Criss cross, p.19
Criss Cross, page 19
“How do you know all this?” Bree said.
Ali said that he’d texted the captain to tell him he was going to the race and wanted to know if they could ride before then. Abrahamsen said he was sorry, but he was flying to Texas in the morning after a doctor looked at his shoulder.
“He said it’s going to be at least two weeks before he can think about a bike.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. The light turned, and Ali took off ahead of us as we jogged across Maine and then Independence. “But when’s the race?”
Ali called over his shoulder, “Four weeks?”
“There you go,” Bree said. “Plenty of time for him to heal up.”
The rest of the weekend, it felt like we did have plenty of time. All of us. It rained on Sunday, and we stayed inside, watching the NCAA basketball tournament and eating Nana’s food.
Bree was reading in our room after I put Ali to bed. I sighed, said, “I needed this weekend. Space to be us.”
“I did too,” she said, putting her book on the table, clicking off the light, and coming over to snuggle.
“Good night, baby,” I said, kissing her.
“Who said the weekend has to be over?” she said and kissed me back.
Chapter
78
It felt like the sun was coming in through the window and shining right on my eyelids.
I squinted and saw it was still dark in the room. But someone outside was shining a powerful, narrow spotlight beam on me.
I threw myself over and onto the floor, yelling, “Bree!”
No answer.
The light vanished.
“Bree!”
Our bedroom door opened, and in her bathrobe, she looked out at me crouched on the floor.
“Shhh!” she said. “It’s only five thirty. Everyone’s still sleeping.”
I hissed, “There was someone outside just now, shining a light in on me.”
That changed everything. We scrambled into clothes, got our service weapons, and went outside.
Judging from the angle, we figured the light had come from the roof of the Morses’ house, next door, and well above the scaffolding that workers were erecting to sandblast the exterior walls.
We knew their lockbox combo, so we got the keys and went inside, guns drawn.
The house was empty. The interior windows, walls, and floors were covered with plastic sheeting coated with sawdust. There were small piles of construction debris here and there, swept up but not removed.
We found plenty of footprints of different sizes both downstairs and upstairs and definitely in the bedrooms that had dormers overlooking the roof. The plastic sheeting over one of the dormers had been cut away. From the window, we couldn’t see anyone out on the roof or any dusty footprints.
Still, the only window in the house that wasn’t covered with plastic was this one.
I climbed out on the roof and moved to where I judged the flashlight had been held. I found traces of sawdust being blown away on the breeze.
“Someone was out there,” I said when I climbed back into the house. “But the evidence is disappearing fast.”
We went back to our own house, and Bree said, “It was him, M, wasn’t it?”
“We have to assume so.”
“I hate that he’s watching us.”
“When I think about it, I want to punch a wall.”
“What about the cameras you were talking about?”
“Ordering them today. And for this place too. I’ll bill the owners.”
“Do we move Nana Mama and the kids? Send them to your dad’s in Florida?”
It wasn’t a bad idea, though I knew it would drive all three of them nuts for various reasons. “Let me think about that.”
My phone rang. Keith Karl Rollins.
“You’re up early,” I said.
“I need only five hours a night,” the FBI cybercrime consultant sniffed. “And I thought you should be the first to know.”
He left me hanging. I said, “First to know what?”
“The Ethereum cryptocurrency used to pay the ransom on Diane Jenkins started to move late last night from all those accounts. I tracked the transfers through twenty-four different stops, most of them designed to strip metadata. A few of my bugs got through, though, and you won’t believe where the funny money finally ended up.”
Chapter
79
McLean, Virginia
The next morning, Ned Mahoney and I drove toward a gate in a six-foot wrought-iron fence that surrounded an estate in horse country. Set well back off the road, the sprawling Colonial home was white with green shutters and trim.
“I’m still not thinking it’s a good idea for you to be here, Alex,” Mahoney said when the pickup truck in front of us turned and rolled up to the gate. We came in behind it.
“I disagree,” I said. “I’ll be the rattler of cages.”
“We have a search warrant.”
“Who says we have to show our cards so soon?”
“What are you hoping for?” Mahoney asked as a hand came out of the window of the pickup and pressed a button on an intercom. “A confession? ‘I’m M, and I organized all the mayhem because of you, Alex Cross’?”
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping for,” I said. We heard a loud buzzing noise and then the gate swung open. “And if we handle this right, we just might get it and save ourselves a whole lot of time and trouble.”
Ned followed the pickup through the gate and up the drive. “Do me a favor, and let me do the talking?”
“I think my presence will provide more than enough leverage.”
We parked on brick pavers in a circular area surrounded by azaleas, which were beginning to bloom. A row of dogwoods lined the walkway we took to the front door. We ignored the looks from the uniformed landscaping crew and knocked.
A Latina woman in her mid-forties answered the door. Somewhere inside, classical piano music played. “Yes?”
Mahoney showed his identification. “FBI, ma’am. We’d like to speak with the lady of the house.”
The woman stared at the credentials. “FBI? She’s not well. I’ll call her son. He lives just down the street.”
