Ivanovic and Flynn! Bree thought. She texted: Did you see the shooters?

  “One,” Luster said. “He was near Paula and Ari, wearing a Saint Laurent tux from two seasons ago and a shirt with no bow tie. About five eight. Hundred and fifty pounds. Short, bristly, salt-and-pepper hair, unattractive face, unassuming manner. But he looked very fit, like a gymnast, so he held my attention more than several glances. Then I noticed he was playing with this metal cylinder thing in his left hand. It was maybe five inches long, two inches around, with buttons and glass lenses at both ends. Like a mini-telescope?”

  “A mini-telescope?”

  “Whatever,” Luster said. “It doesn’t matter what it was because Fit Guy closed his eyes then. His right hand went to his pants pocket and came out with a pistol so small, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things. Then the lights went out and everyone around me was groaning and laughing, even Brad, and I was thinking I was wrong about the gun. But then I saw this, like, green cyclops eye hovering near Paula and Ari, and the shooting and the screaming started.”

  Chapter

  51

  Washington, DC

  My flight from Charleston landed at Reagan National around midnight. I felt wrung out as I walked through the largely empty terminal, still trying to decide if there was enough evidence to warrant further investigation into Suzanne Liu’s allegations against Thomas Tull.

  Then I heard and saw CNN broadcasting on an overhead TV at one of the gates.

  Footage showed cruisers with their lights flashing and crying people coming out of a huge brownstone; the banner read: DEADLY ATTACK AT FASHION EXEC’S MANHATTAN HOME. The words fashion exec stopped me in my tracks.

  Bree’s case is about some fashion bigwig, isn’t it?

  It was only then that I realized I’d been so tired, I had not turned on my phone after landing. I turned it on, half listening to a reporter saying that as many as eleven people might have died inside a home belonging to Paula Watkins, number two at fashion giant Duchaine.

  My phone began to blow up with texts from Bree.

  I needed to read only one: Call ASAP. All hell has broken loose and I may need an attorney.

  Bree answered on the second ring. “Alex?”

  “Right here, baby,” I said. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “I’m fine and I just got back to my hotel.”

  “Were you at the party that was attacked?”

  “Outside it,” she said and told me everything that had occurred that evening from her perspective as well as necessary background about the sex-trafficking and slavery allegations she’d been investigating along with NYPD detective Salazar.

  “Is she keeping you in the loop?”

  “As much as she can,” Bree said. “Her superiors were not happy to hear she was listening in on a questionable wiretap with a private detective who was thrown out of Frances Duchaine’s house by Paula Watkins a few days before.”

  I started toward the airport exit again. “Which is why you need an attorney?”

  “Just being cautious. Elena’s working on retaining one for me as we speak. NYPD wants me in for questioning first thing in the morning.”

  “What’s Elena saying?”

  “She’s as stunned as I am. But given the sex-trafficking allegations, the mobsters, and the sheikh, she also thinks it’s not wildly out of the blue for there to have been an attack like this.”

  I exited the airport and got in a short line for a cab. “I kind of agree with her.”

  “Right?”

  “Okay, what has Salazar told you?”

  She said the detective told her there were indeed eleven dead, including the two bodyguards who had escorted Bree out of Duchaine’s mansion, a man named Victor Roby, and a woman named Katherine Wise. Roby and Wise were believed to have been the main recruiters for the sex ring.

  Salazar said the shooters appeared to have slipped into and out of the house through an old coal chute in the basement that was supposed to have been welded shut. The killers mingled with the guests, started shooting with night-vision monoculars once the lights died, and left quickly.

  “How many wounded?”

  “None.”

  “No wounded?” I said in surprise. “Hold on a sec.” I climbed into a cab and gave the driver our home address. As we pulled away, I said, “So, eleven specific targets?”

  “That’s how we read it. Whoever the shooters were, they were disciplined assassins.”

  “Assassins with a tight, targeted agenda. What about Duchaine?”

  “Evidently in shock but safe and under Greenwich Police protection. Why?”

  “The intimate knowledge of the party. The layout of Watkins’s home. The coal chute. The specific targets. The whole thing reeks of an inside job.”

  “It does, doesn’t it,” Bree said thoughtfully. “And there’s no one more inside this stinking mess than Frances Duchaine herself.”

  “That’s what it sounds like to me,” I said and yawned. “Why don’t you get some sleep and we’ll talk in the morning?”

  “First thing. I want my head on straight when I go in to make a statement.”

  “You always have your head on straight.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too, and I’m happy you’re safe.”

  “Me too. Sleep well.”

  I ended the call as the cab was crossing the Fourteenth Street Bridge. I returned to my queue of unread texts. I was going to look at the others from Bree but then saw an area code and a phone number I did not recognize, and I thumbed the message open.

  Dear Dr. Cross,

  My name is Thomas Tull. As you may know, I am a bestselling true-crime writer. I have a contract to pen a book about the Family Man killings ongoing in the DC area and would very much like to talk to you about them. Also, I think some of the things you’re being told about me and the way I work are completely off base. At the very least, I’d like the opportunity to set the record straight. Please call me at your earliest convenience.

