Mercury got no more than a silhouette image of the driver before he fired at him twice. The window shattered. The bullets hit hard.
The Maserati swerved left, smacked the guardrail, and spun back toward the inside lane just as Mercury’s bike shot ahead and out of harm’s way. He downshifted and braked, getting ready for the coming left turn.
In his side-view mirror, he watched the Maserati vault the rail, hit trees, and explode into fire.
Mercury felt no mercy or pity for the driver.
The sonofabitch should have known that speed kills.
Leaving the gluten-free aisle at Whole Foods, Tom McGrath was thinking that the long, lithe woman in the teal-colored leggings and matching warm-up jacket in front of him had the posture of a ballerina.
In her early thirties, with high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, and jet-black hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was lovely to look at, exotic even. She seemed to sense his interest and glanced back at him.
In a light Eastern European accent, she said, “You walk like old fart, Tom.”
“I feel like one, Edita,” said McGrath, who was in his mid-
forties and built like a wide receiver gone slightly to seed. “I’m stiff and sore where I’ve never even thought of being stiff and sore.”
“Too many years with the weights and no stretching,” Edita said, putting two bottles of kombucha tea in the cart McGrath was pushing.
“I always stretch. Just not like that. Ever. And not at five in the morning. I felt like my head was swelling up like a tick’s in some of those poses.”
Edita stopped in front of the organic produce, started grabbing the makings of a salad, said, “What is this? Tick?”
“You know, the little bug that gives you Lyme disease?”
She snorted. “There was nothing about first yoga class you liked?”
“I gotta admit, I loved being at the back of the room doing the cobra when all you fine yoga ladies were up front doing downward dog,” McGrath said.
Edita slapped him good-naturedly on the arm and said, “You did not.”
“I got out of rhythm and found I kind of liked being out of sync.”
She shook her head. “What is it with the men? After everything, still a mystery to me.”
McGrath sobered. “On that note, any luck finding what I asked you about the other day?”
Edita stiffened. “I told you this is not so easy, Tom.”
“Just do it, and be done with them.”
She didn’t look at him. “School? My car? My apartment?”
“I said I’d help you.”
Torn, Edita said, “They don’t give a shit, Tom. They—”
“Don’t worry. You’ve got the warrior McGrath on your side.”
“You are hopeless,” she said, softening and touching his cheek.
“Just when it comes to you,” he said.
Edita hesitated and then blew him a kiss before leading them to the checkout line. McGrath helped her unload the cart.
“Why do you look like the lonely puppy?” Edita asked him as the checker began ringing them through.
“I’m just used to a grocery cart with a little vice in it. Beer, at a minimum.”
She gestured to a bottle on the conveyor belt. “This is better for you.”
McGrath leaned forward and took it before the checker could.
“Cliffton Dry?”
“Think champagne made with organic apples, no grapes.”
“If you say so,” McGrath said skeptically.
As he loaded the food in cloth bags, Edita paid with cash from a little fanny pack around her waist. McGrath wondered what his childhood buddies would say about his hanging out with a woman who bought Cliffton Dry instead of a six-pack of Bud. They’d bust him mercilessly. But if apple bubbly was Edita’s thing, he’d give it a try.
He knew their relationship was a strange one, but he’d decided recently that Edita was, for the most part, good for him. She made him happy. And she made him feel young and think young, which was also a good thing.
They grabbed the shopping bags. He followed her out into a warm drizzle that made the sidewalk glisten. Traffic was already building in the southbound lane of Wisconsin Avenue even at that early-morning hour, but it was still light going north.
They turned to head south, Edita a step or two ahead of him.
A second later, McGrath caught red fire flashing in his peripheral vision, heard the boom-boom-boom of rapid pistol fire, and felt bullets hit him, one of them in his chest. It drove him to the ground.
Edita started to scream but caught the next two bullets and fell beside McGrath, the organic groceries tumbling across the bloody sidewalk.
For McGrath, everything became far away and slow motion. He fought for breath. It felt like he’d been bashed in the ribs with sledgehammers. He went on autopilot, fumbled for his cell phone in his gym-shorts pocket.
He punched in 911, watched dumbly as the unbroken bottle of Cliffton Dry rolled away from him down the sidewalk.
A dispatcher said, “District 911, how may I help you?”
“Officer down,” McGrath croaked. “Thirty-two hundred block of Wisconsin Avenue. I repeat, officer…”
He felt himself swoon and start to fade. He let go of the phone and struggled to look at Edita. She wasn’t moving, and her face looked blank and empty.
