I, Alex Cross

"Fuck," Sampson muttered,

Exactly right. My thoughts exactly.

Chapter 97

THE SHACK'S FRONT door had no lock, just a hammered-iron latch, and as soon as I swung it open, the smell hit us.

It was that combination of sweet and putrid that's so distinct and so hard to take. Like fruit and meat rotting for days in the same barrel.

The place was mostly empty, with just a few pieces of furniture – a metal cot, a woodstove, a long farm table.

The only chair in the place was occupied, and Remy Williams had apparently died in it.

He looked graphic-novel-style slack jawed where part of his face had been blown off. A Remington shotgun was still half-clutched in his left hand, barrel pointed down at the soft pine floor.

The other hand hung loose at his side, and it looked like there was some kind of writing on his forearm. Writing? Was that it?

"What the hell?" Sampson covered his mouth and nose with his arm and bent down for a closer look. "Oh no, he didn't."

When I put my Maglite on it, I saw that the arm had been carved, not written on.

A six-inch hunting knife was on the ground at Williams's feet, streaked the same reddish brown as his skin. The letters were still easy enough to read:

SORRY

Chapter 98

A LOT HAPPENED really fast after we found Williams. Within a few hours, we had new versions of all the old players on the scene – Virginia State Police out of Richmond and the FBI team from Charlottesville. There was no one I knew here, which was maybe a good thing and maybe not. I'd find out which pretty soon.

The Bureau's Evidence Response Team included serious-looking folks from serology, trace analysis, firearms, photography, and fingerprinting. They set up a tent and spread long sheets of butcher paper over plywood-and-sawhorse tables.

The ground around the wood chipper was sectioned into eight-inch squares, and they started right in, meticulously sifting one square at a time, separating potential evidence from dirt and debris.

The chipper itself would be disassembled in a lab in Rich mond, but blood-enhancement agents had already shown trace amounts of serum. A visual inspection also turned up some likely bone fragments in the mechanism's blades.

Everything was duly photographed, documented, and either set out to dry or put into manila envelopes for transport.

The faster job turned out to be a search of the woods. A lieutenant colonel with the state police called in two K-9 units, and within the first hours, they'd sniffed out a freshly turned patch of earth half a mile east of the cabin.

Some careful digging brought up two plastic bags of "remains" from about five feet down. Everyone on the site was carrying around a hangdog face. No one is ever ready for this kind of murder scene.

The new remains looked exactly like Caroline's had, and the consensus was that they hadn't been in the ground for more than three days. Right away, I thought of Tony Nicholson and Mara Kelly, who were still officially MIA.

"It adds up, on paper anyway," I said to Sampson. "Get them out of jail, and you can make them disappear once and for all. We were supposed to think they fled the country."

"Hell of a way to cover your tracks," Sampson said. "But I have to admit, effective."

We were sitting on the edge of the porch around one a.m., watching an agent tag what was left of the newly deceased as evidence, before they went into body bags. John couldn't take his eyes off it, but I'd seen enough. It depressed me to know that my own niece's case was becoming the single grisliest piece of work I'd ever investigated.

But that fact kept me moving too. For the fourth time in as many hours, I dialed Dan Cormorant's phone number.

This time the Secret Service agent actually picked up.

"Where the hell are you guys?" I asked him. "Are you even tracking this?"

"You're obviously not watching TV right now," he said. "It looks like they've got everyone but ESPN out there in those woods."

"Cormorant, listen to me. Remy Williams wasn't Zeus, any more than Tony Nicholson or Joh

"I agree with you," Cormorant said, "and you know why? 'Cause we've got Zeus pi

Chapter 99

SAD TO SAY, I was operating on nothing but adrenaline and caffeine by the time we got to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the West Wing. It was nearly four a.m. at this point, but the Joint Operations Center was buzzing like midday.

The mood in the briefing room was tense to say the least. They had CNN on one of a dozen flat screens arrayed on the wall, with an overhead shot of Remy Williams's cabin and the subhead Secret Service Agent Found Dead.

At the front of the room, a fiftyish agent in shirtsleeves was shouting on the phone, loudly enough to be heard over everyone else.

"I don't give a shit who you need to speak to; he's not a member of the Secret Service. Now change the damn graphic!"

I had already spotted several people I knew, including Emma Cornish, who was MPD's liaison to the Service's High Intensity Violent Crimes Task Force; and Barry Farmer, one of two Secret Service agents assigned to Metro's Homicide Unit. It was as if the two departments had suddenly been knitted together, right there in the middle of the night.

For show, maybe?

I wasn't ready to say yet.

We all gathered around a long oval table for the first briefing. The man with the big voice in front turned out to be Silo Ridge, deputy special agent in charge. He was the whip on this one, and he stood up with Agent Cormorant.

"I'm sending around a fact sheet," Ridge said, handing half a stack in each direction. "The subject's name is Constantine Bowie, aka Co

Nobody flinched but me – and maybe Sampson. It was like a whole new map of this thing had just been unfolded in front of us.

I put up my hand. "Alex Cross, MPD. I'm just catching up here, but what's the known relationship, if any, with Remy Williams? Other than the fact that they're both supposed to be former agents."

"Detective Cross, glad to have you here," Ridge said, and a few more heads turned my way. "The focus of this operation is former agent Bowie. Everything else is on a need-to-know basis for the time being."

"I'm only asking because -"

"We appreciate MPD's participation, as always. This is all obviously a little sensitive, but we're not going to start unpacking it here. Moving on."

I gave Ridge the benefit of the doubt, for the moment at least. It wasn't a bridge I had to cross yet. Or burn.

An image of Bowie 's 2002 credentials came up on one of the screens. He looked like a million other agents to me – Waspy, square jaw, brown hair combed back. Everything but the dark shades.

" Bowie 's been implicated in the murder of at least three women," Ridge went on, "all of them known employees of the so-called gentlemen's club in Culpeper County. Those women are Caroline Cross, Katherine Te

A video started up, and right away I recognized the recording I'd handed over to Cormorant just the other day. Like Ridge had said, the Secret Service appreciated MPD's participation.