  All my best,

  Thomas

  Chapter

  52

  Manhattan

  At ten thirty the following morning, a Thursday, Bree followed a criminal defense attorney named Natalie Reed into an interrogation room in a midtown precinct.

  Rosella Salazar and her partner, Simon Thompson, were waiting inside with their backs to the one-way mirror, behind which, no doubt, several of their superiors were watching. The killings had made national news and Bree knew from personal experience how much of a pressure cooker cases like these became.

  “Chief Stone, Ms. Reed,” Salazar said, gesturing to the chairs. “Please.”

  Reed took a seat, saying, “Is this a formal interrogation?”

  Salazar rubbed her belly. “If it were, I wouldn’t be here. We’re just talking, catching up, and we need a bit more information.”

  “Such as?” Reed said.

  “We need to know who Chief Stone’s clients are and how much they knew about the sex-trafficking allegations before Bluestone Group got involved.”

  Bree said, “I still have no idea who they are beyond some attorney in Cleveland. But the attorney, or whoever his clients were, knew about the lawsuit in North Carolina and the various sealed complaints here in New York.”

  Detective Simon Thompson, Salazar’s partner, spoke for the first time. “We need the name of the attorney in Cleveland.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “I do,” Bree’s attorney said. She removed a business card from her briefcase and pushed it across the table. “Gerald Rainy with Grady and Rainy. His phone number is there. He is expecting a call, and in light of what’s happened, he has already given me his client’s name. In return, he would appreciate it remaining out of the press.”

  Salazar shifted uncomfortably.

  “We’ll see,” Thompson said. “Name?”

  “Theresa May Alcott,” Reed said. “As in the billionaire Theresa May Alcott. Since her husband’s death, she is the majority shareholder in Alcott and Sayers, the big soap and household products company.”

  That came out of left field, Bree thought, annoyed that Reed had not informed her before the meeting. What’s the connection between Duchaine and Alcott?

  Thompson seemed impressed by Bree’s client. “My girlfriend uses Alcott and Sayers organic soap. You have an address and phone number for Mrs. Alcott?”

  “She splits her time between Cleveland and Jackson Hole, Wyoming,” the attorney said. “She’s in Ohio at the moment. I will track down a phone number for her.”

  Bree looked at the attorney. “Why exactly did she hire Bluestone?”

  Salazar shifted in her chair. “I was wondering the same thing.”

  Reed cleared her throat and glanced at Bree. “I don’t know all the sordid details, but evidently Mrs. Alcott’s favorite granddaughter got caught up in a sex-trafficking ring after being lured to New York to work as a model for Frances Duchaine. When the family found out, the young lady killed herself. Mrs. Alcott wanted the scheme exposed so it would never happen again.”

  That’s odd, Bree thought. I don’t remember anything about a young girl from Ohio in the material I was given at the beginning. But maybe that was intentional?

  Thompson had a sour look on his face. “How was Mrs. Alcott going to expose the scheme?”

  “She’d planned on going to the media, where she has considerable influence,” Reed said.

  “Not afraid she’d be sued by Duchaine?”

  “From what I’ve been told, Mrs. Alcott has far deeper pockets than Frances Duchaine these days.”

  Bree looked at Salazar and Thompson. “Did you find evidence that there was going to be a sex-slave auction at Watkins’s last night?”

  Salazar said, “Nothing concrete yet, but the computers just got to our experts.”

  “What about the other people attending the party?”

  Thompson said, “We can’t talk about them at this point.”

  Salazar stared at her partner. “I would not have been there if it hadn’t been for Chief Stone.”

  “Former chief Stone,” Thompson said.

  “Read up on her sometime—maybe you’ll learn something,” Salazar said. She looked at Bree. “Several of the younger members of the crowd copped to being there for a special party involving sex that was going to happen later in the evening, after most of the guests left. None of the older males in the crowd mentioned being there to buy sex slaves.”

  “Of course they didn’t,” Bree said. “I’d talk to the number-two guys in the Ivanovic and Flynn mobs, see what they know. And talk to the sheikh’s embassy. And I’d be looking for money moving from any of the partygoers’ bank accounts to Paula Watkins or Frances Duchaine. She’s who I’d be leaning on right this minute, by the way. What did Frances know? And when did she know it?”

  The pregnant detective squinted and put her hands on her stomach. “Well, Thompson and I are just about to ask her those same questions, Chief Stone. Would you care to observe and point out anything we might miss?”

  “What?” Thompson said. “Why would we do that?”

  Salazar suddenly looked exhausted. “Because she knows things we don’t.”

  Chapter

  53

  Washington, DC

  Thursday morning, John Sampson and I entered an Au Bon Pain on Tenth Street, not far from Metro PD headquarters.

  Thomas Tull shot to his feet and waved to us from beside a small booth near the rear of the establishment.

  Tull had craggy good looks and a solidly muscled body. A sliver under six feet, he was dressed casually in denim, and he’d let his sandy-brown hair go a little grayer than it was in his recent publicity photos, giving him a middle-aged Robert Redford quality. The writer’s steel-blue eyes danced over me as he smiled and stuck out a big hand.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Cross,” Tull said, fully engaging my eyes before turning to John. “And you too, Detective Sampson. A real honor.”

