Deadly Cross

by Patterson, James

  A group of protesters with signs blocked my view for several moments. When I got beyond them, the SHOOT THE RICH sign was gone again, and I didn’t see anyone wearing a dark bandanna, sunglasses, and dark cap.

  “I’ve lost him,” I said into my lapel mic.

  “I’ve lost him too,” Bree said in my earbud.

  My eyes scanned back and forth, looking for the sign and not seeing it, only that TAX THE RICH placard I’d seen multiple times. I went straight at the spot where I’d last seen the shoot the rich sign, using my height to look at every protester in that area. There were a surprising number of grandmotherly types scattered throughout the crowd, which otherwise was a cross-section of diversity.

  “Tax the rich!” shouted one young man with shaggy, sandy-blond hair near the back of the protesters. “Tax the rich, not the poor, damn it!”

  He was fervent about that message, shaking and pumping a sign with the same slogan and wearing a T-shirt that read FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!

  Then he changed his spiel and started bellowing, “Life’s a bitch! Tax the rich!”

  Others in the crowd picked up his chant while I studied person after person, hoping to spot the bandanna or the sign again.

  “Life is a bitch!” the crowd chanted, and marchers walking past joined in. “Tax the rich!”

  I triggered my mic. “I’m still not seeing him. I think he’s getting out of Dodge. Have officers photograph the IDs of anyone acting suspiciously.”

  “These people are not going to like that,” Bree said, her radio voice crackling.

  “They will when we catch the guy who shot Dawson in the ass,” I said, moving northeast around the crowd toward Eleventh Street. “He’ll be a legend. Most of these people will probably put him up for sainthood.”

  I looked diagonally northwest through the crowd but could no longer see the guy with the shaggy, sandy hair who’d started the chant that was still echoing through the protesters. And his sign wasn’t there anymore. The only TAX THE RICH sign I could make out was held by a woman in her seventies wearing a broad-brimmed beach hat. I walked north on Eleventh scanning the flow of people leaving the march. Police officers were standing at the north end of the block checking IDs.

  A man who held a sign that said THE BANKERS DID IT was giving one of the officers a bit of a hard time.

  “This is the kind of police-state stuff we’re protesting, man,” he said as I showed the cops my FBI credentials and glanced his way.

  Mid-twenties, rust-orange wool cap despite the heat, he was carrying a bookbag bandolier-style and wearing khaki shorts, sandals, and a yellow tank top with the Corona beer logo across the chest.

  “It really is a depressing state of affairs, Officer, and with all due respect,” he said, “you should be pissed about the economic tyranny growing around us.”

  “I hear you, Mr. Edmunds, but it’s already been a long day for me,” the officer said wearily. “And you’ve got a line behind you. You want to protest it, go back down there. You want to go home, keep moving.”

  Edmunds sighed and trudged by her, heading north.

  I continued around the perimeter and was almost back to Pennsylvania Avenue on Twelfth when Sampson came over my earbud.

  “Dr. Cross? Chief Stone? You need to return to the International. We’ve got the whole shooting on tape.”

  CHAPTER 79

  SAMPSON, BREE, AND I STOOD behind Carlos Montoya, head of security at the International Hotel. He sat before a large screen featuring the frozen feeds of two cameras that looked down on the intersection of Eleventh and Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Sampson took a pencil and tapped it on the screen where a man in a black ballcap, dark sunglasses, and a garish red Hawaiian shirt stood at the curb on the northwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “That’s Rex Dawson,” he said. He tapped on another man farther west on the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue wearing a broad-brimmed khaki-green hat that hid his face, a long-sleeved olive-green shirt, and matching olive-green pants.

  “Watch him too,” Sampson said.

  Montoya, the security chief, started the recording. The billionaire stepped off the curb and moved south across Pennsylvania Avenue, weaving in and out of the flow.

  The guy in olive green did too, angling toward Dawson.

