Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross Kill

Sweat poured down her face when she reached the landing and saw me getting off the bench. She didn’t startle or try to escape as I’d expected.

Instead she hardened, said, “Took you a while, Dr. Cross. The intrusion was almost six hours ago. But here you are. At last. In the flesh.”

“Kimiko Binx?” I said, holding up my badge and ID.

“Correct,” Binx replied, walking toward me, palms held open at her sides, and studying me with great interest.

The closer she got, I noticed a device of some sort, orange, and strapped to her upper right arm. When I saw it blink, I thought bomb, and went for my gun.

“What’s that on your arm?” I demanded, the pistol out, pointed her way.

Binx threw her hands up, said, “Whoa, whoa, Detective. It’s a SPOT.”

“What?”

“A GPS transmitter. It sends my position every thirty seconds to a satellite and to a website,” she said. “I use it to track my running routes.”

She turned sideways and held up her arm so I could examine the device. It was smaller than a smartphone, commercially made, heavy-duty plastic, with the SPOT logo emblazoned across the front of it and buttons with various icons. One said SOS and another was a shoe tread. The light blinked beside the shoe.

“So it tracks you?” I said.

“Correct,” Binx said. “What do you want, Dr. Cross?”

I held the search warrant up and said, “If you could open the door.”

Binx read the warrant without comment, fished out a key, and opened the loft. It was an airy work-and-living space with a view of an alley, a hodgepodge of used furniture, and a computer workstation that featured four large screens.

She moved toward the station.

“Do not go near your computer, Ms. Binx. Do not go near anything.”

Binx got aggravated and took off the SPOT device. “You want this, too?”

“Please. Turn it off. Put it on the table there, and your phone if you’ve got it. I’d like to ask you some questions before I call for my evidence team.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked, using her thumbs to play at the buttons on the transmitter.

“Why do you worship Gary Soneji?”

Binx didn’t answer, hit one last button, and looked up at me before setting the SPOT on the table with the light no longer blinking.

“I don’t worship Gary Soneji,” she said finally. “I find Gary Soneji interesting. I find you interesting, for that matter.”

“That why you built a high-security website about Soneji and me?”

“Yes,” she said, sitting down calmly. “Other people find you two interesting also. Lots of them. It was a safe way to handle our common passion.”

“Your members cheered when they found out my partner, John Sampson, was shot,” I said.

“It’s a private forum of free expression. I didn’t approve of that.”

“Didn’t you?” I said angrily. “You provided space for sickos to plot terror in the name of a man who committed utterly heinous acts and died ten years ago.”

“He’s not dead,” Binx said flatly. “Gary Soneji will never die.”

I remembered the coffin coming up out of the ground in New Jersey, wondered how much longer the FBI’s DNA testing would take, but said nothing of the exhumation of her idol.

Instead I said, “I don’t get this, smart woman like you. Virginia Tech graduate. Write code for a living. Paid handsomely. Yet you get involved in something like this.”

“Different strokes,” she replied. “And it’s my personal business.”

“Not when it involves the shooting of a police officer. Nothing’s personal.”

“I had nothing to do with that, either,” Binx said evenly. “Nothing. I’ll take a lie detector.”

“Who did, then?” I asked.

“Gary Soneji.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe Claude Watkins?”

Binx shifted her eyes ever so slightly to look just over my right shoulder before shaking her head.

I said, “Watkins’s name is on your company’s incorporation documents.”

“Claude’s a limited partner. He lent me some start-up money.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You know his background?”

“He had problems when he was younger,” she said.

“He is a sadist, Ms. Binx. He was convicted of carving the skin off a little girl’s fingers.”

“He was chemically imbalanced back then,” she said defiantly. “That was the diagnosis of both the state and his personal psychiatrists. He took the drugs they recommended, paid his dues, and moved on. Claude’s a painter and performance artist now. He’s brilliant.”

“I’m sure he is,” I said.

“No,” Binx insisted. “He really is. I can take you to his studio. Show you. We’ve got nothing to hide. It’s not far. He rents space in an old factory down by the Anacostia River, west bank.”

“Address?”

She shrugged. “I just know how to get there.”

I thought for a moment, said, “After my team gets here, you’ll take me?”

She nodded. “Be glad to. Can I take a shower in the meantime? You can search the bathroom if you need to. I assure you it’s nothing but the usual.”

I stared at her for several beats, and then said, “Make it quick.”

The criminalists arrived ten minutes later. I was giving them instructions to call if they turned up anything when Kimiko Binx emerged from her bedroom in jeans, Nike running shoes, and a short-sleeved green blouse.

“Ready, Dr. Cross?” she said, coming toward me and then stumbling over a loose cord and losing her balance.

I reached out before she could fall. Binx grabbed onto my left hand and right forearm and got her balance.

She turned from me, looking back, puzzled. “What was that?”

“You should put your cords under rugs,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We went downstairs to my car.

Binx got in the front seat, said, “Where’s the siren?”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “Where am I going?”

“Toward the Anacostia Bridge. It’s an old tool and die factory by the river.”

I drove in silence until I realized she was studying me again.

“What are you looking at?”

“The object of Gary’s obsession,” she said.

“Soneji’s sole obsession?” I asked.

“Well,” Binx said, and turned to look out the windshield. “One of them.”

She was so blithe and relaxed in her manner that I wondered if she was on some kind of medication. And yet, she made me feel strange, scrutinized by a cultist.

“How did you meet Claude Watkins?” I asked.

“At a party in Baltimore,” she said. “Have you met him?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure.”

Binx smiled. “It is, you know. A pleasure to see his paintings and his performances.”

“A real Picasso, then.”

She caught the sarcasm, turned cooler, and said, “You’ll see, Dr. Cross.”

Binx navigated me toward a derelict light industrial area north of the bridge, and an abandoned brick-faced factory with a FOR SALE sign on the gate, which was unlocked.

“This is where the great painter and performance artist works?” I said.

“Correct,” Binx said. “Claude moves around, takes month-to-month leases on abandoned buildings, where he’s free to do his art without worrying about making a mess. When the building and the art’s sold, he moves on. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. He learned the tactic in Detroit.”

It made sense, actually. I parked the car outside the gate, and felt odd, a little woozy, the way you do if you haven’t eaten enough or stayed well hydrated. And my tongue felt thick, and my throat dry.

I heard Binx release her seat belt. It sounded louder than it should have. So did the key in the ignition beeping when I opened the door. I took the key out, stood up, felt the warm spring breeze, and felt almost immediately better.