“Name?”

  A slight ripple of what I took to be fear flickered over his face. He said, “He will not like this.”

  Mahoney said, “I expect not, but you’re going to need an alibi that’s a hell of a lot better than three one-name hookers and a nameless Russian expat in Queens.”

  When the writer hesitated, his attorney said, “Tell him or we proceed to arraignment and the destruction of your good name.”

  Tull looked at the ceiling and said, “Dusan. Dusan Volkov.”

  Sampson said, “Phone number for Mr. Volkov?”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Tull said. “You have to go through security checks, and Volkov calls you. If he feels like it. Sometimes it takes a few days.”

  Mahoney cleared his throat, said, “I’m tired of this road to nowhere because we know this story’s not true.”

  “It is true!” Tull said. “Just give the process a little time.”

  “I don’t need to give the process a little time, and I don’t think I’d trust the word of a Russian mobster anyway,” Ned said, and he put the documents with the results of the mitochondrial analysis and match on the table. “We found hairs at the Kane family crime scene.”

  “Slam-dunk match,” I said, watching as Tull and York scanned the document. “Retired U.S. Marine MP and NCIS investigator Thomas Adrian Tull.”

  He jerked his head up. “No! This is BS! I have never—”

  York put an arm across his chest. “Not another word, Thomas. Or you’re wasting the thousand dollars an hour you’re paying me.”

  Tull glared at each of us in turn. “Utter BS,” he said. “Do your job, because I will remember this when it comes time to tell the truth about this story.”

  Then he shut up and looked off into the distance.

  Chapter

  79

  Bree returned from her run and showered, and she was getting dressed when Alex phoned her.

  “It’s him,” he said. “Tull’s the Family Man. We have DNA evidence that puts him at the Kane crime scene.”

  “No kidding,” she said. “Wow, that’s…that’s great, Alex. Well, we all knew you’d figure it out sooner or later. You always do!”

  To Bree’s surprise, she’d said this all with increasing irritation.

  Alex was quiet and then said, “What’s going on there?”

  Bree took a deep breath, examined her emotions. “I think it’s my feelings of inferiority at my inability to make the connections that I know are there,” she said. “If that makes any sense.”

  “It does. But I’ve learned not to beat my head against the wall about these things. If there are connections, you’ll find them. Quite honestly, it’s not like we dug up the Tull connections ourselves. He made two mistakes, with the camera and with the hair.”

  “Big mistakes.”

  “He’s claiming an alibi, by the way.”

  “Against DNA evidence and a photograph of him at the Allisons’?”

  “Exactly, but I am under orders from Tull himself to do my job and check it out before rushing to judgment.”

  “DNA evidence and a photograph, Alex.”

  “Just the same, I think you might be able to help me.”

  “Any way I can.”

  “Could you get in touch with that pregnant NYPD detective for me?”

  “Salazar?” she said.

  “If I remember, you said she’d investigated Russian organized crime before looking at Frances Duchaine.”

  “The Russian mob in Queens,” Bree said. “One of the leaders was killed in Paula Watkins’s house. She knew all about him.”

  “I was hoping so,” Alex said and he explained what he wanted.

  “I can do that. I actually spoke with her a little while ago and I have to go up to New York tomorrow morning to talk to the district attorney assigned to the Watkins/Duchaine case. When are you coming home to sleep?”

  “I was going to wait for Tull’s arraignment so I could see his face when he pleaded. But the assistant U.S. attorney wants him stone-cold sober, so he won’t face a judge until the morning. I’m going to take another nap, then help search his house. The warrants finally came through.”

  “Good,” Bree said. “I’ll let you know what Salazar says.”

  She hung up and phoned the NYPD detective for the second time that day.

  “You don’t quit, Chief,” the detective said. “I—”

  “Not that, Rosella,” Bree said. “I’m calling at my husband’s request.”

  After a pause, she said, “Dr. Cross?”

  “Yes. He wants to know if you know a Russian mobster named Dusan Volkov.”

  “Volkov? I haven’t heard that name in quite a while. But yes, I know of him. They call him Wolf because of his last name in Russian and because he’s secretive, reclusive, operates deep behind the scenes.”

  “Do you know how Alex can get in touch with him?”

