Alex Cross, Run

Then, just after sunrise, my cell rang.

It’s not so unusual for me to get calls at all hours. I expected to see a departmental number on the ID or maybe Bree. But it wasn’t either of those. It was Stephanie Gethma

“Stephanie?” I answered.

“I’m sorry to call so early,” she said. “I actually wanted to call last night, but…well, it’s complicated, of course.”

“Something’s happened to Ava,” I said. It wasn’t a question. My heart was thumping, and I was already ru

“She’s missing, Alex.”

“Missing? What does that mean?”

“She didn’t come home from school yesterday, and nobody knows where she is. I hope this isn’t inappropriate, but I know you and Bree are police officers. I was thinking maybe—”

I only wished Stephanie had called sooner.

“Of course we will,” I said. “We’ll get right on it. Tell me everything you know.”

Part Four

ALL FALL DOWN

CHAPTER

90

BREE AND I SPENT THE MORNING IN OUR CARS, KEEPING IN TOUCH BY PHONE and hitting up every resource we could think of to track Ava down.

I started with the Youth Investigations Bureau contacts I knew in the first, third, and sixth police districts. Those covered Ava’s group home, her school, our house, and Seward Square, where she used to hang out. The department has a centralized database of missing kids, but there’s no substitute for face time with people who are working the streets every day. For that, you have to go district by district.

As it turned out, the picture Nessa had taken of us at the group home was even more valuable than I’d thought. It wasn’t much of a shot, but it was something to show people. I texted it to everyone I could think of.

Bree started at Howard House and interviewed several of the girls there, as well as Sunita, the braided house manager we’d met the other day. From the sound of it, nobody had seen Ava since breakfast the previous morning. She’d been quiet, but that was nothing new. And it didn’t look like anything was missing from her room, either. That meant she hadn’t intentionally run away.

After that, Bree headed over to Seward Square, walking the neighborhood and looking for any of Ava’s old friends. She told me over the phone that she’d found two of them—Patrice and K-Fly. Supposedly, neither of them had seen Ava in weeks, but you have to take anything street kids tell you with a grain of salt. Bree gave them each a card and promised a hundred bucks for anyone who might help find her. Whatever it took.

I hit up all the area hospitals, and then finally headed over to MPD’s main Narcotics Unit on Third Street in Northeast. I was starting to grasp at straws, but I thought if anyone knew of specific dealers who pushed Oxy, or fake Oxy, on the streets Ava had frequented, it might be a way in.

The longer this went on, the worse I felt about it. Especially if drugs were involved, which I all but assumed was the case.

Opiates are probably the least-controlled substances out there these days. The high-grade pharmaceutical stuff is highly desirable on the street, and sellers take advantage of that fact all the time. They pass garbage off as true Oxy, and there’s no way to control the dosage, much less the contents of street drugs like that. It wasn’t just empty talk when we’d told Ava that kids OD all the time. This country has an opiate epidemic, and it’s largely being driven by people under twenty-five.

By midafternoon, we’d come up completely empty-handed. It was getting hard not to play out some worst-case scenarios in my head, and it drove me crazy to think that Ava was around here somewhere, while we ran out of ideas about where to look.

I knew I had to stay positive, for Nana’s sake and the kids’ sake, if not my own. But the truth was, I had a terrible feeling about this.

CHAPTER

91

“ALEX, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

It was Sergeant Huizenga on the phone. I was driving from the Sixth District station house back to my own place in Southeast when I took the call.

“I’m sorry, sergeant. Something’s come up at home.”

“Yeah, well, we need you. Now.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Sheila Bishop, Dr. Creem’s date from last night. She’s been found dead in her apartment.”

It might have hit me harder, but I was practically numb by now. Still, this was one more smack in the face on top of everything else.

“Is Creem in custody?” I asked.

“No,” Huizenga said tightly. “That’s part of the cluster hump we’ve got going on. The son of a bitch is missing.”

That got me. I actually braked right there on D Street and pulled over. “Missing? How is that even possible? We’ve been on him since yesterday.”

“Slipped out right through the back of his property, it looks like,” she said. “Into the woods and God knows where from there.”

The first thing I thought of was Jerry Doyle. He’d gone on and on about how Creem’s surveillance detail was insufficient—and he’d been right.

I remembered how the place was bordered by Glover-Archbold Park. It’s a piece of land that runs from Cathedral Heights all the way down to the Potomac. We’d covered the front of Creem’s house, but there had been no way to completely cover the entire track of open ground at the back. It made for a perfect hole in our net. That much was clear—now.

“We’ve got a BOLO out on him, but meanwhile, I want you over at Sheila Bishop’s apartment.”

She gave me an address on Logan Circle. There was no question of yes or no. If I wanted to keep showing up for work, I needed to be there.

Still, once I hung up with Huizenga, I continued on home. Screw protocol. I needed to check in with my family, too.

Bree actually encouraged me to go, when I saw her. She and Nana were parked by the home phone, waiting for any word from Stephanie, while Bree worked her cell to be in touch with the districts, the hospital, and Howard House. The kids were with Aunt Tia, and could spend the night there if necessary.

“Go,” she said. “You’re just a phone call away if anything comes up. I’ve got Sampson and Billie driving the neighborhood right now, keeping an eye out. You can spell them later.”

“You okay?” I asked.

“No,” Bree said. “But so what? Just go.”

I looked at Nana, who had her hands clasped under her chin. I wasn’t sure if she was praying or just thinking, but she didn’t look good, either.

I gave them both a kiss good-bye, and kept on moving, out the back door.

CHAPTER

92

SHEILA BISHOP’S APARTMENT WAS HALF OF A TURRETED BRICK AND STONE town house on the north side of Logan Circle. Other than a handful of people watching their dogs run around John Logan’s statue, and the usual daytime traffic, it was quiet when I got there. No reporters, anyway. That was a relative blessing.

Most of the investigative team was on-site, along with the Mobile Crime Unit from Forensics. They had techs in blue windbreakers on the front door, up and down the stairs, and all over the master bedroom, where Ms. Bishop’s body had been discovered by a housekeeper a few hours earlier.

That’s also where I found Valente. He was kneeling by the body, and looking from Ms. Bishop to each of the doors and windows when I came in.

She’d been shot once in the chest, and by all appearances had collapsed in front of the open double doors of her walk-in closet. I couldn’t say for sure, but it looked like Ms. Bishop was wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she left Dr. Creem’s house.