be alive.” Dee explained that Maya had told her she wanted to take a self-defense course called Target-Focused Training taught by a former hand-to-hand combat instructor for the Navy SEALs.

  “They teach you targets on the body that can incapacitate someone,” Dee said. “Like their eyes or kneecaps or groin or the side of the neck, and you learn to see them and to hit them. Lots of girls and women have used it successfully.”

  Mrs. Nathaniel said, “It also cost more than two thousand dollars.”

  Dee gritted her teeth. “That’s exactly what Maya’s mother said, Mom.”

  CHAPTER 15

  OUTSIDE THE NATHANIELS’ HOUSE, AS Sampson and I were walking to the car, I said, “Home?”

  Sampson shook his head. “Good as that sounds, I called Capital City when I left the room. Turns out Creepy Chuck’s name is Charles Kendrick, and Mr. Kendrick has a sheet. Ex-con. And he’s done with his shift in twenty minutes.”

  We sped back through the city and were at Capital City’s location off New York Avenue in Northeast DC with five minutes to spare. The night manager said, “What’s Charley done? We took a chance on him and I need to know.”

  “Nothing that we know of,” I said. “We just want to have a chat with him about one of his rides.”

  A limo came into the garage and parked. “That’s Charley,” the manager said. “Have at him.”

  We walked toward the limo as Charley Kendrick, a long, lanky white guy with a hawkish nose, flecks of gray at his temples, and an ill-fitting dark suit, got out. He saw us immediately, studied us, and his expression toughened.

  “Whoever you are, I know for a fact you have no reason to be here,” he said.

  We held up our identifications. I said, “We want to talk about Maya Parker.”

  Kendrick looked puzzled. “Who?”

  “The girl murdered and dumped in the Potomac about four months ago,” Sampson said. “She was one of your rides the week before.”

  “Hey, hey,” he said, holding up both palms. “I have no idea who you are talking about. I don’t read newspapers. I don’t listen to the news. My counselor told me to lose all media and social media contact for a year, said it would be better for my head. It’s the truth. Call her.”

  I held out my phone and showed him a photograph Dee Nathaniel had given us from the night of the formal with all the girls dressed up in the limo. I blew up Maya’s face. “Recognize her now? Her friend said you took the picture.”

  Kendrick got out reading glasses, studied it, and smiled. “I remember her now. The whole bunch of them. Little hellions!” Then he sobered. “You said she’s dead?”

  “She is,” Sampson said. “And her friend said you were being creepy the night you drove them all to the dance. Lowering the window to spy on them, especially Maya.”

  “More likely I was making sure they weren’t blowing dope or anything harder back there,” Kendrick said. “Company policy.”

  “What did you do time for, Charley?”

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and said, “Embezzlement from a nursing home. I have no history whatsoever of violent crime and I’m hardly the sort to obsess over a teenage girl.”

  “So what sort are you?” I said.

  “The gay and cross-dressing sort,” Kendrick said, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips. “Honestly, I was simply admiring Maya’s dress and hairdo that night. Nothing more. When did she disappear?”

  “April fourth,” Sampson said. “Eight days after you drove her.”

  He got out a phone, said, “When? Night? Day?”

  “She was last seen around six thirty in the evening,” I said.

  Kendrick thumbed the phone, looked up, and smiled. “What I thought. I was gone that entire day and the two days after, a three-day gig in New York City driving for the Landreys, a nice, rich old couple from Georgetown who wanted to see if a limo was more fun than the train. Go ask Marty, my boss. He can confirm it.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I DIDN’T SLEEP WELL; I had terrible dreams about Maya Parker and then Kay Willingham. In one, Kay was walking away from me, in and out of fog and mist. Occasionally she’d look over her shoulder or make a half turn and beckon me closer.

  But every time I took a step her way, even when I ran toward her, I could not close the distance between us. She’d fade away, wrapped in the fog, and I’d start calling her name, waking myself up.

  At ten minutes to five, I was groggy but awake for good. Bree appeared deep in the land of Nod. I eased out of bed, got on my running gear, then slipped from the room, went down the stairs, and walked out onto the front porch.

  The air was thick; it was in the seventies, even at that early hour. I did some ballistic stretches Jannie had taught me, then set out at a slow jog that soon quickened into a nice steady pace. Ordinarily, running is a time for me to work my body and empty my mind. But I couldn’t empty my mind that morning. Kay Willingham kept barging in. So did Randall Christopher.

  When had they met? And how? And where was Christopher’s wife? Did she kill her husband and his lover in a jealous rage?

  Though I’d spoken to the principal five or six times over the years, I’d mostly seen him from a distance, heard him speak at parent-teacher events and whatnot.

  Christopher was strikingly handsome, and at six foot two and weighing about one ninety, he was still built like the basketball guard he’d been at the University of Maryland. And yet the physique and good looks weren’t what I remembered about him. It was his palpable charisma, the sense you got the moment he opened his mouth that you were about to hear something both challenging and profound. He was smart without being a show-off, compassionate with the students, and naturally funny.

