Criss Cross

Chapter 67

Chief of detectives Bree Stone checked the black tape across her badge before striding to the lectern in the muster room in DC Metro’s headquarters downtown.

The seats were filled with her hand-picked team of detectives, including Alex Cross and John Sampson. There were also liaison agents present from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and from the FBI, one of whom was Ned Mahoney.

Bree scanned the room a moment while she organized her thoughts, and she did not allow herself to dwell on the fact that her boss, Metro chief of police Bryan Michaels, was standing at the back of the room with his arms crossed. Ever since he’d given her the job, Chief Michaels had put pressure on her to perform.

Early on, she’d thought his expectations had been unrealistic, but she’d learned to accept his tight scrutiny as part of her job. If she was going to oversee the city’s biggest cases, then Michaels was going to oversee her.

“Good morning,” Bree said, quieting the room. “I appreciate you all coming here on such short notice.”

She spotted an empty chair. “Does anyone know where Ron Dallas is?”

“I’ve called three times but he hasn’t answered,” his partner, Elaine Conrad, replied.

“We’ll move on without him, then,” she said, and she pressed a button on her laptop. A recent photograph of Officer Nancy Petit in uniform came up on a screen to her left.

“As you know, Nancy Petit was one of our finest patrol officers. You’ve read her file, you’ve read the multiple letters of commendation she received in a few short years, and you understand the loss. Not only to her family and to her fiancé, Bill, but to this department. We truly have lost one of our finest.”

Bree paused, then she leaned into the microphone and, in her command voice, she said, “This will not stand. I want to be clear. This will not stand. We will do everything in our power to bring to justice whoever was responsible for those frozen heads and the bomb that took Nancy Petit’s life.”

She paused again, sensing the room shift from anger to resolve, which was what she wanted. Bree locked eyes with Chief Michaels and nodded before continuing.

“We have a target suspect,” she said. “As you know, he calls himself M.”

Bree brought the entire task force up to speed on the long history of M, from the first letter to Alex to the text that came in the wake of the bomb explosion that had taken Officer Petit’s life.

Sampson said, “So we’re operating on the assumption that M is responsible for the heads and the bomb?”

“Given the timing of the text, I think it’s a reasonable place to start.”

Alex said, “More than reasonable. It’s him or people working for him.”

Mahoney raised his hand. “Any IDs on the heads?”

“The ME’s checking dental records and DNA on all of them,” Bree said. “But figuring out who they are is going to take time.”

A BATF agent named Fred Allen introduced himself and said his men had taken pieces of the bomb and samples of the chemical residue in the old printing plant to the lab and were forwarding samples to the FBI lab at Quantico.

Mahoney promised full cooperation but also gently reminded Bree that because M’s crimes crossed many state lines and almost certainly involved kidnapping, the FBI would direct the hunt for him.

“Absolutely,” Bree said. “But we are going to work this case hard, and we will share everything we find.”

Chief Michaels took a few steps forward. A big, rawboned man, Michaels had been a U.S. Army Ranger in a previous life and carried it within him.

“We have no description of this M?” he asked. “No one’s ever seen him?”

Bree said, “Not to my knowledge. Dr. Cross, is that correct?”