Triple Cross

Moore said, “I’m always five steps ahead of you, Thomas. I’m sending a list of names, numbers, and relationships your way.”

“Do me a favor and prioritize them first,” he said, looking at the images of nine-year-old Nick Carpenter in a Little League uniform and his brother, five-year-old Alan, who was sitting in a wheelchair at an amusement park somewhere and grinning like he was having the time of his life.

Tull felt a surge of emotion—grief over the senseless loss melded with pity—and had to fight the ball of pain filling his throat.

“Alan. That poor kid is one of the heavyweights of this story,” he murmured into the recorder. “Born into terrible circumstances beyond his control and then dying the same way. But in the years between, there was love. Deep love for and from Alan.”

Tull paused and shook his head before speaking again. “Need scientific background on cerebral palsy. Talk to Alan’s therapists. His friends. His doctors.”

He stopped, rubbed his eyes, and sat at his desk.

“Do you like them?” Moore asked. “As subjects?”

“I do,” Tull said. “I’m sad, of course, but these were good people caught up in events beyond their understanding. I need to explore that theme, I think. Readers will relate to that. They love it when the victims have good souls.”

“No doubt,” Moore said. “What about law enforcement?”

“I’ll take the local crime-beat reporters out to lunch, begin building our sources for the nitty-gritty to come.”

“Alex Cross?”

“Dr. Cross is near the bottom of the list for the moment,” he said. “Along with the other two detectives quoted in today’s articles, Mahoney at the FBI and Sampson with Metro Homicide.”

“Why so low?”

“Because we’re conducting our own extensive investigation first and in parallel.”

“You believe they’ve already made mistakes?”

“I do. A couple of big ones.”

CHAPTER 11

THE FAMILY MAN SENSED the time was ripe to increase the pressure and make the critical next move in the promotion of general hysteria.

Up to this point, the killer had focused primarily on white suburban families. Now that had to change.

The Elliott family of Alexandria, Virginia, would do nicely, thank you. A family selected to change the popular buzz about the killings, broaden and deepen it, spread the fear far and wide.

With the floor plan of their Craftsman bungalow memorized, the night-vision goggles ready, and happy that there was no canine to contend with, the Family Man eased down an alley behind the house, finished putting on the hazmat gear, and vaulted the rear gate.

The killer landed and trained a laser pointer on the wide-angle security camera high above the rear door, effectively blinding it to the backyard.

There was no camera above the concrete steps that led to the basement door, a steel-clad affair with double dead bolts. With the help of a pair of stainless-steel picks and a small electromagnet, the Family Man had the bolts turned and the door open in under ten minutes.

The bungalow design presented an interesting challenge. The members of the Carpenter family had slept on different levels of their house, but the Elliotts were all clustered upstairs in three bedrooms around a common area and a bath.

The house was nearly sixty years old. A creak in a floorboard or a stair riser could alert one of them and make life and death messier than it had to be.

The Family Man got out the pistol with the sound suppressor, climbed the steep stairs out of the musty basement, and slipped into the kitchen. The night-vision goggles revealed a living room on the right and a dining room and stairs to the second floor on the left.

The killer took several breaths with closed eyes, rehearsing, before moving to the staircase and, with near robotic precision, settling each foot on the side of the risers, not in the middle, where they might squeak or squeal in protest.

The Family Man made no detectable sound the entire climb but paused at the last step anyway to listen for movement. Hearing nothing, the killer stepped up onto the landing and then slid along the wall, head up, intent on the master bedroom’s door, which was ajar.

The Family Man’s soft-soled boot accidentally kicked a wineglass on the wood floor. It hit a second wineglass, which tipped over an empty bottle, which hit the wood and rolled. It might have given another intruder a heart attack.

But, adapting, the killer just pushed up the goggles and aimed the pistol at the bedroom door.

“Tristan?” a woman said groggily on the other side. A light went on.

Then a light went on in the bathroom; the door opened and Tristan Elliott, a massive Black man who’d played lineman at Georgia Tech, stepped out. He saw the Family Man aiming the gun at him. Elliott raised his huge hands, sudden terror in his eyes, and whispered, “No, please. I know who you are. I know what you’re here to do. Don’t do it!”

“That’s not possible,” the killer said and shot him, then pushed open the master bedroom’s door to find Elliott’s wife on the edge of her bed, just about to scream.

CHAPTER 12