“Of course,” I said, getting up to hug her. “Thank you for taking good care of us, old lady.”

  “It’s an old lady’s pleasure.” She laughed. “And her purpose.”

  Chapter

  71

  After we’d cleaned the dishes and put away the leftovers, Bree and I watched some of the game with Ali and Jannie. But then Atlanta pulled away and was up eighteen points in the middle of the fourth quarter.

  Bree, drowsing on my shoulder, said, “I’m zonked. It’s bedtime for this girl.”

  “I’m not long behind you,” I said.

  “Good night,” Bree said; she kissed me and went up the stairs.

  I yawned when the game ended and the kids went up to bed, but I knew I was still far too wound up to sleep. As I often did when I felt like this, I climbed up to my little attic office.

  It had low ceilings and looked like a hoarder’s paradise, but my best thinking took place in the old chair behind an older desk or on the ancient couch.

  I’d no sooner sat down than my phone rang. “Suzanne Liu?” I groaned, seeing the caller ID. “I’m not taking this.”

  I thumbed Decline. Almost a minute later, the phone beeped to alert me to a voice mail. I ignored it.

  Then the texting started. Seven messages, and all long. I scanned the first one, then read it and the six after it closely.

  In each of the texts, Liu raised issues with the way Tull had written his second book, pointing out blatant errors and false statements. The editor finished by imploring me not to exclude the writer as a suspect in the murders.

  Things are not as they seem, she wrote. Not with Thomas Tull, Dr. Cross.

  I sighed. On the corner of my desk in a neat stack were Thomas Tull’s three books. I picked up the only book of his I had not looked at in depth, Noon in Berlin.

  Like the others, the writing pulled the reader in and did not let go. I think I’d read twenty pages before I picked my head up, realizing I’d been utterly fascinated with his description of the victims meeting for a noontime tryst at an apartment near the Tiergarten in Berlin only to be murdered while they made love, both struck with darts that contained powerful animal tranquilizers, enough to stop their hearts in seconds.

  From there, Tull jumped to the point of view of Inspector Ava Firsching of the Berlin police, the female detective that the writer had gotten involved with on this case. As Tull depicted her, Firsching was in her early thirties, tough, dedicated, and in the midst of what would be the case of her career.

  I read another two chapters and came across another name: Hauptkommissar Horst Martel. Tull portrayed Martel as Firsching’s foil inside the department, a strictly by-the-book cop, too rigid to try creative ways to deal with the string of lovers being murdered at noon in the German capital.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly midnight in DC, nearly eight in the morning in Berlin.

  On a whim, I Googled the phone number of the Berlin City Police and found it and something better, the number for the major-crimes unit. I called it and was not surprised that it was answered. Eight o’clock in the morning, cops answer. Later, when things get hectic or nuts, sometimes they don’t.

  Luckily, the detective I got spoke English, but he said he was sorry to inform me that Hauptkommissar Martel had retired the year before. When I asked where Martel had retired to, he said he thought he was still in Berlin.

  It took me about ten more minutes to find a Horst Martel living in the Kreuzberg section of the German capital. A woman picked up on the third ring.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “My name is Alex Cross,” I said. “I work as a psychological and investigative consultant to the FBI and the Washington, DC, police department. Is Horst Martel in? I would like to talk with him about a case I’m working on.”

  “Horst is retired,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s about a case he worked on. It became a book.”

  “Noon in Berlin,” she said sourly.

  “That’s right. I’d like to talk to him about it. Well, about Thomas Tull, really.”

  The line went silent.

  Chapter

  72

  “Hello?” I said and was about to hang up when I heard muffled voices in the background. She had not hung up, just put the phone down.

  A few moments later, I heard someone pick up the phone. In heavily accented English and with a suspicious tone, a man said, “I am Horst Martel. Who are you?”

  I identified myself again and said, “If you’re doubting my standing with the FBI or the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police, Herr Martel, I can get my liaisons to call and vouch for me.”

  “Not necessary, Dr. Cross,” Martel said. “My wife just Googled you. What do you want to know about Thomas Tull? And for what reasons?”

  For the next ten minutes, I described the Family Man murders. I told him that Tull was writing about the case and, largely due to his former editor, was also a suspect.

  “Ja, ja, of course he is a suspect,” said the former Berlin police inspector. “That is his pattern, I think. Well, I know here that was also true.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You suspected Thomas Tull in the noontime murders?”

  “Ja, ja,” Martel said. “He was already in Berlin when the first killings occurred. Not far from where it happened.”

  Was that in the book? I didn’t think so. I thought he’d written that the first murders took place before his arrival in Berlin. “Why did you consider him a suspect?”

  “Because he tried to—how do you say it—insert himself into the investigation within two days of the first murders.”

  I was frowning so hard, my eyebrows hurt. That was definitely not in the book. In fact, he’d kept himself completely out of the narrative in the pages I’d read. “Let me understand,” I said. “Tull decided to follow the case within forty-eight hours of the first murders?”

