Return of the Spider, page 5
part #33 of Alex Cross Series
She took us through the first door on the left into an autopsy room. The corpse lay beneath a green cloth on a stainless-steel table.
“His clothes are there,” Chin said, gesturing to evidence bags on a counter.
“You stripped him already?” Diehl said. “We usually like to be there for that.”
“My bad,” Chin said. “Everything’s been bagged, logged, and witnessed for evidence under my signature. Clothes, wallet, two condoms—that was it.”
“Anything else we should know?” Detective Kurtz asked.
“I can only tell you what the body tells me,” the medical examiner said. She drew back the green cloth, revealing Conrad Talbot’s body. His young face looked serene from the eyebrows down, now that the gore had been cleaned away.
At the center of his forehead, an ugly exit wound gaped.
CHAPTER 12
THE AUTOPSY UNFOLDED QUICKLY, with most of the attention paid to the path the bullet had taken after it struck Conrad’s occipital protuberance, low and square at the back of his skull.
Dr. Chin noted that the bullet must have been slowed by the window it was shot through and the thick bone of Conrad’s skull. It had entered at a slightly upward angle.
Dr. Chin cut a cap of bone off the victim’s skull. Studying the brain, she said, “The bullet was fragmented, and although it slowed down considerably, it continued its forward progress. There’s a lot of trauma and blood here, but I’d say the remaining energy from the bullet fragments liquefied and cut channels through the brain at a rising angle. I’m eyeballing it at thirty degrees upward tilt. But we’ll check.”
I steeled my stomach as she removed the brain in its entirety, set it aside for further dissection, reoriented the light over the open skull, and peered inside. “Make that thirty-two degrees rise.”
I said, “Can you translate that for a new guy, Dr. Chin?”
The medical examiner said, “I believe it means your shooter was crouched and aiming slightly upward into the cab of the Bronco.”
Sampson said, “Or maybe the shooter is unfamiliar with the gun and yanks on the trigger, causing the gun barrel to rise at the shot.”
The medical examiner nodded. “That would do it as well.”
“Which means what?” Chief Pittman said impatiently.
Detective Kurtz said, “We have either a short assailant who knows how to use a gun or a taller one with limited firearms experience.”
“Doesn’t exactly limit the fish in the fish pond, does it?” Diehl said.
“Not yet.”
Chief Pittman looked frustrated when we left the autopsy suite forty minutes later. “I was hoping for more.”
“More, sir?” Detective Kurtz said.
“More to say to the media. More to tell the public so they’ll know that the Metro PD is out front on this case and making damn sure the person who took this kid’s life will be brought to justice!”
I was surprised at how worked up Pittman was. It showed me that, whatever his motives, the chief of detectives actually cared about his job and truly didn’t know what to say to the media and the public.
Sampson picked up on that too and said, “The story you should be telling, Chief, is that at the moment, given the evidence we have, we believe this to be a random act of violence.”
Detective Diehl said, “And that in any case, the Metro PD is committed to solving this crime.”
Kurtz added, “Which is why the four of us are going to go back to the crime scene and canvass the neighborhood personally. Maybe someone in one of those apartments across the parkway heard something. A gunshot that made them look out the window.”
Chief Pittman chewed on that for several moments, then nodded. “That story works. Thank you, Detectives. Good hunting.”
“You too, sir,” Diehl said and watched him until he’d left the building.
Kurtz nodded at Sampson. “That was impressive, the way you handled Pittman.”
Sampson said, “I didn’t realize I’d handled him.”
“You gotta handle all the big swinging clowns,” Diehl said. “Otherwise you’ll never get what you need when you need it to close a case.”
“Which is what we’re all about, understand?” Kurtz said. “Together, Diehl and I have forty years on the street. Neither of us give a damn about moving up, becoming more of a suit than we already are. We like being detectives—being out, asking questions. It’s what we’re good at. It’s all we want to be.”
“Same here,” Sampson said.
“I’m not happy behind a desk,” I said.
“Good,” Diehl said. “Then keep us informed, let us take the lead when it needs to be taken, and trust our decisions when we make them.”
Kurtz said, “Other than that, have at it. Run down every lead you want. You won’t be stepping on anyone’s toes as long as you tell us where you’re focusing.”
“And above all, stay on target,” Diehl said. “We are not here to chase glory. We represent the dead, and we work on their behalf.”
“Clear?” Kurtz said.
“Clear,” Sampson said.
“Loud and clear,” I said.
“We’ll see you back at the crime scene, then,” Diehl said, and they left.
When we got in our squad car, Sampson said, “Diehl and Kurtz. Who knew?”
“Learning.”
“Every day, brother.”
CHAPTER 13
SEVEN HOURS LATER, WITH little to show for our investigations into the Talbot murder, I pressed the buzzer to the bottom-floor flat in a small two-story house on Fourth Street.
A woman’s voice whispered, “Who’s there?”
“Tony,” I said.
“Mmm,” she said, and then, putting on a Hispanic accent, “If it’s Tony, he’s gotta sing.”