  Sampson narrated. “Boom, the guy in the green hat shoves someone, and that guy knocks into Dawson. Billionaire’s hat and glasses go flying as he falls down. People start to recognize Dawson. See them all pointing?”

  I saw them and Dawson getting up. People began to shout at him, and he shouted right back. But the guy in green was moving south ahead of Dawson when the billionaire threw up his arms in disgust at the people heckling him and started toward the hotel.

  “Watch green guy slant toward Dawson again,” Sampson said.

  The two men were separated by no more than eight feet when they reached the traffic island. Sampson had the security chief slow the feed.

  A gap opened up in the crowd with Dawson facing the hotel. The guy in green’s right arm rose above his hip. The sleeves on the shirt he wore were overly long, covering his hand.

  Dawson jerked sideways to his left, stumbled, grabbed at his flank, and screamed in pain. Then he got his balance and flung a few wild punches and kicks at the people nearest him while Green Hat moved away against the throng of protesters and out of the frame.

  “I want to see that again,” Bree said. “I’m not seeing the gun. There’s something off about it.”

  “I want to see it again too, but humor me a second,” I said. “Fast-forward, find the guy in the crowd opposite the hotel holding a sign that says Shoot the Rich. Just a few minutes after we arrived.”

  Montoya gave his computer an order and the feed blurred to 3:42 p.m. Our vehicle came to the driveway three minutes later.

  We were visible in the lower part of the frame of the feed from the east side of Eleventh at 3:54 p.m. Two minutes passed and there it was: a placard with the SHOOT THE RICH graffiti on it held by a guy in an LA Dodgers cap, dark sunglasses, a khaki-green shirt, and a black bandanna around his neck.

  The sign was visible for about thirty seconds before he ducked down and lowered it.

  “Lost him,” Montoya said.

  “The sign returns in two or three minutes,” I said, spotting the guy with the shaggy blond hair holding the TAX THE RICH sign now. “Somewhere down here, below this guy and to his right.”

  The shaggy-haired guy moved deeper into the crowd.

  I pointed. “Stay where he was. Blow it up a little.”

  We waited. I kept looking for the sign. A few minutes later, Bree said, “There he is, Dodgers cap, right side of the screen.”

  Sure enough, he’d raised the SHOOT THE RICH sign again. But only for ten seconds, then he lowered it and disappeared into the crowd once more.

  “Back out,” I said. “You should see me in about twenty seconds.”

  Montoya gave the computer an order and the image gave us a wider-angle view. I could be seen moving in the opposite direction of the marchers toward the fixed group of protesters with Bree behind me.

  Shaggy-haired guy started his tax-the-rich chant. Soon people around him were raising fists, yelling with him. When the chant was at its peak, he drifted out of the frame.

  At first, I didn’t think much about it and kept looking for the Dodgers fan on the opposite side of the screen. But then I noticed the shaggy blond guy walk up to a seventy-year-old woman in a straw gardening hat and talk to her. She was carrying a sign that said the bankers did it.

  Montoya froze the screen. “More?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Just a minute or two.”

  The security chief started the recording again.

  Ten seconds into the footage, the old woman and the blond guy traded signs.

  CHAPTER 80

  I STARED AT THE SCREEN, not quite understanding what I was seeing, as Shaggy Hair bumped fists with the woman, turned, and went out of sight behind other
protesters.

  A few moments later, a man wearing a rust-colored wool cap, sandals, khaki green shorts, and a yellow tank top walked out of the throng onto Eleventh heading north. He was carrying a backpack and a sign that read THE BANKERS DID IT.

  “That’s him,” I said, pointing at the screen. “I saw him. He’s the shooter.”

  “How do you know that?” Sampson said.

  “He’s wearing green khaki shorts because he zipped off the legs. He’s carrying a sign he traded an old lady for a few moments ago. And I am betting he’s got a shaggy blond wig in that backpack and a green khaki sun hat and a green khaki shirt with overly long sleeves with bullet residue on it and a small pistol of some kind. He was wearing a rust-colored knit cap when I saw him. His last name is Edmunds.”

