Alternately studying the plan and the house itself, Sunday made notes on the diagrams regarding entries and exits, positions of windows, landscaping, and the like. When Cross’s wife, Bree Stone, also a detective with the DC Metro Police, came out on the porch to fill a bird feeder at 7:40, he recorded that act as well, and the fact that her backside looked glorious in a tight pair of jeans.
At 7:52, a truck bearing a logo that read DEAR OLD HOUSE pulled up in front of Cross’s house, followed by a waste disposal company hauling a construction Dumpster. Out came the great detective onto the porch to greet the contractors and watch the unloading of the Dumpster. So did his grandmother, his wife, and two of his three children: fifteen-year-old Jannie and seven-year-old Ali.
Nice happy family, Sunday thought, studying them through the binoculars in turn. The future for them seems bright. Looks full of promise. Doesn’t it?
Sunday allowed himself a smile, thinking that a good deal of the fun in any adventure lay in the planning, the preparation, and the anticipation. Maybe more than half, he decided, enjoying the way his ever-fertile brain conjured up various dark ways to destroy the dream scenario unfolding before his eyes.
Then Dr. Alex left with his kids. The three of them walked past Sunday on the other side of Fifth, but the detective barely looked at the work van.
Then again, why would he?
Sunday felt deflated after Cross and his children disappeared. It just wasn’t as enjoyable scouting the house with the detective absent, almost like looking at a maze in desperate need of a rodent.
Sunday checked his watch, shut the binder, and put it away, feeling that he was a free, authentic man with a purpose that would not waver no matter the consequences. He started the van, thinking that wavering in any way was almost an insult to one’s opponent. You had to want to destroy your enemy as much as he wanted to destroy you.
As Sunday drove off, he believed he was up to his task. He also believed Cross’s family deserved the wickedness to come.
Each and every one of them.
Especially Dr. Alex.
Chapter
2
In a normal year the murder rate in Washington, DC, waits for the stifling days of summer to peak. In July and August, when the air along the Potomac is the consistency and temperature of a rabid dog’s mouth, people just seem to snap left and right. In my line of work you come to expect it.
But beginning with the terrorist attack at Union Station on New Year’s Day, there had been a steady run of homicides through the winter and on into spring. It was barely April, but this was shaping up already as one of the worst years in three decades for homicide in the District of Columbia.
That had put enormous political pressure on the mayor and the city council, which meant the Metro police chief, too, was under enormous pressure. But the squeeze was especially tight around the homicide and major case squads. Since I was now a roaming investigator for both teams, the nonstop murders meant the biggest squeeze had been put on me and on my partner and closest friend, John Sampson.
We had not had a day off in nearly two months, and our caseload seemed to grow every day. To make it worse, I was fielding calls from a contractor who was about to remodel the kitchen and put an addition on our house. So the last person I wanted to see around nine thirty that Thursday morning was Captain Roelof Antonius Quintus, who ran Homicide.
Captain Quintus knocked on the door of my office, where I’d been finishing up a breakfast burrito and a second cup of coffee while looking at a cabinet hardware catalog my wife had shoved into my hand as I left home. Sampson, a locomotive of a man, was on the couch, devouring the last of his morning meal.
Sampson saw Quin
tus and groaned. “Not another one?”
Quintus shook his head. “I just need an update to take to the chief. The mayor’s out of her mind and hounding him nonstop.”
“We cleared three this week, but you handed us four,” I replied. “So the takeaway is that we’re making progress but falling behind.”
“Sounds about right,” Sampson said. “Like that king in mythology who keeps pushing the boulder up the hill, only it keeps falling down.”
“Sisyphus,” I said.
“Like him,” Sampson said, pointing at me.
“C’mon, Cross,” Quintus said. “We’re counting on you to put some of the higher-profile cases like Rawlins and Kimmel to bed, get the Post off our backs. Did you see that goddamned editorial?”
I had. Just that morning they’d run a piece that described the effect the murders were having on tourism, called for the police chief to resign, and floated a proposal to have the FBI take over the department until the murder rate could be lowered.
“Tell you what, Captain,” I said. “You tell people to stop killing each other, and we’ll have more time to work on cases like Rawlins and Kimmel.”
“Funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”