“We’re going to see him next, but we need to talk to her now,” Ned insisted. “What’s your name, by the way?”
I suppose she thought Ned wanted this information so he could check her immigration status, because she crossed her arms, lifted her chin, and said, “I am Maria Joan, and I have a green card, six years now. I will be a U.S. citizen in seven months. I study for it. And I know the laws. Fourth Amendment. You cannot make me let you in without probable cause or a search warrant.”
Mahoney smiled and reached for his inner breast pocket. “Well, Ms. Joan, you are right about that. But we do have a federal search warrant. So if you don’t let us in to see your boss, you could be obstructing justice.”
Mahoney held the warrant up for her to see. She scanned it, nodded, and grudgingly stood aside so we could enter.
The oval foyer was slate-floored. At the center, between us and a weeping wall fountain, stood a pedestal table with a vase holding a riot of a floral arrangement that scented the air with its perfume.
We followed Maria Joan down a hallway off the foyer, past a library, and toward the sound of the piano music into a large open space that contained a kitchen out of a glossy magazine and a living area beyond with furniture of equally high finish and taste.
There were fresh roses in two vases and a nice tea service on the round table in front of a woman sitting in a wheelchair turned slightly away from us. She was watching Bloomberg Television on a large screen set into the wall.
The volume was on mute. Piano music played from speakers.
Maria Joan went around the front of the woman, shook her lightly, and said, “You have visitors, Mrs. M.”
Chapter
80
I almost lost my balance when Maria Joan said those words.
You have visitors, Mrs. M.
Mahoney’s face had gone slack, but it firmed before he came around in front of the wheelchair with me. I stopped short at her appearance.
The last time I’d seen Margaret Edgerton, she had had the poise and polish of a wealthy and accomplished businesswoman. But the polish had gone off her in the four weeks that had passed since that day at the Greensville Correctional Center when we’d both watched her son die the cruel and barbaric death he’d chosen.
She looked exhausted and wore tinted sunglasses, a plush blue robe, and thick socks. Her hands shook slightly, and there was an air of bewilderment about her when she turned her head and peered at me and Mahoney.
“Visitors?” she said in a sleepy, slightly slurred voice. “I thought the therapists had all gone for the day, and I’m tired, Maria.”
“Mrs. Edgerton, I’m Special Agent Mahoney with the FBI,” Mahoney said, stepping forward with his credentials and the warrant. “You can go now, Ms. Joan.”
“She won’t be able to read anything you show her,” she said, walking into the kitchen.
Mrs. Edgerton looked puzzled. “What’s this about?”
Mahoney said, “The kidnapping of a young mom named Diane Jenkins.”
The old woman wrinkled her nose and then squirmed upright.
“Kidnapping?” she said, indignant. “Me? How dare you!”
She began to cough and hack. She waved her fingers in the air.
“Please,” Maria Joan said, rushing back into the room toward an oxygen canister set on a dolly in the corner. “You’ve upset her, and she can’t breathe now.”
I was beginning to feel bad about coming.
The aide got the oxygen line below Mrs. Edgerton’s nose and then snarled at us, “Can’t you come back? She had a stroke three weeks ago. It damaged her vision, and she gets anxious.”
Now I felt really bad, but I said to Mahoney, “Tell her exactly why we came.”
Mrs. Edgerton’s head cocked and swiveled toward me. “Who else is here?”
Mahoney said, “A consultant, ma’am. But back to why we’re here. The kidnapped woman’s husband paid her ransom in what’s called a cryptocurrency.”
“I know what that is, blockchain nonsense,” she snapped. “So what?”
Before Mahoney could answer, Mrs. Edgerton waved her shaky left hand in my direction. “You answer. Consultant.”
“Mrs. Edgerton,” Ned said. “I am in charge here.”
“I don’t care,” she said, wheeling six or seven inches toward me. “I may be legally blind now, but I still have most of my hearing, my rights, and my wits about me. Mr. Consultant, tell me why you and the special agent are really here.”
I cleared my throat and said, “The ransom money moved through hundreds of digital accounts all over the world and ended up in your personal cryptocurrency account. It landed there yesterday. All five million.”
It was as if she hadn’t heard. After I’d said about ten words, Mrs. Edgerton gripped the handles of her chair so hard, her knuckles turned pearly, and her face contorted into something bitter and vindictive.
“You’re here to finish me off, aren’t you, Cross?”
I hesitated, then said, “No, Mrs. Edgerton, I’m not.”
She chortled at that. “Sure you are. You railroaded my son into that electric chair, and you’d like nothing better than to see me fry too.”
“We’re here about a completely different matter,” Mahoney said. “Mrs. Edgerton, we have a federal warrant to seize any and all computers from your home and the Edgerton family office in Manhattan.”
The old woman seemed not to hear. She strained forward in her wheelchair, looking as angry as she’d been when her son was executed.
In a harsh, cold whisper she said, “I told you that you would burn in hell, Cross. Do you remember that?”
“I do. Are you M, Mrs. Edgerton?”
