Cross Country (5 page)

T
HE PLAZA WITH its lines of gas pumps exploded from underneath, the pavement rising like a carpet being rolled. Flames shot at least eighty feet into the air, a ball of bright yellow and orange, followed by a heavy black coat of smoke. Burning vehicles rolled around like toy cars; truckers and families fled screaming from the restaurant, where the fire had already spread and with it the panic.

Up ahead I could see two SUVs speeding out toward Route 50. They were getting away!

I spotted Bree coming around from the far side of the building and breathed a sigh of relief. She was all right. She ran toward my car and so did I.

I got in the car and punched it up to ninety in a hurry.

For a few uneasy seconds, there was nothing ahead of us, nothing I could see.

"There!" Bree pointed at the two SUVs. They must have spotted us because just then they peeled off from each other.

The first Land Cruiser went left. The second SUV turned right. I followed the lead vehicle, hoping I had made the right choice.

I
BARRELED DOWN a dark two-lane road, gaining ground quickly on the Land Cruiser. A deep drainage culvert curled along our left side. I came up on the Cruiser's taillights, and the driver appeared to panic. Suddenly it flared to the right, then cut back nearly ninety degrees without slowing. Then the Land Cruiser flew straight toward the ditch.

The front wheels were lodged into the far bank. The rear tires continued to spin fiercely.

Bree and I were already out of our car and crouched behind the open doors.

"Out of the vehicle! Now!" I yelled across the ditch.

Finally, I could see bodies moving inside the Land Cruiser.

The adult was in the driver's seat. Next to him was someone barely tall enough to be seen.

The smaller figure reached through the passenger-side window. He put one palm on the roof, then the other. He started lifting himself up and out.

"Down on the ground! Now!" Bree shouted at him. "Get down, I said!"

But he didn't! He torpedoed himself up onto the roof, skinny and cat-quick. His gun was out now, pointing our way. He slid across the roof, firing three quick shots at us.

We fired back. A round caught him and he dropped to the ground. But not before he'd given the adult enough cover to get outside. The driver's door was open. I couldn't see the large man, but I knew he was getting away.

Bree stopped beside the kid; I kept going. Down into the ditch, then up the other side.

I'd thought there were woods beyond the gulley, but now I saw there was just cedar screening and tall weeds.

Suddenly I heard the rattle of a chain-link fence. The large male was climbing it. By the time I pushed through the trees, he was over the top and running across the rear yard of some kind of storage facility.

I leveled my Glock against the chain link, then emptied the magazine. He was too far away. I didn't think I'd hit him and then he turned. He waved contemptuously, then disappeared like a cat into the darkness.

I called in the location and then ran back to see about Bree. She was still crouched near the ground, right where I had left her. She'd put her jacket over the dead boy's face. It was an odd thing for a cop in a shoot-out to do, but Bree liked to go her own way.

"You okay? "I asked.

She didn't look up. "He was maybe twelve, Alex. Maybe that old. He ran suicide for the prick adult."

"Was he alive when you got to him?" I asked her. Bree nodded.

"He say anything?"

"Yeah." She finally looked up at me. "He told me to fuck myself. His last words on this earth."

I
DIDN'T SLEEP more than a couple of hours that night. An officer and two civilians were dead — not to mention one of the boy killers, the "world's youngest terrorist," according to a Washington Post headline the next morning. On top of everything else, I had an eight o'clock psych client to see at St. Anthony's.

But I didn't want to see this particular patient — not today.

It was ironic that I had a session with Bronson "Pop-Pop".

James that morning. He was eleven years old and probably the most advanced sociopath at that age I'd ever seen. Four months before, he'd made headlines when he and a seventeen- year-old beat two homeless men half to death. They had used, cinder block. It was Pop-Pop's idea. The district attorney hadn't figured out how to try the case yet, and Bronson was being held in juvenile custody. The one thing he had going for him was a very good social worker from Corrections, who made sure he got to his appointments with me.

At first I thought it best to keep the events of the last night out — out of my head. Once the session got going, though, I changed my mind.