  “Correct,” Martel said. “He, uh—how do I say it?—claimed he had the extrasensory perception that the case might be important. You know, the feeling in the stomach?”

  “I know that feeling.”

  “I had this same feeling about Tull. From the beginning, he made me feel this way, even after we cleared him.”

  “He had an alibi?”

  “Cell phone records that showed him in another part of the city at noon,” the retired police commissioner said. “And time-stamped credit card receipts.”

  I thought about the fact that Tull had used his cell phone data to prove he was nowhere near the Kane house the night that family was murdered. Was it a coincidence? Or was Tull gaming the system somehow?

  Get away with it once, you’ll definitely try again.

  “So you let him into the investigation?” I asked.

  A little bitterly, Martel said, “I was against it because we could not find CCTV footage of him to absolutely corroborate his whereabouts at the time of the killings. But my superiors said he was in a park having a beer, not many cameras, and they knew of his previous book and thought it might reflect well on the Berlin police department to have someone of Herr Tull’s, uh, reputation to tell the story.”

  “Did Tull eventually solve the killings?”

  He snorted. “Thomas Tull? No.”

  “The way he writes it, Ava Firsching decides on her own to go back to the zoo to look at vendors.”

  “You will have to ask her, but we were going back and looking at a lot of the evidence by then. The zoo would have been studied again by someone.”

  “What about the guy you ended up catching?”

  “Dietrich Frommer.”

  “Any doubt it’s him?”

  “None.”

  “Could he have been framed?”

  The retired police inspector made a dismissive noise in his throat. “Frommer believes so, but the evidence says it is him. Frommer had supplies of the tranquilizer. He knew the first woman to die from the gym where he exercised, Gerta Waldemar.”

  “Didn’t you find the dart gun?” I asked.

  “In a crawl space under his home, wiped clean. He claimed he had never seen the weapon before in his life.”

  “You said the evidence says it is Frommer. What does the sick feeling in your stomach say?”

  Martel paused for several moments. “That if Frommer is telling the truth, Tull was somehow involved. At the very least, I feel Tull was pushing the investigation in directions he wanted it to go from very early on.”

  “Through his relationship with Inspector Firsching.”

  “Ja, ja,” he said and chuckled. “Tull left Ava the day after Frommer was convicted, and still she defends him every chance she gets. Tull will do the same with you this time. Has he become sleeping partners with anyone on the case yet?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “This is surprising,” the retired commissioner said. “But give him time and—”

  I could hear a woman talking in the background.

  “Ja, ja,” he said. “I am sorry, Dr. Cross, but my wife reminds me I must go to the dentist. Can I give you my e-mail? You’ll tell me what you find out about Tull?”

  “I will,” I said.

  Chapter

  73

  After my late-night conversation with retired Hauptkommissar Martel, I tried to read more of Noon in Berlin, but I soon got drowsy and stumbled over to the old couch to shut my eyes.

  Less than two hours later, when I was dead asleep, my cell phone started ringing and buzzing. It startled me awake; I had no idea where I was for several seconds, then I stumbled to my phone on the desk.

  “Cross,” I said.

  “Sampson’s on the line as well,” Mahoney said. “I’m in Baltimore and can’t get there fast. But Family Man has made a mistake. We got a report from a residential security company that a silent alarm has gone off in the home of the Allison family in Falls Church, near Lake Barcroft. There is an intruder in the house as we speak. He is armed and wearing night-vision goggles.”

  “How do you know that? Where’s the family?”

  “In a safe room,” Mahoney said. “They’re watching the son of a bitch on a closed-circuit system.”

  “Get police there. And a chopper overhead. Surround the place. I’m on my way.”

  “Already gone,” Sampson said.

  I bolted out of the attic and down the stairs; grabbed my coat, service weapon, and the keys to the car. I put the address into my Waze app. Metro had given me a bubble that I could use in rare circumstances. This felt like one of those times, so I rolled down the window and slapped it on the roof.

  It was two thirty-five in the morning when I squealed away from my house. With the early hour and the bubble, which let me run the red lights, I set some kind of land-speed record between Southeast DC and the wooded Lake Barcroft area, where I spotted a Fairfax County sheriff’s cruiser parked sideways across the mouth of Dockser Terrace, its lights dark.

  I pulled over behind him and got out, holding up my IDs and credentials. “FBI and DC Metro,” I said. “When did you arrive, Deputy…”

  “Conrad, and not five minutes ago, sir.”

  “Are we in contact with the family?”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, I think so, sir.”

  “Let me talk to your dispatch.”

  He handed me a walkie-talkie. I took it and called for dispatch. A woman named Helena Rodriguez came on. I identified myself and asked about communications with the family.

  “I was talking to Mr. Allison until four minutes ago, when his comm cut out.”

  Sampson pulled up and jumped from his car.

  “I’m borrowing your radio, Deputy,” I said. I looked at John. “We’ve lost contact with the family.”

