Джеймс Паттерсон: Target: Alex Cross

“I’m going to faint if this goes on much longer,” my grandmother said.

“We’ll hold you up,” Jannie said. She took one of her hands and Ali took the other.

Bree’s cell rang. She answered and listened.

“I’ll be right there,” she said and then hung up.

“You can’t leave now,” I said.

“I have to. Murder in Georgetown five blocks from where Walker was shot.”

“That was hours ago.”

“I’m looking for straws to grasp at.”

“Need company?”

“Can’t; you’re under FBI contract. Michaels would have my head if I let you in. Text me what happens?”

I nodded and kissed her. “Be safe.”

She slipped down the aisle and disappeared before the referee blew his whistle. Georgetown brought the ball out-of-bounds and up-court in three long and precise passes. But the Wildcats’ pesky defense kept them from getting an immediate shot.

When the Hoyas passed a fourth time, Barnes darted forward, intercepted it, and passed to Ott, who slammed the ball through Georgetown’s hoop with eighteen seconds on the clock.

“We’re up by three!” Ali squealed.

Neither team had time-outs left. Georgetown tried to break quickly up-court, but Barnes and Damon kept pressing the Hoyas.

When they tried to come inside with a lob pass to their center, Ott sprang and batted the ball. The Hoyas’ guard snatched it up before Ott could steal, however, and passed it to Georgetown’s best outside shooter.

He set to release, and I thought for sure we were heading into overtime. But Damon came leaping laterally and windmilling his right hand.

After the shot, my son’s fingers brushed the ball just enough that it caromed off the rim and into Barnes’s able hands. He dribbled away from the Hoyas chasing and trying to foul him.

He was just too quick. The buzzer went off, and the Wildcats went crazy.

“Upset of the year!” Jannie cried, and we all cheered as if Damon and Davidson College had made the Final Four.

Bree drank from a cup of hot black coffee as she surveyed the scene inside the apartment in Georgetown. The victim, a white male in his fifties, sat slumped in a club chair. Blood had spilled from his neck wound to his lap and clotted on his chest and belly like an apron.

“Time of death?” she asked Evelynn Kincaid, a top medical field examiner.

“Four or five hours ago?” said Kincaid, a tall lanky woman who used to play volleyball at Purdue. “The heat was turned up, so I’ll need more tests to be precise.”

“Nasty neck wound. The knife?” Bree said, gesturing to a switchblade on the carpet near the corpse.

Kincaid shook her head. “That’s his knife. There’s a scabbard for it around his right ankle, and there’s no blood on the blade.”

“So what was the weapon?”

The ME put on reading glasses, peered at the victim’s neck. “He’s got bruising and skin abrasions above and below the wound. And the edges are ragged. Could be a thin rope, but I’m thinking small-gauge wire.”

“From behind?”

“I’d say so,” Kincaid said. “The killer had to be plenty strong for the wire to cut deep like that. And smart. Victim got a shot off with that little Ruger in the corner, but it missed. Bullet hole is in the south wall, over there.”

“No one heard the shot?”

Natalie Parks, the detective on the scene, said, “No one yet.”

“We have an ID? Who found him?”

Detective Parks said they’d found a driver’s license and credit cards that identified the deceased as Carl Thomas of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and business cards that pegged him as a medical-equipment salesman. A maid for the apartment’s owners had arrived to bring clean towels around seven p.m. and found Thomas in his present state.

“I’ve already spoken with the owners,” Parks said. “Thomas booked online nine days ago. He indicated in his application he was going to combine business with tourism and stay for three nights.”

Bree thought about that. “Anything linking him to Senator Walker’s killing?”

Parks and Kincaid both seemed surprised by the question.

“Two killings seventeen hours and five blocks apart,” Bree said. “And this guy is armed not only with a pistol, but a knife he carries in an ankle sheath. So until we prove otherwise, we’re considering these murders connected. Meantime, I want his prints run. Anything else? Itinerary? Phone? Computer?”

Parks shook her head. “Nothing beyond the wallet and the IDs, Chief.”

“Killer took them. Clothes?”

“An overnight suitcase. A down parka, hat, gloves.”

“How’d he get here? Where’s his car?”

“No idea yet.”

“Nothing that said ‘shooter’ in that overnight bag?”

“No bullets or rifle components, if that’s what you mean,” Parks said.

Bree’s phone rang. Dispatch.

Bree sighed and answered. “This better be good. I’m running on fumes.”

“Chief, we’ve had officers under fire, a high-speed chase on Blair Road, and now an armed standoff in Takoma, multiple weapons involved,” the dispatcher said.

Bree started toward the door fast, barking questions at the dispatcher. She was told that it started when a Metro patrol unit had pulled over a Cadillac Escalade with California plates for failure to make a full stop at a blinking light. There were three males in the car. The officer ran the plates and found them registered to Fernando Romero of Oakland.

The name had rung bells.

“What kind of bells?” Bree demanded, leaving the apartment crime scene.

“Romero’s a big gangbanger with ties to the Mexican drug cartels. He’s got a long history of violence and three felony warrants out for his arrest, including one for threatening bodily harm to a U.S. senator two weeks ago.”

“Betsy Walker?” Bree said, running now.

“That’s affirmative.”

We waited outside the Verizon Center until Damon emerged as happy as I’d ever seen him. And not just because he’d played an integral part in the upset of the NCAA season. He had his arm around a very pretty young Asian woman.

“This is my girlfriend, Song Li,” he said. “She’s from Hong Kong and goes to Davidson, a transfer like me.”

Girlfriend, I thought. That’s a first for Damon.

“Song Li,” Nana said, walking up and taking her hand. “What a beautiful name.”

Song smiled shyly and said in a soft British accent, “Thank you, Mrs. Hope. Damon has told me so much about you, I feel like I know you.”

“You can call me Nana or Nana Mama like everyone else, dear,” my grandmother said.

Jannie appeared suspicious until Song turned to her and said, “Are you the fabled Jannie?”

My daughter laughed. “Fabled?”

“Damon brags on you almost every day.”

“That’s not true,” Damon protested. “Well, maybe almost every other day.”

“Dr. Cross?” Song said. She shook my hand and bowed her head. “It is indeed an honor to meet you. My father will be most pleased.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Song,” I said. “Your father?”

Damon said, “He’s a detective in Hong Kong. It’s how Song and I got to talking.”

Song smiled. “When I told my father who Damon’s father was, he got very excited. He has watched the tapes of your FBI seminars on profiling and homicide investigations. He says you are one of the best in the world.”

“I don’t know about that. But it’s very flattering and kind of him to say so.”

“I will tell him,” Song said. Beaming, she turned to Ali. “Damon says you are studying Chinese in school?”