"Bronson, you hear about what happened at the service plaza in Virginia last night?"

He sat across from me on a cheap vinyl couch, fidgeting, the whole time, hands and feet always in motion. "Yeah, right, I heard. They was talking 'bout that shit on the radio. What of it?"

"The boy who died… he was twelve."

Bronson grinned and put two fingers to his head. "Heard he got X-Boxed."

His confidence was prodigious; it gave him a strange adult quality — while his feet dangled about six inches off the floor in my office.

"You ever think something like that might happen to you?" I asked him.

He snorted. "Every day. It's no thing."

"That's okay with you, though? Makes sense? That's how the world should be?"

"That's how the world be. Bam."

"So then" — I looked around the room and back at him — "why bother to sit here and talk to me about it? That doesn't make much sense to me."

" 'Cause that bitch Lorraine fuckin' make me come."

I nodded. "Just because you come here doesn't mean you have to say anything. But you do. You talk to me. Why do you think that is?"

He made a thing of getting all impatient. "You the witch doctor, you tell me."

"You envy kids like the one who died? Working for a living? Running around with guns?"

He squinted at me, pulled the Lebron James Cleveland Cavaliers sweatband around his head a little lower. "Whad-dya mean?"

"You know, are you jealous of them?"

He smiled again, but only to himself. Then he slouched down on the couch and reached out with a toe to casually tip over the orange juice I'd given him. It spilled across the table between us. "Yo, they, got any Skittles in the machine downstairs? Go get me some Skittles!"

I did no such thing. After the session, I escorted Pop-Pop out to his social worker and told the boy I'd see him on Friday. Then I went home and picked up Nana.

We went to the Cox family funeral together. We held each other and cried with everybody else.

I didn't care if people saw me cry anymore. I just didn't care. If they were friends, they would understand. If they weren't, what did it matter what they thought of me?

That philosophy, to give credit where credit is due, was a Nana-ism.

"T
HIS IS DETECTIVE Alex Cross. I'm with the Metro police here in Washington. I need to speak with Ambassador Njoku or his representative. It's important, very important."

A night deputy from the Nigerian embassy was on the line with me. I kept one ear covered, trying to hear what she was saying above the wail of Bree's siren.

"Sir, I am very sorry, but I will need more information than simply—"

"This is an emergency call. Their son Daniel was just murdered at a nightclub. We have reason to believe the ambassador and his wife may be in danger too. We're sending police cruisers right now."

"But, sir… the Njokus are not in the country. They are at a symposium, in Abuja."

"Find them, then. Tell them to get somewhere secure. Please, do whatever you can do. Then call me back at this number. I'm Detective Cross."

"I'll do what I can, sir. I will call you back, Detective Cross."

I hung up, feeling a little helpless. How was I supposed to stop a murder that could happen six thousand miles away?

"I
WANT TO talk to the witnesses first. As many of them as I can. No one goes home."

Members of Daniel Njoku's party were being held in the coat-check area. I found them sitting close together on sofas, huddled. One girl, wearing a tiny black dress with a man's blazer over her shoulders, had blood smeared all over her neck and cheek.

I knelt down next to her. "I'm Detective Cross. I'm here to help. What's your name?"

"Karavi," she said. She had beautiful long hair and scared dark eyes, and I thought she might be East Indian. She looked to be early twenties at most.

"Karavi, did you get a look at the people who did this?"

"Just one man," she whimpered to me. "He was huge."

"Excuse me, sir," one of the others interrupted, "but we need to speak with our lawyers before we say anything to police." The speaker had an air of privilege about him; these twenty-somethings spent their Saturday nights in private boxes at a private club.

"You can talk to me," I said to the girl.

"Nonetheless, sir—"

"Or," I interrupted, "we can do this later tonight and tomorrow. After I'm done here with all of the others."

"It's all right, Freddy," Karavi said, waving off the boy. "I want to help if I possibly can. Daniel is dead."