  And he wasn’t afraid to be of service to the community, just as he had been during the early days of both the Parker and Hernandez disappearances, volunteering to help us organize the big civilian searches. I considered the possibility that he was involved in the rapes and killings because serial killers have been known to try to insert themselves into investigations.

  Could Christopher have been involved? Were he and Kay killed for it?

  I could not see it, at least not based on the evidence at hand, but I decided not to close the door on the possibility, unlikely as it was, that Kay had been wrong about Christopher, that her legendary instincts about political talent were off the mark.

  The fact of the matter was that the principal had made concrete improvements in his students’ lives. I’d seen how much Jannie and her classmates had grown as people in his school. That had to have made Christopher attractive.

  Was it what made him attractive to Kay?

  Of course it was. His infidelity with her aside, on paper Christopher was just the kind of project Kay liked to take on: a political diamond in the rough that needed to be cut and polished so it would gleam brilliantly.

  After all, didn’t she do that for her ex-husband? I thought as I ran up the sidewalk toward St. Anthony’s. I meant to head home. But when I came abreast of the churc
h, I felt compelled to stop and go inside.

  With a good forty minutes until morning Mass, the church was empty. I crossed to the rack of devotional candles and fished around in my back pocket for the five-dollar bill I always stuck in there in case I wanted to stop for water during my run. I slid it into the box, took a long stick match, and lit two candles, one for Christopher and the other for Kay. As the flame on her candle began to dance, I remembered watching the news after coming home from the Capital City Limo garage the evening before and feeling horrible at the way some in the media were treating her.

  Alive, Kay had had most journalists in Washington eating out of her hand, but now they were tearing her to shreds. The rumor mills had been grinding out nonsense, filling the airwaves with snark and innuendo that smeared both victims’ reputations, but especially Kay’s. The socialite, it was suggested, had had a wild side before and after her marriage to the vice president. Kay allegedly had a series of torrid affairs over the years and at one time or another she’d been linked romantically to a wealthy Wall Street investor, an actor young enough to be her son, and an editor at the Post.

  But thank God, not to me.

  How long will that last? How long before Clive Sparkman gets into this mix and decides to sling some mud my way?

  CHAPTER 17

  I STOOD THERE LOOKING AT the candles, then I closed my eyes and tried to tune it all out for a moment, tried to see the Kay Willingham I’d known.

  Her husband at the time, J. Walter Willingham, had been the governor of Alabama when I first met her at a charity function for victims’ rights nearly a decade ago, well before Bree came into my life. That was the same night I’d driven her home and she’d broken her heel and tripped.

  After that there’d been no contact for almost two months. Then she called me and asked me to meet her for lunch at a restaurant in DC; she said she had a personal request. She wasn’t the kind of woman you turned down, so I agreed.

  At that lunch, Kay asked me to look into the conviction of a killer on death row in Alabama who had written her asking for help.

  “Most people like you would push a request like that to the corner of the desk or drop it in the trash,” I said after she set a bulging legal-size envelope in front of me.

  “I’m not most people, Alex. I actually care about wrongfully convicted prisoners. And it’s not because of the privileged life I’ve led. If I see an injustice, I try to right it.”

  I studied her. She was so much more than beauty, poise, and wealth. “Okay, I’ll take a look at this, see if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thank you, Alex,” she said. “I can’t tell you what this means to me.”

  Her smile was dazzling and pure. Her eyes sparkled with empathy.

  I swallowed hard, looked away, and gestured at the envelope. “What makes you so interested in this case? These usually go to the governor.”

  Her smile faded. “Before we married, Walter was the prosecutor on this case. It was the one that helped launch his political career.”

  “And you’re questioning the conviction?”

  “No, I just want there to be zero doubt going forward. Between you and me, Walter is thinking of running for national office, and despite our current difficulties, I want no skeletons in his closet, no stone unturned before he launches his next campaign.”

  Standing there in the church, I opened my eyes, remembering how I’d looked at the case only briefly because, with Nana Mama’s help, I was caring for three young children. I couldn’t run off to Alabama to learn more, so three days after she offered me the job, I turned it down. She’d accepted my decision gracefully when I explained about the kids.

  My attention drifted from Kay’s candle burning in the church to Christopher’s.

  Maybe he was the one, I mused. Maybe he was the love she’d been looking for.

  I’d no sooner had that thought than a ball of emotion swelled in my throat. I tried to stay in control, tried to swallow it back down deep in my gut.

  But the enormous, irrational grief I felt for Kay and the weird jealousy I felt about Randall Christopher was too much. I felt a tear roll down my cheek for everything that had been lost when someone put multiple bullets through both of their hearts.