  We both started to run toward the Allisons’ house, which was on the left side of the road where Dockser Terrace split and looped back on itself.

  “No way out of here in a car,” Sampson said.

  “Do you have eyes overhead?” I barked into the radio.

  “Negative, Dr. Cross,” Rodriguez said. “It’s refueling. Two minutes to takeoff. Six minutes to you.”

  That made us run faster.

  “I need two uniforms in the trees watching the back of the Allisons’ house. Have them come in through the woods from the far side of the loop.”

  “Roger that.”

  We were less than two hundred yards from the Allisons’ home by then, a big gray Colonial set back among pines and oaks. Even in the moonlight, it was one of the bigger structures in the neighborhood. The lights were off outside and in.

  I slowed and stopped at the bottom of the driveway, gasping. “He’s in there, John. He may have found the family already.”

  “How would he get into a safe room?” Sampson said, drawing his weapon.

  “We’re about to find out,” I said, drawing mine as well, and we started to move forward, only to stop again.

  A middle-aged man came jogging around the corner ahead of us on the opposite side of the street. He wore running pants, a white windbreaker, a headlamp, and a bright green reflective vest over a small knapsack with a water hose coming out of the top. A small red light blinked at his waist. A little dog on a leash ran at his side.

  We went at him, guns drawn. The Jack Russell terrier growled.

  Seeing us, he stopped and threw up his hands, frightened. “What is this?”

  “Metropolitan Police,” Sampson said. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “Tim Boulter. I’m out for a run?”

  “At three in the morning?”

  “I own a bakery,” Boulter said. “This is my six a.m.”

  “How did you get by the police cruiser blocking the road?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t see a cruiser. I came on the trail that comes into the far side of Dockser Terrace from closer to the lake. What’s happening?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Arcadia Road. Two miles from here.”

  I said, “Go straight to the cruiser behind us and give your contact information to the officer there. Sorry to have interrupted your run.”

  He nodded uncertainly. The terrier was still growling. “Thank you. What’s going on?”

  “Just checking a suspicious person seen in the area.”

  Boulter looked at our guns, nodded again, and turned.

  “Hey,” Sampson said. “What’s the name of your bakery?”

  “Sunrise,” he said. “We’re in the book.”

  “Go home, Mr. Boulter,” I said and turned back toward the Allisons’ house.

  Boulter broke into a jog. As we started up the driveway, I glanced back, saw the silhouette of him and his dog stopping to talk to the officer blocking the road.

  “I say we go inside before the uniforms,” Sampson said.

  It was somewhat against protocol, but we feared for the Allisons. If the killer had managed to shut down power or communications from the safe room, he could have gotten inside. He could be executing them now or getting ready to.

  “Dispatch, do we know the location of the safe room?” I asked.

  “Center of the basement, behind the back wall of the wine cellar.”

  We went to the front door. I tried the knob.

  Locked.

  We moved fast around the house and found a screened-in side porch. A large piece of screen had been cut and folded down.

  “Here we go,” I whispered, crawling through on my hands and knees.

  The porch had sliding glass doors. One was ajar.

  Chapter

  74

  There’s always a split second of stiffness, of hesitation, before you go through a door seeking someone who’s likely to try to kill you.

  But then years of training take hold, and the shoulders relax and the mind focuses into an almost hyperalertness, attuned to any movement or sound. Sampson went into the house first, with me hard on his heels and covering our six.

  We both turned on Maglite flashlights and held them in our left fists, our pistols braced on top across the backs of our hands. John stepped into a great room that ran the width of the house. We went toward the kitchen, clearing behind the sofas and the floor-length curtains.

  We did not have a diagram of the house and were forced to bumble through, trying the lights unsuccessfully after we’d cleared the great room and entered the kitchen. We went to the first door off the kitchen, looking for the staircase to the basement. Sampson slipped up to the right edge of the door frame. He pinned his spine to the wall, gun ready. I pulled the door open.

  The pantry. One of two doors at the rear of the kitchen revealed the laundry. When I opened the third door, we saw carpeted stairs dropping into darkness.

  Easing down, guns still braced, we dissected every shadow with the powerful flashlights until we reached the floor of a massive basement. There was a small movie theater on the left and a larger game room on the right.

  Beyond them, in the center of the basement was a stone wall the height of the room and about twenty feet long. Hallways ran off into the dark on both sides of the wall, which wept, water trickling down the stones into a narrow cache for the fountain.

  “I’m guessing the wine cellar’s behind that wall.”

  “Left or right hallway?”

  I shone my light to the right over the cream-colored carpet, seeing where it was compressed from use and noticing a red-wine stain.

  Around the right corner of the rock wall, we found a heavy whitewashed oak door with a wrought-iron thumb latch. Once again, we operated as if we were in the middle of an intense training session.

  The door creaked when I pulled it, revealing a two-door wrought-iron gate with the letter A crafted into its face. Beyond it was a terra-cotta tile floor, a tasting table with two chairs, and four walls filled top to bottom with wine bottles.