I looked around, saw no one, and sang the line from West Side Story: “‘Maria, I just met a girl named Maria.’”
She laughed. “Not bad. But you started in the middle of the song.”
“Best part.”
“Sing the next verse, and Maria will know you’re her Tony.”
“But no dancing.”
“Promise.”
So I sang, “‘I just kissed a girl named Maria!’”
The door buzzed open. I went inside and found my wife, Maria, waiting at the door, barefoot but still in her work clothes, all five foot two inches of her; she shot me the most beautiful smile. Her hands rested on her belly—she was six months pregnant with our second child.
“Babysitter just left, and Damon’s conked out,” she whispered. I bent my six-foot-two frame over and kissed her hello, then followed her inside.
I whispered, “You know, if you get shorter when we get older, I’m going to throw out my back every time we kiss.”
“One of the hurdles you have to face if you want to keep this goddess happy,” Maria said with a wink. She gestured down at her belly and laughed again.
“Bring on the bad back, baby doll. Can I look in on Damon?”
“Give it a little bit,” she said. “He woke up a while ago and just went back down again. I’m reheating dinner.”
“Your mom’s sauce?”
“Not tonight.”
I sighed. “Still cracks me up that your mother has a secret spaghetti sauce.”
Maria stirred a pot on the stove with a wooden spoon. “How many times have I told you my mother’s godmother was Sicilian?”
“I know, I know. She helped raise your mother, taught her to cook.”
“And me,” Maria said. She turned and smiled, and I fell in love all over again.
It had been like that since the beginning. Maria was a social worker at St. Anthony’s Hospital in DC, and the first time I saw her, I knew that, despite her small stature, she had one of the biggest spirits I’d ever encountered.
I’d been talking with a couple of cops in the ER at St. Anthony’s when Maria Simpson came in with Hector Munoz, a nineteen-year-old gangbanger who’d been shot in a drive-by.
Munoz had a through-and-through bullet wound to his abdomen, but he basically refused to talk to anyone. After the docs gave him morphine for the pain, he relaxed quite a bit but maintained his silence with the Metro patrol officers who were trying to interview him.
Things changed when a young woman walked over to the cops who were talking to Hector. She was wearing high heels and a snug navy-blue dress that flattered her compact gymnast’s build. Her features were elegant, as if a higher power had decided to emphasize her large almond eyes and high cheekbones.
As soon as I saw this angel, I wanted to know everything about her. I took a step toward her and saw the name on the badge she wore on a lanyard around her neck: MARIA SIMPSON.
She glanced at me shyly, nodded, then turned to Hector and rattled off a series of questions. Munoz seemed as taken by Maria’s beauty as I was. He talked to her slowly and lazily, as if he were flirting with her. She took it in stride and joked and teased information out of him.
Munoz claimed not to know who shot him. He said he’d been out for a walk with some friends and a guy on a motorcycle drove by with a gunman riding on the back.
Maria told the cops, “He says to go back to his neighborhood. Maybe someone saw the shooter. Hector just got shot and went down.”
A nurse arrived. “There’s an OR opening up for Mr. Munoz in fifteen minutes. I have to take him for prep.”
Maria smiled at all of us. “Sorry I couldn’t have been more help.”
I was honestly so dazzled to have her looking at me that I couldn’t say a word.
“Well,” she said, “tell whoever is investigating this that if they have questions, I’m available in social services.”
She walked off, and I stared dumbly after her, then felt compelled to follow.
“Excuse me, Ms. Simpson?” I managed. “I have some questions.”
She turned and looked at me. I felt like melting when she asked, “Who are you?”
“Uh, I’m Alex Cross. I have a PhD in psychology from Johns Hopkins with a focus on violent criminality and its ripple effects.”
“Nice to meet you, Alex Cross, PhD,” she said, holding out her small, delicate hand. “And I know a thing or two about the ripple effects of violent crime.”
“I bet you do,” I said. “Could I buy you a cup of coffee? Pick your brain?”
“I’ll have to take a rain check on that, I’m afraid,” she said.
CHAPTER 14
IN OUR APARTMENT NOW, Maria pivoted from the stove holding a plate of baked chicken thighs, rice, and broccoli spears.
“What are you smiling at, Alex Cross?” she asked in that soft, teasing voice I loved. “You’re that hungry?”
“Just remembering how you blew me off the first time I asked you out.”
“Asked me out? Blew you off?” she said in mild protest. “You asked if I wanted to grab coffee so you could pick my brain, and I said I’d take a rain check on the coffee.”
“But you didn’t say no to a glass of wine.”
“No, sir,” Maria said, sitting down as I began to eat. “I was going against my mom’s voice in my head saying, ‘You don’t know him at all.’ But I did say yes to wine.”
“Happy you did,” I said, raising my beer.
My wife clinked her glass of water against my bottle, beaming back at me.
“Did you know right away?” I knew the answer but still enjoyed hearing her reply.
“I knew that night. I’ve told you that.”
“What was it?”
“It wasn’t one thing. More like a bunch of things at once. I guess first was how you really listened to me, how intent you were about wanting to know what I thought.”
“You were an expert on some topics in psychology.”