  I started toward the door.

  “Alex!” Bree said. “How do you know all that?”

  “Follow me, both of you, and I’ll explain.”

  By the time we exited the hotel, most of the marchers had passed. The police had opened the avenue to vehicular traffic, and the knot of protesters across Pennsylvania had dwindled to no more than thirty.

  I was going to head straight up Eleventh to try to find the patrol officer who’d checked Edmunds, but then I noticed that the older woman with the gardener’s hat was still there with the remaining protesters.

  “I want to talk to this woman first,” I said. “She’s still got Edmunds’s sign. Call dispatch. Find out the name of the female officer who was checking IDs at the north end, west side of Eleventh. See if she took a picture of his ID.”

  Bree started the call, and Sampson and I went up to the older woman and introduced ourselves.

  Her name was Elodie Le Chain. She was seventy-four, a widow from northern Maine who had come by bus to join the protest. “Someone has to stand up and say something when an old lady like me has to chop firewood to heat her house,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” I said, putting on latex gloves. “Could we take a look at your sign, please?”

  Mrs. Le Chain frowned but nodded and held it out. I took it. The handle was a wooden broomstick. The sign itself was made of two pieces of white poster board stapled to the upper broomstick. It was blank on the back with TAX THE RICH on the front and three of the sort of O-rings you see in binders punched through the tops of the poster boards.

  “Why the O-rings?” Sampson said.

  I thought that was odd as well. I turned the sign sideways and noticed a seam on the front poster board as if two pieces of it had been sandwiched together. Sampson gave me a pocketknife. I worked the blade into the seam and got it apart; they’d been held together with Velcro along the edges.

  I got both pieces separated and flipped the TAX THE RICH sign backward on the O-rings, revealing another sign: shoot the rich.

  “What’s that say?” Mrs. Le Chain said. “I don’t agree with that. I think they should pay taxes like everyone but I don’t want them dead.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, ma’am, but we’re going to have to take this as evidence. We suspect the man who gave it to you was involved in a shooting earlier.”

  “No!” she said. “He was a nice young man. He was from Maine too. Portland.”

  We got her contact information and left her to see Bree trotting our way on the west side of Eleventh. I pivoted the sign to show her the SHOOT THE RICH graffiti.

  She smiled, gave me the thumbs-up, and said, “Officer Wells was still there. She remembered Adam Edmunds because he mouthed off. She didn’t take a picture of his ID, but she said she knows it was a George Mason University graduate-student ID card because she asked him what he was studying.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Conflict analysis and resolution,” she said.

  “George Mason has a school for that?”

  “It does.”

  CHAPTER 81

  WE CAUGHT UP TO ADAM EDMUNDS at the George Mason University School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Virginia Square Campus in Arlington. Edmunds was on his way out of an evening lecture on using meditation and tai chi as a path to inner peace and laughing with five earnest-looking young women on the Birkenstock and Patagonia end of the spectrum.

  Seeing that he was also carrying the bulging yellow pack from earlier in the day, Ned Mahoney walked up to him, showed him his credentials, said, “Adam Edmunds. FBI. You are under arrest.”

  The young women all gasped and looked at Edmunds.

  “Arrest?” he said. “For what?”

  “Three counts of attempted murder, including one attempt on a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

  Now the women were acting as if an oily creature had suddenly invaded their safe space. “Attempted murder?” one said.

  Edmunds shook his head. “I’ve never tried to kill anyone in my life.”

  “Try doesn’t matter,” I said. “You shot all three of them.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “And I want a lawyer.”

  I took his backpack, opened it, and pulled out the green khaki hat, the blond wig, the long-sleeved shirt, and, finally, a crude weapon, a. 22-caliber zip gun, a single-shot weapon so small, it could be concealed in the palm of your hand.

