Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross the Line

“No, I didn’t want to know.”

Around eight that night, we were left with seven bodies on the chill cement floor, and no one waiting outside. Two Jane Does. Five John Does. Two were the older Caucasian males in suits who’d been found with the cash; the remaining five were all in their late twenties and had been discovered in the meth lab.

I knelt next to the bodies and looked at them. What had brought them to this? Who the hell were they?

“Let’s get these bodies on ice,” I said.

“Dr. Cross?” called one of the patrolmen by the door. “There’s a young lady out here who wants to look for her friends.”

“Okay, one more.”

Alexandra Campbell shuffled in as if against her will, shoulders rolled forward, looking everywhere but at the bodies. She was a reedy woman in her twenties with a colorful sleeve tattoo and blond hair dyed peach in places.

“You think you know someone here?” I asked after introducing myself.

Campbell shrugged miserably, said, “Gotta look. Make sure.”

I led her over. Campbell stopped eight or nine feet from the remaining seven bodies. Her hand trembled up to cover her mouth.

“Carlo,” she choked out. “Now look where you’ve left me.”

She kind of folded down into herself then, wrapped her arms around her knees at the feet of the body bags, and sobbed her poor heart out. I gave her some time and then crouched at her side and offered her a tissue box.

Bree brought her a bottle of water, and Campbell told us everything she knew.

We didn’t reach home until well after midnight. We ate cold leftover chicken in the kitchen and tried to forget the things we’d seen and heard.

“You believe her?” Bree asked, getting up from the table to wash her plate. “Alexandra Campbell?”

“The bones of it,” I said.

“God help us, then,” she said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a zoo.”

“Just be the calm tortoise,” I said.

“You’re asking me to act like a turtle at work?”

“No, like a tortoise, with a big armored shell and the ability to stand back from it all and keep plodding toward the finish line.”

Bree looked at me sleepily, came into my arms, and said, “I have a feeling this is going to be all-consuming for a while, and you telling me to act like a land turtle wasn’t exactly the advice I expected from you. But I love you and let’s not lose track of each other.”

“Deal,” I said, and followed her upstairs to bed.

I don’t remember my head hitting the pillow. I don’t remember dreaming.

There was nothing but darkness until the alarm went off at six fifteen. Bree was already up, showered, and dressed, and eating in the kitchen with Nana Mama. Jannie was drinking a protein shake and wearing her warm-ups.

I yawned, said to Jannie, “You’re up early.”

“Trainer’s waiting. He wants my workouts done before the heat comes up.”

“You on the track?”

“Gym,” Jannie said. “I’m being introduced to Olympic weight lifting.”

“You’re going to be one of those bodybuilders?” my grandmother asked. “They’re not fast.”

“No, Nana,” Jannie said. “This is exactly the opposite of bodybuilding. The Olympic lifts require every muscle in your body to engage and fire. So doing them in addition to running will get me much stronger and more explosive, and it’ll do it without making my body look freakish.”

“Oh, well, that’s good,” Nana Mama said. “No freakish in this family.”

I smiled through another yawn, poured myself coffee. Bree rinsed the dishes and got ready to leave. I followed her into the front hallway.

“Why are you in such a rush?” I asked.

“Chief Michaels texted me, asked me to be in his office by nine.”

“For what?”

“To brief the mayor and the commissioner. How do I look?”

“Like a badass crime fighter.”

Bree smiled at that, pecked me on the lips, and said, “Thanks for making my life easier.”

“Anytime. Day or night.”

The murders of Aaron Peters, Tom McGrath, and Edita Kravic were put on the back burner after the massacre. Chief Michaels ordered virtually the entire Major Case Unit to work on the factory slayings.

The FBI put another ten agents on the case. The help of the DEA was enlisted as well. A task-force meeting was called for early that afternoon in a room normally used for patrol roll call.

The room was packed when Chief Michaels came in; he was followed by Ned Mahoney, a guy with a shaved head I didn’t recognize, and Bree. We hadn’t seen each other all morning, since I’d been back at the factory, watching the FBI neutralize and dismantle the meth lab.

She smiled and opened her eyes wide at me, mouthed the word Text .

I frowned, reached in my pocket, pulled out my smartphone, and realized that I’d shut the alerts off. There were several texts from Bree. The first three said Call .

The last one said Oh, well, hold on to your hat.

“This kind of slaughter will not go unanswered,” Chief Michaels began. “You cannot kill twenty-two people and not face punishment.”

Everyone in the room sobered. Many nodded their heads.

“The FBI, DEA, and DCPD have pledged total cooperation in that effort,” Chief Michaels said. “Our new chief of detectives, Bree Stone, will be supervising liaison with Special Agent Mahoney of the FBI and the acting DEA special agent in charge for the District, George Potter.”

Sampson whispered in my ear, “Your mouth’s hanging open.”

I shut it and grinned, prouder than proud. How could I not have seen that one coming?

Bree stepped up to the mike and nodded to me, all business.

Multiple photographs appeared on a screen in the corner.

“As of now, we have twenty out of twenty-two confirmed identities for the victims,” Bree said. “Any one of these people could be linked to the killers, so we are going to need workups on all of them.”

She nodded to someone, and the photos were reduced to five.

“This has not come out yet, but we know quite a bit about these five from a witness who came forward late last night,” she said. “All five are classmates in the graduate chemistry program at Georgetown University.”

That sent a rumble through the crowd. Georgetown? Chemists from a prestigious university running a meth lab?

Bree gestured to a photo of a dark-complected curly-haired man and said, “This is Laxman Dalal. Twenty-two years old. PhD candidate. Born in Mumbai, he went to the University of Southern California on a full academic ride and finished in two years. We believe he was the brains and driving force behind the drug lab.”

From there she gave them a story of four very smart, very driven people who’d been seduced into crime and easy money by Laxman Dalal, a man whom Campbell had described as “brilliant, charismatic, and morally corrupt.”

“Dalal evidently didn’t think the laws applied to him,” Bree said. “By sheer force of brains and personality, he convinced his fellow students, including Alexandra Campbell’s ex-boyfriend Carlo Puente, that they could earn a whole lot of cash by making meth at night, on weekends, and during their summer breaks.”

They got good fast, and their illegal business started to grow even faster. Campbell said it had started in a small garage in Southeast DC, but they’d soon moved to the factory in Anacostia.

“Campbell said her boyfriend showed her bags of money back in March,” Bree said. “That’s when she said she called it quits with Puente. She says she told him Dalal was going to get him killed. And he did. That’s it for me. Special Agent Potter?”