We sat off to the side for a little privacy, and Karavi told me she was a grad student in cell biology at Georgetown. Both her parents were in the diplomatic corps, which was how she knew Daniel Njoku. They had been best friends but were never a couple. Daniel's girlfriend, Bari Nederman, had been shot tonight too, but she was alive.

Karavi described the gunman as a lone black man, maybe six six, at least that tall, wearing dark street clothes. "And he just looked… strong," she said. "He had huge, muscular arms. Everything about him was powerful."

"How about his voice? Did he speak to anyone? Before he started to shoot?"

Karavi nodded. "I heard him say something like 'I have an invitation' just before he…" She trailed off, not able to finish the thought.

"What kind of accent?" I asked. "American? Something else?" I was pushing because I knew I'd never get a better, truer account than right now.

"He wasn't from here," she said. "Not American, I'm certain of that."

"Nigerian? Did he sound like Daniel?"

"Maybe." Her jaw clenched as she fought back the tears. "It's hard to think straight. I'm sorry."

"Anyone else here Nigerian?" I turned back toward the others. "I need someone with a Nigerian accent."

One of the boys spoke up. "I'm sorry, Officer, but there's no such thing," He had a Jimi Hendrix 'fro and an open tuxedo shirt showing off his skinny chest and jewelry. "I speak Yoruban, for instance. There is also Igbo, and Hausa. And dozens of other languages. I'm not sure it's appropriate for you to suggest—"

"That's it!" Karavi put a shaking hand on my arm. I noticed a few of the others in the party were nodding too.

"That's how the killer sounded. Just like him."

I
WAS STILL at the nightclub murder scene around two in the morning, conducting interviews that had begun to blend one into another, when the cell in my trousers pocket rang. I figured it might be the Nigerian embassy and answered it right away.

"Dad?"

Damon's voice on my cell shocked me a little. At two in the morning, why wouldn't it? What was up now?

"Day, what's going on?" I asked my fourteen-year-old, who was away at school in Massachusetts.

"Uh… nothing really," Damon said. I think my tone had taken him off guard. "I mean — I've been trying to call you all day. I've got some good news."

I was relieved, but my pulse was still racing. "Okay, I need some good news. But what are you doing up so late?"

"I had to stay up. To catch you. I called home, talked to Nana. I didn't want to call you on your cell."

I look in a slow breath and walked over to the hall by the bathrooms, away from the crime scene techs. No matter the time, it was always good to hear Damon's voice. I missed our talks, the boxing lessons I gave him, watching his basketball games. "What's your news? Let me hear it."

"Nana already knows, but I wanted to tell you myself. I made the varsity. As a freshman. That's pretty good, right? Oh, and I got As on my midterms."

"Listen to you—'Oh, and I got As.' Nice one-two, Damon. I guess you're doing pretty good up there," I said, and suddenly I found myself smiling.

It was weird to be having this conversation under neon lights in a hallway that smelled of liquor and death, but it was still great news. Cushing Academy's sports and academic program had been a real draw for Damon. I knew how hard he'd been working to do well at both.

"Sir?" A uniform leaned her head into the hallway. "Nine-one-one dispatch for you?"

"Listen, Damon, can I call you later? Like in daylight, maybe?"

He laughed. "Sure, Dad. This is a big one, isn't it? Your case at that club. I saw you online."

"It is a big one," I admitted. "But it's still great to hear your voice. Any time. Get some sleep."

"Yeah, I will. You get some sleep too."

I hung up, feeling guilty. If this is what work meant — two a.m. conversations with my son — then I better make the work count. Dispatch relayed the call over to me, and I got the same woman from the Nigerian embassy as before. This time, though, her voice was thick with emotion.

"Detective, I'm sorry to tell you, but Ambassador and Mrs. Njoku were killed tonight. We're quite in shock."

I didn't feel shocked, I felt sick. "When did it happen?" I asked her.

"We're not entirely sure. Within the past few hours, I believe."

And within minutes of their son's murder? Had that been the plan all along? And whose plan? To what end? What was going on here?

I slid down against the wall until I rested on my haunches. Another family dead. And this time, the murder had crossed two continents — two completely different worlds. At least I thought so at the time.