  CHAPTER 18

  I RAN UP OUR PORCH steps ten minutes later, drenched in sweat but feeling lighter for having visited the church and expressed those conflicting emotions. Inside the house, the air-conditioning made me shiver. I went into the kitchen to find Bree and Jannie cooking breakfast, Ali sitting at the counter typing on his laptop.

  “Where’s Nana?” I said.

  “Feeling under the weather,” Bree said, scooping scrambled eggs into a dish. “She wanted to sleep in.”

  “Fever?”

  “Just tired and listening to her body,” Jannie said. “Isn’t that what you told me to do when I had mono?”

  “I did.”

  Bree scooted past me, bringing the eggs to the table.

  “What, no kiss?” I said.

  “The way you smell?”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “Yes, you are,” Ali said, waving his hand in front of his nose.

  I threw my arms up in defeat. “Save me some.”

  Upstairs, as I showered and shaved, I felt slightly rudderless, not quite knowing what move to make next. While I dressed, I decided to call Mahoney, and I was about to do that when Bree walked into the room.

  I went to hug her, and she pulled back slightly to study my face. “Why were you out running so early?”

  “Couldn’t sleep and I figured a run would help me understand why. Turns out I needed to purge something.”

  She smiled quizzically. “You want to explain — ” Her work cell rang. “Duty calls,” she said; she turned away from me and snatched her phone off the bed. She looked at caller ID and groaned. “It’s Commissioner Dennison.” She pecked me on the cheek as I left the bedroom, then answered the phone while shutting the door. “Yes, Commissioner. How can I help?”

  In the hall, I almost knocked on Nana Mama’s door, but if she needed rest, she needed rest. Downstairs, Jannie was on her way out of the house with her workout bag over her shoulder.

  “Training?” I asked.

  “Core and agility.”

  “Have fun.”

  “Always.”

  I gave her a hug and watched her go. My daughter was tall, strong but not bulky, and very, very fast. According to the many NCAA track coaches who had tried to recruit her, Jannie possessed athletic skills that had made her a top prospect as a four-hundred-meter runner and a potential heptathlete.

  I went into the kitchen and found the plate Bree had set aside for me wrapped in foil. My phone rang before I could take a bite. Mahoney. I snatched a piece of bacon to munch on before I answered. “Ned?”

  “You still have your security clearance?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve been granted an audience with Vice President Willingham on Thursday.”

  “We? As in me too?”

  “He specifically asked that you be there.”

  “The vice president did?”

  “As I understand it. He wants Sampson too, since he was first on the scene.”

  “What time?”

  “Eight a.m. sharp. His residence. One Observatory Circle. Bring two forms of ID to show the Marines.”

  Bree walked into the kitchen, still on the phone. “Dr. Cross is on the Maya Parker case as well as the Willingham case, sir. I don’t think I can… yes, Commissioner Dennison. I hear you loud and clear.”

  “I’ll call you back, Ned,” I said and hung up.

  Bree hung up as well, then looked at me, perplexed. “He drives me nuts with this micromanaging stuff. You have to help me out here one more time, Alex.”

  “I just agreed to work the Parker and Hernandez case for you,” I said.

  “I know,” she said, holding up one hand. “Just go talk to this guy at some point today. He’s a big-time tobacco an
d food-additive lobbyist. He was shot in the ass with a twenty-two last night outside a restaurant in Georgetown.”

  “Shot in the ass?”

  “You heard me,” she said. “And someone spray-painted Shoot the Rich on the wall of the alley that the shooter likely fired from.”

  “Okay?”

  She sighed. “Two other wealthy people have been shot at in DC in the last month. The shooter missed both times, breaking things right next to them, but the same Shoot the Rich graffiti tag was present.”

  “I didn’t hear about the graffiti tag.”

  “We’ve been trying to keep it quiet,” she said. “But he hit this lobbyist guy. And the lobbyist guy is a friend of Commissioner Dennison somehow. It could get some of his heat off my back if you go.”

  “I promise I’ll try to get to him at some point today,” I said. “I have a noon client here. And Ned wants me on Kay’s case, and Sampson and I wanted — ”

  “Kay’s case?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You don’t see it, do you? This lobbyist wounded? Two others shot at? Shoot the Rich? What if it’s the same shooter who killed Kay and Christopher?”

  “No graffiti tag that I know of.”

  “Just the same.”

  I blinked, said, “I think I’ll go visit that lobbyist before my noon appointment.”

  CHAPTER 19

  AN HOUR LATER, JOHN SAMPSON and I were riding an elevator in the Watergate complex. He yawned.

  “Didn’t sleep well?” I asked.

  “I stayed up looking at the video from the bodega’s security cameras again,” he said and shook his head. “Nothing that I can see that’s relevant, and I scrolled through it for hours.”

  “Because the killer or killers came from the west,” I said as the elevator doors opened with a ding. We stepped out into a small round foyer as a door on the opposite side was opened by a maid.