Alex Cross, Run

A Barneys shopping bag was on the bed, with her evening gown and shoes inside. And according to Valente, the tub in the adjoining bathroom was just under half full.

“Looks to me like she came in, left the bag on the bed, and started drawing a bath,” he said. “Then she comes back out here to get undressed, and bam. He’s waiting for her in the closet. No signs of forced entry, either. Creem could have easily had a key to this place.”

Most of what Valente had worked out made sense to me—except for the part about Creem himself.

“I watched him put her in a cab at three in the morning,” I said. “He didn’t go anywhere after that. At least not before five. There’s no way he could have beaten her over here.”

“I guess the question then is time of death,” Valente said.

“That’s one question,” I said.

“Detectives?”

Errico and I both turned around to see Ma

“I got this off the bathroom tile over the tub,” Lapore said. “There’s a couple of matching partials on the hot and cold taps, too. Could be something.”

My first thought was that the killer had gone in to turn off the tub, to avoid an attention-drawing flood in the bathroom. My second thought was that it seemed like a pretty sloppy mistake—unless he just didn’t care. Or wasn’t thinking straight.

We followed Lapore downstairs to see what, if anything, this print turned up. With the mobile automated fingerprint ID sca

“Here’s your guy,” he said, handing me the report. “Does the name Joshua Bergman mean anything to you?”

CHAPTER

93

I CAUGHT UP WITH BREE ON THE PHONE WHILE VALENTE AND I DROVE FROM Logan Circle over to M Street, where Josh Bergman lived. There was no new word about Ava. It was all eerily quiet on that front.

Meanwhile, I had to focus on this if I could.

It can take an hour or more to pull SWAT together, but that was time we didn’t have. Instead we dispatched a quick in-house team for the operation. Within thirty minutes, we had five tactically trained officers with one sergeant all ready to go in a parking lot on Water Street, a block from Bergman’s building.

Bergman had a high-dollar loft on the top floor of a converted flour mill, from Georgetown’s nineteenth-century industrial days. Word from our spotter, stationed on the roof behind his, was that Bergman seemed to be home alone.

After a fast briefing with Commander D’Auria, we piled into two plain white panel vans and pulled around the block. The drivers stopped in front, the van doors slid open, and we made a beeline for the entrance.

Besides the half dozen tactical perso

The breach team was armed with AR-15 rifles and SIG P226 sidearms. Tasers and pepper spray were standard issue as well.

I had my Glock out, for the first time since I’d been reinstated. All of us wore Kevlar, too. We had more than enough manpower to take Bergman in, but he was very possibly armed and dangerous. Maybe also a little desperate. He might try to get off a few shots of his own.

When we got to the third-floor landing, the sergeant at the head of the line wagged two fingers at a pair of officers, who came forward with the forty-five pound battering ram they’d carried up. Everyone was wired with headsets, but the protocol was for radio silence once we’d entered the building.

Inside I could hear Bergman talking. It sounded like half of a phone conversation.

“Where the hell are you? You said you’d be here an hour ago,” he said. He also sounded agitated, and seemed to be moving around. When he spoke again, his voice faded off toward the back of the apartment. “I don’t care,” he said. “Just…no, you listen to me. Just get here! Now!”

That was it. I could feel the collective pulse of the group start to go up, as the sergeant gave a visual countdown on his fingers—three, two, one. The two cops at the front pulled back with the ram and swung it at Bergman’s steel front door. It sent a resounding boom up and down the stairwell. Any cover we had now was blown.

“Units C and D, standby,” the sergeant radioed. “He may try to make a run for it.”

It took two more fast swings before the door finally tore away from the frame and blew open. My vision tu

“Go, go, go, go, go!”

CHAPTER

94

VALENTE AND I DIDN’T WAIT FOR CLEARANCE. WE FOLLOWED RIGHT IN BEHIND the breach team. Normally, investigative staff is meant to hold their position until we get an all clear, but neither of us were feeling that patient right now.

The apartment door opened into a wide-open loft space that looked pristine to the point of sterility. Bergman didn’t seem to have any stuff at all. There was a set of white modular furniture on a huge gray rug, like an island in the middle of the room, with a single tall rubber tree that reached up to the exposed I-beams in the ceiling. A stainless-steel kitchen off to the side looked like it had never been used.

There was no sign of Bergman anywhere in the front. The team quickly moved through, leapfrogging each other across the loft, and then down a long hallway toward the back of the building.

“MPD! Joshua Bergman?” I shouted. “Stay right where you are! Don’t move!”

At the very end of the hall there was an open door, with light streaming in through several iron-framed floor-to-ceiling windows. As soon as the first officer got there, I heard Bergman start to yell.

“Get away from me! Stay back!”

“Sir, put down the gun!” one of the officers shouted. “Keep your hands where we can see them and get down on the floor!”

“Go to hell!”

When I came into the room, Bergman was sitting up, cross-legged on a king-size platform bed. He had his back against the painted concrete block wall, with a white iPhone in one hand and a small Smith & Wesson revolver in the other. It could have easily been the same .32 he’d used to kill all those boys, as well as Sheila Bishop.

“Bergman, put the gun down!” I told him. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t?” He was clearly agitated, but also relatively focused. He looked me right in the eye when he said it.

“Just try to calm down,” I told him. “Let’s go one thing at a time.”

I lowered my own gun and took a step toward him, but only until he pressed the Smith & Wesson up to his chin.

“You think I’m kidding around here?” he said.

“Josh—don’t,” I said. “Please.”

“Too late,” he said. He held the phone up to his ear and spoke a single word to whoever was there. “Good-bye,” he said.

Then he pulled the trigger on that Smith & Wesson and blew himself away.

Whatever horrible things Bergman might have done to other people, it was god-awful to see him go out like that. This was an act of pure, irrational desperation. Maybe even insanity.

Not to mention a truly stomach-churning mess.

Everyone started moving at once. There was no question of survival, but Bergman’s death had to be confirmed. The sergeant went straight to the body and felt for a pulse on the wrist, while Valente called it in.