Cross Kill

Chapter 27

The criminalists arrived ten minutes later. I was giving them instructions to call if they turned up anything when Kimiko Binx emerged from her bedroom in jeans, Nike running shoes, and a short-sleeved green blouse.

“Ready, Dr. Cross?” she said, coming toward me and then stumbling over a loose cord and losing her balance.

I reached out before she could fall. Binx grabbed onto my left hand and right forearm and got her balance.

She turned from me, looking back, puzzled. “What was that?”

“You should put your cords under rugs,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We went downstairs to my car.

Binx got in the front seat, said, “Where’s the siren?”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “Where am I going?”

“Toward the Anacostia Bridge. It’s an old tool and die factory by the river.”

I drove in silence until I realized she was studying me again.

“What are you looking at?”

“The object of Gary’s obsession,” she said.

“Soneji’s sole obsession?” I asked.

“Well,” Binx said, and turned to look out the windshield. “One of them.”

She was so blithe and relaxed in her manner that I wondered if she was on some kind of medication. And yet, she made me feel strange, scrutinized by a cultist.

“How did you meet Claude Watkins?” I asked.

“At a party in Baltimore,” she said. “Have you met him?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure.”

Binx smiled. “It is, you know. A pleasure to see his paintings and his performances.”

“A real Picasso, then.”

She caught the sarcasm, turned cooler, and said, “You’ll see, Dr. Cross.”

Binx navigated me toward a derelict light industrial area north of the bridge, and an abandoned brick-faced factory with a FOR SALE sign on the gate, which was unlocked.

“This is where the great painter and performance artist works?” I said.

“Correct,” Binx said. “Claude moves around, takes month-to-month leases on abandoned buildings, where he’s free to do his art without worrying about making a mess. When the building and the art’s sold, he moves on. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. He learned the tactic in Detroit.”

It made sense, actually. I parked the car outside the gate, and felt odd, a little woozy, the way you do if you haven’t eaten enough or stayed well hydrated. And my tongue felt thick, and my throat dry.

I heard Binx release her seat belt. It sounded louder than it should have. So did the key in the ignition beeping when I opened the door. I took the key out, stood up, felt the warm spring breeze, and felt almost immediately better.

I called up Google Maps on my phone, pinned my location, and texted the pin to Bree along with a message that said, “Send patrol for backup when you get the chance.”

Then I drew my service weapon.

“Sorry to do this, Ms. Binx,” I said. “But I need you in handcuffs.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re technically under arrest. I’ve just been a nice guy until now.”

The computer coder didn’t look happy as she came over. I got out my cuffs and buckled down her wrists, arms forward. She’d been cooperative for the most part and didn’t seem much of a threat.

“What am I under arrest for?” Binx demanded. “Free speech?”

“How about fomenting and abetting attempted murder of a cop?”

“I did not!”

“You did,” I said, pushing her in front of me.

We passed through the gate, crossed fifteen yards of scrub ground where purple crocuses poked out of weeds by a metal double door. Binx seemed on the verge of tears, opening one of the doors and saying, “I would never hurt a cop. My dad was a cop in Philly.”

That surprised me. “Was?”

“He’s retired,” she said. “With a gold shield.”

I looked at her differently now, the daughter of a good cop. Why would she get involved in something like this?

“You said you wanted to meet Claude,” Binx said, trying to wipe her tears with her sleeves. “Let’s go.”

At first a voice in my head said not to enter the abandoned factory, to wait for backup, but then the voice was gone, replaced by a surge of clarity and confidence.

Keeping Binx squarely in front of me, I went inside.

Whenever you leave a sunny day for a darker quarter, there’s always a fleeting moment when you’re all but blind before your eyes adjust. It’s also a time when you tend to be silhouetted in the doorway and are therefore an easy target.

But I heard no shot, and my vision refocused on a large, airy space, ten, maybe fifteen thousand square feet, with a ceiling that was warehouse-high and crisscrossed with rusted overhead tracks for heavy industrial lifts and booms.

Ten-foot-tall partitions carved the space up like a broad maze. The cement floor right in front of us was cracked, broken in places, and bare but for stacks of pipe and sheet metal, as if a reclaiming operation was under way. Thick dust hung in the air. Waves of it danced and swirled in the weak sunlight streaming through a bank of filthy windows high on the walls.

“I’m not seeing any paintings or studio,” I said. “Where’s Watkins?”

“He and the studio are in the back,” Binx said, gesturing into the gloom. “I’ll show you the way.”

For the second time that day, that internal voice of mine, born of years of training and experience, raised doubts about following her until I had someone watching my back. And for the second time that day, I felt my heart beat faster, sensed more sharply my surroundings, and surged with another rush of complete confidence in my abilities.

“Lead on,” I said, smiling at her, and feeling good, real good, like I was perfectly fine-tuned and ready for anything that might come my way.

Binx took me down one dim hallway, and then another, passing empty workroom after empty workroom before I smelled marijuana, fresh paint, and turpentine. The smells got stronger as we walked a short third hallway that dog-legged left and opened into a large, largely empty assembly-line room with dark alcoves off it on all four sides.

The only lights in the room were strong portable spots trained on one of several large paintings hanging on the far wall about fifty feet away. The painting showed a crane lifting a coffin from the ground. The headstone above the grave read “G. SONEJI.” Two men stood by the grave. A Caucasian in a dark suit. And an African American in a blue police slicker. Me.

I almost smiled. Someone who’d been at the exhumation, probably Soneji or one of his followers, Watkins, had painted this, and yet I had to fight to keep from grinning at all the goodwill I felt inside.

The furthest of the three spotlights went dark then, revealing a man I couldn’t see before because of the glare. He wore paint-speckled jeans, work boots, and a long-sleeved shirt, but his face was lost in shadows.

Then he took a step forward into a weak, dusty beam of sunlight coming through the grimy windows, revealing the wispy red hair and distinctive facial features of Gary Soneji.

“Dr. Cross,” he said in a cracking, hoarse voice. “I thought you’d never catch up.”