McGrath whispered to her before dying.
“Sorry, Ed,” he said. “For all of it.”
Light rain had begun to fall when John Sampson and I climbed out of our unmarked car on Rock Creek Parkway south of Mass. Avenue. It was only 6:30 a.m. and the humidity was already approaching steam-room levels.
The left lane was closed off for a medical examiner’s van and two DC Metro patrol cars and officers. Morning traffic was going to be horrendous.
The younger of the two officers looked surprised to see us. “Homicide? This guy kissed a tree going ninety.”
“Reports of gunfire before the crash,” I said.
Sampson asked, “We have an ID on the victim?”
“Car’s registered to Aaron Peters. Bethesda.”
“Thanks, Officer,” I said, and we headed to the car.
The Maserati was upside down with the passenger side wrapped around the base of a large Japanese maple tree. The sports car was heavily charred and all the windows were blown out.
The ME, a plump, brassy, extremely competent redhead named Nancy Ann Barton, knelt by the driver’s side of the Maserati and peered in with a Maglite.
“What do you think, Nancy?” I asked.
Barton looked up and saw me, then stood and said, “Hi to you too, Alex.”
“Hi, Nancy,” I said. “Anything?”
“No ‘Good morning’? No ‘Top of the day to you’?”
I cracked a smile, said, “Top of the morning, Doc.”
“That’s better,” Barton said and laughed. “Sorry, Alex, I’m on an old-school kick. Trying to bring congeniality back to humankind, or at least the humankind around me.”
“How’s that working for you, Nancy?” Sampson asked.
“Pretty well, actually,” she said.
“This an accident?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said, and she squatted down again.
I knelt next to Barton, and she shone the light into the Maserati, showing me the driver. He was upside down, hanging from a harness, wearing a charred Bell helmet with a partially melted visor, a neck brace, and a Nomex fire suit, the kind Grand Prix drivers used, right down to the gloves and booties.
“The suit worked,” Barton said. “No burn-through that I can see. And the air bag gave him a lot of protection. So did the internal roll bar.”
“Aaron Peters,” Sampson said, looking at his smartphone. “Former Senate staffer, big-time oil lobbyist. No wonder he could afford a Maserati.”
Standing up to dig out my own flashlight, I said, “Enemies?”
“I would think by definition a big-time oil lobbyist would have
enemies.”
“Probably so,” I said, squatting back down. I flipped my light on and probed around the interior. My beam came to rest on a black metal box mounted on the dashboard.
“What is it?” the ME asked.
“If I’m right, that’s a camera inside that box, probably a GoPro. I think he may have been filming his run.”
“Would something like that survive a fire?” Sampson asked.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” I said, then I trained the beam on the driver’s blackened helmet. I noticed depressions in the upper part of it that didn’t look right.
“You’ve photographed it?” I asked.
Barton nodded. I reached up and released the buckle of the chinstrap. Gently but firmly, I tugged on the helmet, revealing Aaron Peters. His Nomex balaclava looked untouched by the fire, but it was blood-soaked from two through-and-through bullet wounds to Peters’s head.
“Not an accident,” I said.
“Impossible,” Barton agreed.
My phone rang. I was going to ignore it but then saw it was chief of police Bryan Michaels.
“Chief,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“Rock Creek,” I said. “Murder of an oil lobbyist in his car.”
“Drop it and get to Georgetown. One of our own is down, part of a double drive-by, and I want our best on the scene.”
I stood, motioned Sampson back toward the car, and broke into a trot, saying, “Who is it, Chief?”
He told me. My stomach turned over hard.
* Mary’s name, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
† Joe’s name, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
* Wendy Dobbs’s name, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
* Noel St. Pierre is a composite character.
* Alison’s name, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
* Jenny’s, Francine’s, and Kristina’s names, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
* Cynthia Selleck’s name, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
* Beverly Donatelli’s name, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
* Alicia’s name, some identifying details, and dialogue have been changed.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Part I: The Crime
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part II: The Man
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part III: The Women
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Part IV: The Investigation
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Part V: Incarceration
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Part VI: Aftermath
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Coda
Epilogue
Photos
About the Authors
Books by James Patterson
A Preview of Cross the Line
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by James Patterson
Excerpt from Cross the Line copyright © 2016 by James Patterson
Cover design by Mario J. Pulice
Cover photograph by Palm Beach Police Department
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ISBN 978-0-316-36245-0
E3-20160826-JV-PC