Triple Cross

“He’s not here,” said a bruiser of a man in a plain white T-shirt, blue gym shorts, and flip-flops. Two identical twin boys about ten exited behind him. He put down the camping lantern he carried and thrust out his hand. “Stan Allison. My wife, Polly. He’s gone, right?”

“We haven’t cleared the upper floors, sir.”

“He’s gone,” he said. “The creep found the redundant electric line that feeds the safe room and cut it, but I picked him up on a battery-powered pressure sensor leaving through the back door off the kitchen.” He looked at his watch. “Nine minutes ago.”

“He didn’t find the safe room?” Sampson said.

“He had no clue,” Allison said and chuckled. “He stood right where you are at one point, and he had zero idea we were eight feet away. I told you it was worth building, Polly.”

She sighed and nodded, looking exhausted. “I’m a believer, Stanley.”

“We’ll get the electric company out here to get your power on,” Sampson said.

“I can take care of that,” Allison said and tried to bulldoze by us.

“Wait, wait a second, sir,” I said. “Our dispatcher said you were watching him on camera. Did you see him?”

“See him?” Allison laughed. “We saw him a lot, recording the whole time, but he only took that hood off the once and then only for two seconds. But I got something.”

He dug out his cell phone, thumbed it, and showed it to us.

Family Man was turning away from the camera, which looked diagonally down at him from high up in a kitchen corner. The camera must have caught him repositioning the hood and the night-vision goggles for comfort; he held both with gloved hands an inch above a thick shock of curly, sandy-brown hair.

You could see only an eighth of his face and even that was in considerable shadow. But the image struck me and Sampson the same way.

“Tull,” we both said.

CHAPTER 75

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, WE left the crime scene to a crew of FBI agents and forensic techs and were racing in our cars back across the Potomac to Georgetown. Sampson and I got there shortly before four a.m.

Mahoney, who had come from Baltimore, was already parked across the street from Tull’s rented town house and was climbing from his car. A light shone outside the writer’s green front door.

We stood in the empty street.

“Where’s the Audi?” Sampson said, gesturing to the parking spot where the writer usually kept his blazing-fast coupe.

“Maybe he’s been out for a race along the George Washington Parkway,” I said.

“Or a time trial around Lake Barcroft,” Sampson said. “Do we have a warrant?”

“It’s being reviewed by a grumpy federal judge who isn’t very happy with me for waking him up,” Mahoney said. “But I think we’ll be inside before long.”

He’d no sooner uttered those words than we heard the rumble of a powerful engine coming toward us from the north. Headlights slashed the road.

“It’s him,” Mahoney said, and we all hurried to the other side of the street and the darkest shadows we could find.

Tull came in hot, overshot the parking space, and made a mess of parallel parking. The Audi’s front right quarter panel still jutted out a considerable way into the road when he jerked open the door and climbed out.

The writer wavered on his feet a moment, then threw back his thick shock of sandy-brown hair and chortled at some recent memory.

“Someone’s been drinking,” Sampson said.

“He’s hammered,” Mahoney agreed and moved at him fast with his badge in one hand and his service pistol in the other. “Mr. Tull. We’d like to talk to you.”

Tull made a jerky motion with his head before pivoting, stumbling, and almost face-planting on the street. He peered at us, then shook an index finger at us with glee.

“Gang ish all here,” he slurred. “Three Stooges redux.”

“Mr. Tull, how much have you had to drink?” Mahoney asked.

“Too much?”

“We’re taking you into custody,” Sampson said, going for his zip ties. “Turn around, hands behind your back. You know the drill.”

Tull gave him a puzzled and scornful look. “Why? I’m right here. I live here. I’m not hurting anyone.”

Sampson was having none of it. He spun the writer around expertly and fitted the zip ties on him. “Drunk-driving’s the least of your worries, Thomas.”

When he turned the writer around, he’d sobered a little. “What is this?”

Mahoney said, “Thomas Tull, you are under arrest on suspicion of multiple mass murders, including those of the Hodges family, the Landaus, the Carpenters, the Elliotts, and the Kanes.”

Sampson said, “You have the right to remain silent—”

“What? No,” Tull said, shaking his head like a horse pestered by flies. “No, no, no. It’s nothing like that.”

John kept reading him his Miranda rights.

“I know my rights, damn it, and I did not do this!” Tull roared. He jerked free of Sampson’s grasp and tried to take off. Still in restraints, he made it three feet before tripping and actually face-planting on the street.

We rushed to pick him up. Tull’s nose was smashed and gushing blood. One of his upper incisors was broken. The other was gone. Blood ran from that wound.

In what had to have been some agony, the writer got belligerent.