Джеймс Паттерсон - Detective Cross

Still in her running gear, Bree was on the sidewalk waiting for me with Special Agent in Charge Ned Mahoney, my old partner at the Bureau. As usual, he wore a dark Brooks Brothers suit, starched white shirt, and repp tie. Both he and Bree looked big-time stressed. I climbed out, thanked the driver, and hugged and kissed Bree before shaking Ned’s hand.

Bree took the overnight bag, checked it, and smiled at me, then Ned. “There’s somewhere I can shower and change inside?”

“Women’s locker room,” Ned said. “I’ll get you a pass.”

“Perfect,” she said, and we started up the steps to the front entrance.

“What do we know about the guy in the reflecting pool?” I said.

Ned preferred to wait until we were inside and upstairs in a conference room, close to the interrogation room where they were holding retired Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant Timothy Chorey. Ned told us Chorey had done almost three full tours of duty in the Middle East, two in Iraq during the surge and one in Afghanistan during the big pullout. Two months shy of the end of that third tour, Chorey sustained a head injury due to an IED explosion in Helmand Province.

The bomb killed two of Chorey’s men, rattled his brain, and damaged his inner ears. He spent time in a US military hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany before transferring to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the neurological effects of the blast eased, but did not entirely disappear.

Chorey was granted a medical discharge nearly four years before he waded into the reflecting pool. He left Bethesda with bilateral hearing aids, determined to go to school on the GI bill.

“‘His behavior seems erratic at best’,” I said, reading from a VA doctor’s notes taken on a walk-in visit a year after he left Bethesda. “‘Patient reports he has lost apartment, left school, can’t sleep. Headaches, nausea are common.’”

“That’s it. Chorey basically vanishes after that appointment,” Mahoney said. “He goes underground for three years and surfaces to put bombs on the National Mall.”

“If he’s your bomber, Ned.”

“He’s the guy, Alex. Master gunnery sergeants like Chorey wear a bomb insignia on their left lapel, for Christ’s sake. This guy may not have triggered the explosion, but he was involved, Alex. He ran from police, ignored their repeated orders, and was diverting attention from the bomb squad when that IED went off. And he hasn’t said a word since we’ve had him in custody.”

“Explosives residue on him?”

Mahoney grimaced. “No, but he could have worn gloves, and the techs say his dunk in the reflecting pool could have removed whatever traces there might have been.”

“No lawyer?”

“Not yet, and he hasn’t asked for one. He hasn’t said anything, in fact.”

“Mirandized?”

“Most definitely. Second they pulled him out of the water.”

“Okay,” I said, shutting the file. “Let me see if he’ll talk to me.”

As soon as Bree returned after a shower and a change of clothes, I went into the interrogation room alone. My first task was to build trust, and see what Chorey might tell me of his own volition.

Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Chorey sat in a chair bolted to the floor, gazing intently at his grimy hands folded on the tabletop and the handcuffs that bound his wrists. A heavy leather belt encircled his waist, with steel hoops attached to chains welded to the legs of the chair.

If he saw me enter, he ignored me. Not a flicker of reaction passed over his face. His entire being seemed focused on his hands and wrists, as if they held some great secret that calmed and fascinated him.

He was, as Bree had described him, six-foot-three, rail thin, with dull brown dreadlocks, a sparse beard over drawn skin, and dark bags under his eyes, which were still gazing, barely blinking. He stank of body odor and cheap booze.

“Mr. Chorey?” I said.

He didn’t react.

“Gunny?”

Nothing. His eyes closed.

I was about to take the seat in front of him, and shake the table so he’d open his eyes and at least acknowledge my presence. But then something dawned on me, and I eased to his side, studying him more closely.

I went around behind him and clapped my hands softly. Chorey didn’t react. I clapped them loudly and he didn’t startle, but instead slightly cocked his head as if wondering if that sound was real.

“He’s almost stone deaf,” I said to the mirror. “That’s why he wasn’t responding to officers’ orders. And hate to say it, Ned, but it jeopardizes the Miranda.”

Chorey opened his eyes and saw me in the mirror. He startled, squinted, and twisted around to look up at me. I held up my hands and smiled. He didn’t smile back.

I went around the table, took another chair, and got out a legal pad and pen from my bag.

I wrote, “Master Gunnery Sergeant Chorey, my name is Alex Cross. Can you hear with your hearing aids?”

Chorey brought his head close over the tablet when I spun it. He blinked, shrugged, squinted at me and in a weird, hollow nasal voice said, “I don’t know.”

“Did you have them in when you went in the reflecting pool?” I wrote.

“Been two and a half years since I’ve had them. I think. Time goes by and...”

He stared off into the middle distance.

“What happened to them?”

“I got drunk, heard voices and that damn ringing in my head, and I don’t know, I think I crushed them with a rock.”

“Get rid of the voices and the ringing?”

He laughed. “Only if I kept drinking.”

“Would it help if we got headphones and an amplifier for you?”

“I don’t know. Why am I here? Is it that big a deal to protest in Washington? I’ve seen films of hundreds of peaceful protesters in that reflecting pool back in the sixties. Hell, they were in it in Forrest Gump, right? Jenny was, anyway.”

I smiled because he was right. Before I could scribble my response, a knock came at the door. An FBI tech entered with headphones, amplifier, and a microphone.

The tech put the headphones on Chorey, and turned on the amp. He turned the sound halfway up, and told me to speak. Chorey shook his head at each hello. It wasn’t until the amp was at ninety percent of capacity that he brightened.

“I heard it. Can it go louder?”

The tech said, “At a certain point it could further damage your ears.”

Chorey snorted and said, “I already know what the silence is like.”

The tech shrugged and turned the volume up again.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

Both eyebrows rose and he said, “Huh, yeah, I heard that in my right ear.”

I set down my pen and leaned closer to the microphone the tech had set up on the table. “Going in the water, dismantling your weapon, you did that as a protest?”

“Destroying my weapon as protest. Beating swords into ploughshares, and baptizing myself in the pool of forgiveness. It was supposed to be a new beginning.”

He said this with earnestness, conviction even.

“You ran from the police.”

“I ran from shapes chasing me,” Chorey said. “My eyesight sucks now, except right up close. You can check.”

“What about the bombs?” I asked. “The IEDs?”

Chorey twitched at the word bombs, but then appeared genuinely baffled.

“IEDs?” he said. “What IEDs?”

Forty minutes later, I entered the observation booth overlooking the interrogation room where Chorey was still in restraints, sweating and moaning with his eyes closed. Ned Mahoney’s arms were crossed.

“You believe him?” Mahoney asked.

“Most of it,” I said. “You saw his hands there at the end. I’d say it would be impossible for him to build a bomb.”