Patterson, James - Alex Cross 14 - Cross Country

I decided to take the partial manuscript with me to get it copied. I wanted to read everything that Ellie had written.

Was this what had gotten her killed-her book?

Next, I stared for a long time at a striking, poignant picture of Ellie, her husband, and their three beautiful children.

All dead now.

Murdered right here in their home. At least they hadn't been boiled in oil.

I took one more look at the photo of the two of us on the National Mall. Young and in love, or whatever it was that we were feeling.

“Ellie, I'll do what I can for you and your family. I promise you that.”

I left the house, thinking, What did you find in Africa?

Did somebody follow you back?

Cross Country

Chapter 11

EVERYBODY THERE KNEW there was trouble, but no one knew what kind or how bad it was.

A dark green panel van had screeched to a stop in front of a low-level mosque in Washington called Masjid Al-Shura. More than one hundred fifty peaceful congregants were crowding the sidewalk in front.

Even so, the very moment Ghedi Ahmed saw the gunmen scrambling out of the van, saw their gray hoodies, their black face masks and jaunty sunglasses, he knew they had come for him. They were just boys-the Tiger's boys.

The first gunshots were aimed into the sky. Just warnings. Men and women screamed, and some scurried back into the mosque.

Others flattened themselves on the sidewalk, shielding their children's bodies as best they could.

His hands held high, Ghedi Ahmed made his decision and moved away from his family. Better to die alone than to take them with me, he was thinking, shaking like a leaf now.

He hadn't gotten far when he heard his wife, Aziza, scream, and he realized what a terrible mistake he'd made. “Ghedi! Ghedi!” He turned as the wild boys carried, then threw, Aziza into the waiting van. And then-his children! They were taking the children, too! All four of them were hustled into the van.

Ghedi reversed direction quickly, and now he was screaming, more loudly than anyone in the crowd, even more than Aziza.

A courageous man from the congregation took a swing at one of the kidnappers. The boy yelled, “Dog!” and shot the man in the face. Then he fired again, where the man lay spread-eagled and already dying on the sidewalk.

Another bullet took down an elderly woman just as Ghedi pushed past her.

The next shot found his leg, and running became falling. Then two of the boys snatched him up off the ground and threw him into the van with his family.

“The children! Not our children!” sobbed Aziza.

“Where are you taking us?” Ghedi screamed at the kidnappers. “Where?”

“To Allah,” came the answer from the driver, the Tiger himself.

Cross Country

Chapter 12

THE MYSTERY WAS deepening and getting worse each day, but much of Washington didn't seem to care, probably because this one happened in Southeast, and only black people were killed.

Lorton Landfill is the final destination for much of Washington's garbage. It is two hundred and fifty acres of foul and disgusting refuse, so we were fortunate the bodies had been found at all. I drove the Mercedes in through valleys of trash that rose thirty feet high on either side. I continued on to where the response team was parked around an orange-and-white DC sanitation truck. The gauze masks they'd provided Bree and me at the gate didn't do much against the nauseating smell.

“A drive in the country, Alex. This is so romantic,” Bree said as we plunged forward through the muck. She was good at keeping things upbeat, no matter what the circumstances.

“I'm always thinking of new things for us to do.”

“You've outdone yourself this time. Trust me on that.”

I finally spotted Sampson talking to the truck's driver as we got out of the car. Behind the two of them and a ribbon of Crime scene tape, I could see yellow sheets covering the six bodies where they had been Found

Two parents and four more kids here. That made four adults and seven children in just the past few days.

Sampson walked over to brief us. “Garbage truck started on the empty streets this morning and made stops all over midtown. Forty-one Dumpsters at eighteen locations, some of them as close as a few blocks from the mosque. That's a shitload of follow-up work for us.”

“Any other good news?” I asked him.

“So far, only the bodies have been found. No word on the heads.” We hadn't released that so far to the press: All six of the victims had been decapitated.

“I love my job, I love my job,” Bree said quietly. “I can't wait to get to work in the morning.”

I asked Sampson where the father's body was, and we started there. When I pulled back the sheet, the sight was horrific, but I didn't need an ME to tell me that the cutting was much cleaner this time. There were no extraneous wounds: no bullet holes, no slashes, no punctures. Plus, the lower body had been burned badly.

Senseless murders, but probably not random, I was thinking.

But what did the Ahmed killings have to do with Ellie and her family?

“We've got some similarities and some real differences here,” Sampson told us. “Two families taken out suddenly. Multiple perps. But one behind closed doors, the other outside a mosque. Heavy cutting in both cases.”

“But different cutting,” Bree said. “And if the heads don't turn up-”

“Something tells me they won't,” I said. “Then, maybe we're talking about trophies, keepsakes.” “Or proof of purchase,” I said.

They both looked at me. “Maybe this one was business, and the other was personal. Also, CNBC just broke a story that Ghedi Ahmed was the brother of Erasto Ahmed, who's Al Qaeda, operating out of Somalia.”

“Al Qaeda?” Bree whispered and looked momentarily stumped. “Al Qaeda, Alex?”

We stood there, silent for a moment, trying to comprehend something as horrible as these murders. I thought of Ellie again. I couldn't stop thinking of her the past few days. Did her trip to Africa have something to do with her murder?

“So, what are we looking at?” Sampson finally spoke again. “Two sides of a war?”

“Could be,” I said. “Or maybe two teams.”

Or maybe one very smart killer, trying to keep us guessing.

Cross Country

Chapter 13

THERE WAS NO question there was federal interest in these cases. The cases were inflammatory and international in scope, and the CIA probably knew something. Two of their people had shown up at Ellie's house the night of the murders. The question was, How much could I get them to tell me, if anything at all?

I pulled in a few favors from my days with the bureau and got a meeting set up at Langley. The fact that they not only agreed to meet but also waived the first in what was normally a two-meeting protocol told me this was no back-burner issue for them. Usually, the CIA started you with somebody who couldn't do anything for you before you even got close to anybody who could.

I was given a whole team: Eric Dana from the National Clandestine Service; two spit-shined analysts in their mid-twenties who never spoke a word the whole time I was there; and one familiar face, AI Tunney, from the Office of Transnational Issues.

Tunney and I had worked together on a Russian mafia case a few years back. I hoped he would advocate for me here, but this was clearly Eric Dana's meeting, his case. We sat at a gleaming wood table with a view of nothing but green forests and lawns as far as I could see. Peaceful, serene, very misleading.

“Detective Cross, why don't you tell us what you know so far?” Dana asked. “That would be helpful to get things going.” I didn't hold back, saw no reason to. I walked them through all three crime scenes-the Cox house, the street outside Masjid Al-Shura, and, finally, the landfill out in Lor ton.