  I have an expert nose for someone blowing smoke at me. But I didn’t smell anything coming off Tull except goodwill and curiosity.

  Sampson felt it as well and he smiled back. “You’re the big-time writer, Mr. Tull.”

  “Thomas, please,” he said and gestured to the booth, where a carafe of coffee, clean cups, and a plate of breakfast rolls awaited. He slid in, still smiling, looking at each of us in turn as if trying to burn our images into his mind. Then he knocked his knuckles against the tabletop twice and put his right hand over his heart.

  “Dr. Cross, your lectures at the FBI Academy were a revelation to me. I first heard them when I was working for NCIS in San Diego,” Tull said. “And Detective Sampson, several of your investigations should be taught in every police academy in the country.”

  “Nice of you to say so,” I said.

  Sampson nodded. “How can we help?”

  Tull flashed a thousand-watt smile at us, then grew serious, putting the palms of both hands on the table.

  “Let me explain how I work,” he said. “First off, I am not here to second-guess you and I will never, ever reveal anything you might tell me about the Family Man murders without your explicit approval. Ever. I know how delicate an investigation like this is, and you don’t need some clueless writer accidentally letting something critical slip.”

  “Comforting,” I said. “You’re saying that you’ll say nothing about the case until your book is written?”

  “And vetted by each of you before it’s published,” Tull said. “You may not like what I’ve written, but I will hide nothing from you.”

  For the next ten minutes, the writer described how he’d worked with investigators in the research of his previous three books. In each one, he had signed an agreement stating that he would not disclose anything about the probe until it was complete. In return, he asked to be a fly on the wall as the case unfolded.

  “You mean, like, constantly?” Sampson asked. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “No, of course not,” Tull said. “Only in those instances where you think I need to be there in order to understand some new twist or breakthrough in the case.”

  “I need to ask you a couple of questions first,” I said.

  The writer sat up straighter and steepled his fingers. “Anything.”

  I asked him about the threat he’d made to Suzanne Liu. “She taped it,” I said.

  “So did I,” Tull said. “She’s been making false accusations against me and I wanted to let her know there would be financial repercussions if she continued.”

  “You deny you had relationships with the detectives running the investigations in your various books?”

  “The detectives running them?” he said. “No. I had relationships with consenting adults who were part of those investigations. To my knowledge, no one ever complained about them.”

  “You don’t mention the relationships in your books,” I said.

  “Because they’re no one’s business but mine and three wonderful women,” Tull said, not batting an eye. “Do you have one of them on the record being critical of me?”

  “I’ve only spoken to Heidi Parks,” I said. “And no.”

  “There you go. Heidi and I parted on great terms,” the writer said. “I’m sure you’ll hear the same from Jane Hale in Boston and Ava Firsching in Berlin.”

  “Detective Hale is on her honeymoon.”

  “In Australia,” he said. “I know because I attended her wedding. And I one hundred percent guarantee you that Ava will also speak well of me.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” I said. “You gave them the credit for making substantive breakthroughs in the investigations when you, in fact, made those logical leaps.”

  Tull’s face screwed up. “Name one.”

  “You, not Jane Hale, first theorized that the electrocutions in the greater Boston area were connected.”

  “That’s false,” Tull said. “Jane came up with that theory the night of the retirement of her old partner. Jane got quite drunk on whiskey and told me she was going to look into other electrocutions in and around Boston. I just reminded her the next day.”

  “Why not just write that, then?” Sampson asked.

  “Because Jane is ordinarily a teetotaler and would have been embarrassed if I’d described how plastered she was.”

  I said, “You told Ava Firsching to return the focus of her investigation to the Berlin Zoo, didn’t you?”

  “I may have suggested it,” he said. “But isn’t that a tried-and-true investigative method? Going back and looking again?”

  There was no disputing that, so I said, “What about Doctor’s Orders? I talked to Heidi Parks yesterday and she said it was your idea to look into malpractice suits.”

  The writer shrugged. “I don’t remember it that way, but so what? Isn’t it logical to look into the dark underbellies of the victims? Isn’t that what you preached in one of your lectures at Quantico, Dr. Cross?”

  That was true and it caused me to sit back. “Still doesn’t explain why you kept yourself out of the narratives in three of the biggest breaks in the cases.”

  Tull sighed and for several moments watched me with no guile that I could see.

  “I find it odd that you’re, in a sense, criticizing me for being humble, for letting the spotlight shine where it should—on the detectives who drove the cases,” he said at last. “But I’ll tell you what, Dr. Cross. If you’ll let me observe the investigation and I come up with an angle that you two had not considered and it turns out to be big, I’ll take the credit. One hundred percent. Does that work for you?”

  Chapter

  54

  Manhattan

  Bree watched from the observation booth as Frances Duchaine entered the interrogation room with Katrina French, her young attorney. Wearing a widow-black pantsuit and dark sunglasses, Duchaine folded herself into a chair across the table from Detectives Salazar and Thompson.