  “Oh,” I said. “And we have you on camera in front of the International Hotel.”

  Mahoney began to read him his rights.

  Edmunds finally lost it. “You can’t charge me with attempted murder. I shot them in the ass, for God’s sake!”

  All five of the women’s jaws dropped. One said, “He was just talking about that!”

  “He was!” cried another. “Telling us about Dawson getting shot at the march.”

  “And you were all laughing about it!” he shouted at them. “Hypocrites. You know that when it comes right down to it, conflict resolution is a no-win. All in all, peaceful change rarely happens. You’re living in a fantasy. At some point, someone has to take a stand and act. People take notice when corrupt politicians and fat-cat lobbyists and billionaire criminals like Dawson get shot in the ass. They take notice and they laugh just like you did or they cheer. And maybe, just maybe, they read up on these rich guys and see them for who they are. And in their own way, they start shooting the rich in the ass — metaphorically. And that shift in perception, everybody doing their best to shoot the bad rich in the ass, that’s how you make lasting change — enough pain to get them aware of common pain, not some woo-woo conflict analysis and resolution.”

  “You’re sick and delusional!” one shouted as we put handcuffs on Edmunds.

  “No, I’m not, Lynn,” he shouted back. “I fought in Afghanistan, remember? I know what real conflict resolution looks like.”

  Lynn and her fellow students were appalled at that.

  “You said you came here because of your war experience,” another young woman said. “You said you came here to find a way to peace. If that’s not true, why the hell are you here?”

  “You really want to know, Maggie?” he said. “I had the GI Bill, and the woman-to-guy ratio in the school was like thirteen to three, and one of those three was a gay guy.”

  The five women were completely shocked.

  “You’re an asshole, Adam,” Maggie said.

  “Total,” Lynn said and they all walked away.

  CHAPTER 82

  BY THE TIME BREE AND I had delivered Adam Edmunds to the federal holding facility in Alexandria, filed our reports, and driven home, it was after midnight. We slept in the next morning and got up for a late breakfast with Nana Mama and the kids.

  “You’re not working today, are you?” Nana Mama asked.

  “Not if I can help it,” I said, yawning.

  Bree said, “I think you deserve a day off after the hours you put in yesterday.”

  “Agreed,” I said and poured myself another cup of coffee, realizing I owed someone a favor. After we’d eaten omelets and a fresh fruit salad, I got my phone and went out on the front porch.
The temperature today, the first day of September, was tolerable but climbing.

  I found the number I was looking for and punched it.

  Clive Sparkman answered. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

  “I didn’t have anything solid to tell you before.”

  “And now you do?”

  “You are speaking to a ‘source close to the investigation,’ ” I said. “And you cannot release this until later in the day.”

  “Of course. Which investigation? Higgins’s murder?”

  “Rex Dawson,” I said.

  “You got his shooter?”

  “We did,” I said.

  Sparkman started laughing when I told him Edmunds was attending a school designed to promote peace and explained his bizarre rationale for the shootings.

  “This is crazy,” Sparkman said, and I could hear the blogger tapping on his keyboard. “Good, but crazy.”

  “I thought it would appeal to your sense of irony,” I said. “He’ll be arraigned first thing tomorrow morning in federal court in Alexandria. Expect a drama. I have to go now, spend some time with my family.”

  “Wait,” he said. “What about Higgins? And Kay Willingham?”

  “Still working on both,” I said, and I hung up.

  Thunderstorms swept in soon after, which kept us all inside watching a Redskins preseason game against the Browns, and then a baseball game between the Nationals and the Cardinals. I couldn’t remember the last time we had all just hung out together, and it was nice.

  Later in the afternoon, Nana Mama roasted a leg of lamb in a garlic sauce that filled the entire house with wonderful aromas. Sampson came over with Willow before dinner started.

  Once Willow was settled with Jannie and Ali, he took me and Bree aside. “The past few days I’ve been staring a lot at my map. Like, a lot a lot.”