  “Volkov?” she said doubtfully. “I don’t know. I’d have to do some reaching out, and even then…”

  “All they’re looking for is corroboration of an alibi,” Bree said, and she explained.

  “Tull and Volkov, huh?” Salazar said. “Strange bedfellows, Chief. I’ll make a few calls and see what I can—”

  Bree heard a slight gasp.

  “Gotta go, see you tomorrow.” The detective groaned. “Big kick. Big, big kick.”

  Chapter

  80

  Around three that afternoon and finally armed with warrants, Sampson, Mahoney, and I donned blue booties, hairnets, and latex gloves while an FBI criminalist picked the lock to Thomas Tull’s Georgetown rental.

  The green door swung open. After the criminalist photographed the narrow front hallway, Mahoney led us inside.

  The writer had done little to make the lower floor of the luxury town house his own. The furniture in the living area was all steel and black leather. There were no televisions and no pictures whatsoever.

  The kitchen had top-of-the-line major appliances but was otherwise sparsely outfitted: a cheap toaster, a cheap coffeemaker, basic cooking utensils, plates, pots, and pans.

  “Looks like someone bought it in one swoop at Walmart,” Sampson said.

  The fridge was empty save for a can of coffee, a carton of half-and-half, and leftover takeout Chinese food.

  “Place is spotless,” Mahoney said.

  “I wonder how much time he spends here,” Sampson said.

  “You think he has another place in town?”

  “There could be another local one, right? I mean, he’s loaded. Big bestselling author.”

  “If he has somewhere local, we’ll find it,” I said, climbing the stairs to the second floor.

  A door on the right revealed the master suite. The king-size bed was made military taut. Tull’s clothes were crisply folded in an armoire, his shoes set in tight order below. Books were stacked on both sides of the bed.

  Sampson and Mahoney went through a locker in one corner. I went through the bathroom and into the second bedroom, which was the writer’s office.

  It wasn’t what I’d anticipated. Or was it?

  I guess I’d expected a rat’s nest, a disorganized mess that only Tull could make sense of. Or maybe an elaborate setup with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a heavy old writing desk.

  Instead, the office was spartan, ordered, and efficient, a former Marine’s place of work: a ladderback chair with a cushion, a long folding table, an iMac, a MacBook Pro laptop, a smaller folding table supporting a printer, and two three-drawer filing cabinets. All of it faced the far long wall of the room, which had been transformed into a visual case control, with sections of each set of victims in the Family Man’s killing spree.

  The murders were arranged in order of occurrence from left to right. The Hodgeses, the Landaus, the Carpenters, the Elliotts, and the Kanes.

  Sampson and Mahoney found me studying the evidence that Tull had considered worthy of inclusion on the wall.

  “Anything jump out at you?” Ned asked, going to the laptop and lifting the lid.

  “Yes,” I said, waving at the right side of the wall. “He left room for more cases. He’s got strips of paper cut there on the desk just waiting for a name.”

  Mahoney gestured at a sticky note on the wall above the desk. “Laptop password: FamilyMan.”

  “That right?” Sampson said, coming over.

  “He’s got multiple applications and files open here,” Mahoney said and started working the trackpad.

  I left the wall for the moment and came around behind them; I saw a Microsoft Word document labeled FAMILY MAN NOTES. Before I could scan it, Mahoney clicked on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

  We looked at the list of what appeared to be his monthly budget items: Car payments. Mortgage on a house in Maine. Credit cards.

  Something odd caught my eye: Cold/Cold $57. I pointed. “What’s this?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s got an Arlington storage unit,” Sampson said, gesturing to the last item on the list.

  “Costs three fifty a month so it’s got to be a good size,” I said while Mahoney clicked on the Google Earth icon at the bottom of the screen.

  We gaped when the app came up and showed that Tull had been searching in the Lake Barcroft area.

  Chapter

  81

  After taking photographs with our phones of the Google Earth search and the budget spreadsheet with the name and address of the storage unit, we left the computers to the FBI criminalists, who bagged them for transport to Quantico for further analysis. We searched the rest of the house and came up with nothing.

  Mahoney opted to stay on the scene when Sampson and I announced our intention to go see what Tull had hidden in Arlington.

  “That storage facility is on the way to Lake Barcroft,” Sampson said.

