Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 53

I knelt over the body of Phillip Lamonte, who dressed the gangsta but whose identification showed he was a junior at Catholic University. He had a home address on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and carried a ticket to Penn Station on the Acela that was about to board. The extra-large cup lay on the floor next to him. The ice in it hadn’t yet melted.

I lowered my face over the foam around his mouth and sniffed. I smelled an acrid odor I recognized.

“Cyanide poisoning,” I said.

“Hala?” Mahoney said.

“Has to be,” I replied. “That’s how she killed her husband, right?”

“That’s how he died,” Bobby Sparks agreed.

I looked at the closest patrol officer. “Was this guy with anyone?”

The cop gestured with her chin toward a skinny white kid, late teens, who was also dressed to party with 5 °Cent and Diddy. “Name’s Allen Kent.”

I glanced at the cup. “Phillip drinking from that before he died?” I asked Kent.

The kid nodded, but he was obviously in shock.

“Anyone else get close to that drink, son?” I asked.

Kent shook his head. “Phil got it himself from the fountain.”

I didn’t know how she’d done it, but I was certain Hala Al Dossari had murdered this college kid. And how didn’t seem to matter as much as why.

I looked at Mahoney and Sparks, said, “Close this place down.”

Captain Seymour Johnson, the shift commander of the Amtrak police, a sweaty, unhealthy-looking man, lost more color. “Are you crazy? We’re the only transportation into or out of DC. We don’t even know if this woman is still in here, for God’s sake.”

“Maybe she’s not,” I said. “But if I were you, I’d put men with her picture at every exit. No one gets out of Union Station without proper identification. That goes for passengers who are boarding too. And call in Metro homicide and patrol. There’s deep snow everywhere. If she has made it outside and doesn’t have a car, then she’s on foot and visible.”

Mahoney agreed and started making calls. Bobby Sparks did the same. So did Johnson. I looked around, spotted a guy, early thirties, wearing a chesterfield overcoat, watching. He held an iPad.

I went to him. “You see what happened, Mr.…?”

“Goldberg. Jared Goldberg. And no, I didn’t see anything. I came over when I heard the screaming.”

“You a patriot, Mr. Goldberg?” I asked.

His brows knit. “I like to think so.”

I handed him my card, said, “Alex Cross. I work with Metro DC Police and as a consultant to the FBI. Can you help me?”

Goldberg frowned. “I clerk at the tax court. How can I-”

“Your iPad,” I said. “Work on one of those 4G networks?”

He nodded.

“Backed up in-what do they call it-the iCloud or something?”

The law clerk frowned but nodded again.

“Good, can I use it?” I asked. “I promise you I’ll return it. And if I break it, I’ll replace it with one even better.”

Goldberg looked pained, but he handed it over.

“What are you up to, Cross?” asked Bobby Sparks when he saw me return with the iPad in hand.

“Those guys out in the command center,” I said. “Can they transmit the footage from the cameras at this end of the station?”

The HRT commander thought, then said, “They’ll have to feed it through one of our secure websites, but affirmative, I think they can do that.”