“Don’t answer that!” a man behind us roared. “Mom, do not say another damned word, and you two are out of here. I don’t care if you are FBI. You don’t barge into my invalid mother’s house and start asking her questions without counsel.”
We’d both turned to see a bull of a man in his fifties coming at us across the kitchen. He was balding, fit, and wearing a hooded sweatshirt and workout gear. I remembered him from the execution.
“Peter Edgerton?” Mahoney said. “We have a warrant for your house too.”
That stopped Mrs. Edgerton’s older son in his tracks. “My house? For what? And what the hell do you think you’re going to find in my mother’s computers? She hasn’t used one since the stroke!”
“Ransom money demanded by kidnappers ended up in your mother’s crypto account,” Mahoney said.
“Pete!” Mrs. Edgerton shouted. “I don’t even have an account like that.”
“Yes, you do, Mom,” her son said sharply.
“What?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said. He studied us. “Are you bullshitting me? Did that crypto really go into her specific account?”
“It did.”
“Then someone out there hacked it and sent it there, the real kidnappers.”
“What would be the point of that?” I asked.
Peter Edgerton seemed to notice me for the first time, and his entire demeanor changed.
“No way,” he said. He looked at Mahoney. “You get this son of a bitch out of my mother’s house or I promise you, I’ll spend every dime of my personal crypto fortune to sue you both into oblivion.”
“Mr. Edgerton,” Mahoney said.
“Get him out of my house, Pete!” his mother shouted.
Her son struggled to control himself as he glared at Mahoney. “If Cross goes, out of here completely, off the property, we’ll cooperate, let you look at my house, my brother’s place, the family office, whatever. I promise you we’re not involved.”
Mahoney looked at me and gestured with his head toward the door.
I left without argument. I heard Pete Edgerton say in a soothing voice, “He’s gone, Mom. He’s never coming back.”
I was heading toward the front door when his mother shouted, “You’re still going to burn, Cross! No matter what you do, you’re still going to burn for what you did to Mikey!”
Chapter
81
As I walked down the driveway toward the gate, I decided there wasn’t any point in my sticking around outside while Mahoney and his men conducted the search.
And I was having serious doubts that Mrs. Edgerton was physically capable of being M. Her brain seemed largely intact, but the stroke had left her all but blind, and she had serious respiratory issues.
Pete?
Now, that was a real possibility. Pete had the motivation to be M. He also had the money, and at least part of it was in largely untraceable cryptocurrency.
Or was there a conspiracy between mother and son? If it was a shared obsession, two hearts loathing as one, I could almost wrap my head around the Edgertons’ putting revenge ahead of their personal fortunes, lives, and freedom.
Almost.
My doubts all stemmed from one question: Why would they be involved in a kidnapping in Ohio?
No answer I could come up with made sense. I walked through the gate and pulled out my phone to request an Uber to take me back into the city.
My phone buzzed in my hand. A text from FBI Special Agent Kim Tillis:
Going to Alexandria detention center at noon to tell Marty. See you there to deliver good news for a change?
It was ten past eleven, so I texted back: I will be there.
An innocent man freed. The thought made me smile in a way that putting the cuffs on someone guilty did not. This felt lighter, selfless, not like atoning for the dead at all.
That feeling was still building when I got out of the Uber at the appointed hour and spotted Agent Tillis beside a younger, chipper-looking woman in a navy-blue suit.
Sandra Wendover smiled and shook my hand after Tillis introduced her as an attorney with the federal public defenders’ office.
“I’m so happy, Dr. Cross,” Wendover said, still smiling. “We don’t often get to make this kind of visit to an inmate.”
I grinned back. “It does feel good.”
Tillis teared up. “It’s like we’re bringing Marty the best present ever.”
We went through the doors to the security checkpoint. I got out my identification and was ready to pass my shoes through the scanner when a woman called out, “Dr. Cross?”
I looked up to see Estella Maines, the sheriff’s deputy.
“Did you get the message I sent over your way Friday?” she asked.
“My way?”
“To Metro PD.”
“Oh, I’m only a consultant there these days.”
“Well, the fingerprints you asked us to take of Dirty Marty’s visitor? The guy in the stills from the security feed? We got a hit. He’s an ex-con. We got him cold.”
My heart raced. Finally, we were getting a break.
Before I could reply, Kim Tillis said, “Deputy, for the record, Martin Forbes is not dirty. He was unequivocally framed, and we’ve come to get him freed.”
Deputy Maines didn’t know what to make of that and she looked at me.
“It’s true. The guy in the security stills was in on the scheme to put Forbes behind bars. Who is he? What’s his name?”
Chapter
82
Forbes’s former partner and his attorney went in to give him the good news. But after I’d learned the real name and most recent address of the man we called Pseudo-Craig, I’d decided not to go with them. I told them to give Marty my sincere best, and I left.
The first thing I did was call Keith Karl Rawlins to tell him to start digging. Then I called Ned Mahoney and told him to meet me in the lab beneath the FBI’s cybercrimes unit at Quantico.
Mahoney was already there when I pulled open the lab’s glass door and was met with the thudding techno dance music Rawlins listened to when he was working.