“It was more than that, I think,” she said.
“I was shocked by your beauty.”
“Aww,” she said and smiled. “Tell me more.”
“Hector Munoz was too. He was hitting on you, and you used it against him.”
“Of course I did. The power of the feminine has always been my secret weapon.”
“Thank God,” I said and laughed. “We did talk for hours that night.”
“They kicked us out of the bar.”
“I asked you if anyone had ever told you that you were the most charming, intelligent, and beautiful woman they’d ever met.”
“Don’t forget ‘inside and out,’” she said. “That’s what you said. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re the most charming, intelligent, and beautiful woman, inside and out, that they’d ever met?’”
I acted crestfallen. “And you said, ‘Yes. A couple of times, actually.’”
She raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t being arrogant. Just truthful. And I didn’t leave you hanging there, did I?”
“No. You said, ‘But I have never been told that I was charming, intelligent, and beautiful by someone as tall, well-spoken, and handsome as you.’”
Maria laughed and ran her hands over her belly. “Good line off-the-cuff, huh?”
“Provoked the beginning of my bad back when I bent over to kiss you. That’s when I knew for certain.”
“Because your back went out, you knew you loved me?”
“No. It was when we kissed that first time. I just knew. There was before that kiss and afterward, and I had not a second of doubt about who you were.”
“Me too,” she said and blew me a kiss across the table. “To change subjects, you haven’t told me about your day.”
My smile faded. “I caught another murder case today. Kid from the Charles School in Alexandria.”
“I saw that on the news,” she said. “They think it’s a random thing?”
“Sampson and the chief are leaning that way.”
“You’re not?”
I shrugged. “I’ve just got this odd feeling that it was more than random.”
“You think the shooter knew the victim?”
“Either that or the shooter knew it was a place where young couples go.”
“And what? Took advantage of the time and place to kill a teenager in cold blood?”
“Bad either way. But I don’t know which one is right.”
“You sound frustrated.”
“I am,” I said. “I feel like I haven’t had enough police training.”
CHAPTER 15
MARIA FROWNED, SET DOWN her glass. “You went through the academy, Alex. You rode patrol.”
“For two months before I was moved to major cases. There’s a lot that I don’t know about investigations, and there are times, a lot of times, where I feel like I’m playing catchup.”
“You are playing catchup,” Maria said. “But that’s to be expected. They did not hire you for your years on the street. They hired you because you have unique insight into how bad guys think, a mindset taught to you by bad guys.”
“True.”
“Give them insight, then. Do that tomorrow and the day after that.”
I laughed and saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.”
“At ease, or whatever,” she said. “And one more thing to think about.”
I held up my palms. “Swing away.”
“Use your imagination, but make sure it’s imagination rooted in experience and reality. My mother taught me that was what being creative was—learning a skill well enough that you can use your imagination to improve it.”
“Like she did with her pottery.”
“Like she did with her pottery.”
“Message heard. I will take the facts as I find them, then use my imagination to explore reasons to explain them.”
She threw her arms wide and cackled. “And the student becomes the master!”
I couldn’t help myself. I got up, went over, and kissed her.
“I want more of those,” Maria said.
“Me too. I’m going to take up yoga for my back.”
“I want to be there for that first class.”
“I thought you’d be more supportive.”
“I support anything that promotes more kissing.”
I remembered something my grandmother said after she’d met Maria and repeated it—with an addition of my own. “You really are an old soul … in a wondrous body.”
“Don’t start any of that now,” Maria said, wagging her finger as she got up from the table and cleared my plate. “Or you won’t be able to get up and chase bad guys in the morning.”
I made a mournful face, then said, “Can I at least look in on Damon?”
She looked up at the clock and nodded. “I’ll do the dishes.”
“No, you will not,” I said. “I’ll take a quick peek and be right back.”
Maria smiled. “Then I’m going to put my feet up and watch TV. Volume on low.”
I’d squirted the hinges of the door of my little boy’s room with WD-40, so it opened without a sound. A slat of weak light cut the gloom inside, revealing Damon in his crib along the far wall, his blankets kicked off, as usual.
He lay on his back, right leg over his left, left hand on his forehead, left elbow held high to form a triangle. How in God’s name Damon found the position comfortable, I didn’t know, but it was one of his favorite positions to “conk out in,” as Maria put it. I quietly crossed the room, looked down at my son, and, as I’d done every day since the miracle of his birth, gave thanks for the second-greatest gift I’d been given in this life.
Part Two
* * *
MASTER CLASS
CHAPTER 16
I TRIED TO FOLLOW Maria’s suggestion about looking at my work from a different perspective, spending time with the cold hard facts, the proven clues, then trying to extrapolate possibilities from them.
We also searched for evidence from other sources, including the FBI. From my research days, I knew a special agent over there, Ellen Bovers, whom I had interviewed several times.
I called Ellen and asked if there was a security camera overlooking the intersection where the Chain Bridge met the Canal Road. She checked, said there were CCTV cameras on both ends of the bridge and indeed on all the other bridges connecting the District to Virginia and Maryland.