  “It is,” I said.

  Indeed, Greenbriar Storage turned out to be just a short detour off the most direct route to Lake Barcroft and the Allison family home. Edna Martinez, the fifty-something owner, was working in the office when we entered. She remembered Thomas Tull.

  “I’m in two book clubs,” she said and cackled. “How could I not know him?”

  “Did you hear he’s under arrest?” Sampson asked.

  Ms. Martinez’s shock was complete. “Thomas Tull?”

  “In connection with the Family Man murders,” I said. “We need to get into his storage unit, please.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”

  “Do you have a fax number? We’ll get the warrant for his town house amended to add the storage unit.”

  The owner of the facility became more helpful, giving us her fax number and telling us she’d call the woman who cut the locks off her units.

  By the time we watched the amended warrant print out on her fax machine, a forty-something woman named Lenora Sands had arrived with a special carbide saw designed to cut the curved locks that Martinez demanded clients use on each unit.

  Sands led us to unit 1204 E, a six-by-ten-foot space with a red roll-down door and a stout lock that the carbide tool cut like it was butter. It fell at our feet. Sands bent down to pick it up, but I stopped her.

  “Could be evidence,” I said.

  “Oh?” she said.

  “You never know,” Sampson said, putting it into a bag.

  The locksmith seemed interested in seeing what we found, but we politely asked her to leave while we did our work. “Of course,” she said and walked off.

  I waited until she’d rounded the corner before squatting and rolling up the door. After taking a long look at the room, I turned to John and said, “I’ll go get her.”

  Luckily, I caught up to Sands in the parking lot. “Lenora, have you ever cracked a safe?”

  She closed one eye, said, “Make?”

  “I think it said Liberty.”

  “Helps. Tumbler?”

  “Digital pad.”

  She cocked her head in reappraisal. “That helps too.”

  Sands climbed into her van and soon emerged with a small black carrying case that said LIBERTY SAFE on it. “My husband and I are their certified techs in this area.”

  “Good to know.”

  “People forget their codes all the time,” the locksmith said.

  We returned to the storage unit. Sampson had climbed over a couch, a kitchen table, and several chairs and was rummaging through boxes stacked on the far wall.

  “Anything?”

  “Lot of books and knickknacks.”

  “Lenora says she can get us into the safe.”

  “I’ll check the filing cabinets,” he said and climbed over a credenza to four filing cabinets along the rear wall of the unit.

  Sands struggled but reached the black safe at the back and soon had a notebook computer plugged into the underside of the digital keypad. She gave the computer a series of commands, then looked up and around.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m not getting a clear satellite signal through…oh, now it’s talking.”

  “Who’s it talking to?”

  “A security computer at Liberty, which should generate a onetime code to override the real combination. And you are law enforcement, which we click here.”

  The locksmith hit Enter and looked at the safe expectantly. Several moments later, a light on the pad flashed green and heavy steel bars rolled back. Sands turned to us. “She’s all yours.”

  “Leave us an invoice at the front counter,” I said. “And thanks.”

  “It’s what I do,” the locksmith said, and she left.

  I opened the safe door, revealing seven weapons. Three were bolt-action hunting rifles with Leica scopes. The other four were AR-style rifles with Aimpoint sights. Boxes of ammunition were stacked on the floor at the back.

  I went through the top inner drawer and found various legal documents, including Tull’s will and the title and deed to his home on Moosehead Lake in Maine. There was a Glock nine-millimeter pistol in a holster in the second drawer. The third drawer was empty.

  “Find what you were looking for?” Sampson asked.

  Every person who’d died in the Family Man murders had been shot with a .40-caliber pistol.

  “Not today,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment as I turned to face him.

  “That’s okay. I did,” he said, grinning and holding a pen stuck through the trigger guard of a black pistol fitted with a suppressor. “Glock, forty cal. And it smells like it’s been fired recently.”

  Chapter

  82

  That evening Alex came home exhausted but happy that they’d all but nailed Tull to the wall. The poor guy had slept less than four hours in the past two days and went to bed after dinner so he could wake up early and be there when the writer was arraigned in the morning.

  Bree had to be up early too to catch the train back to New York, but she wasn’t feeling tired and was uninterested in the movie Nana Mama, Ali, and Jannie were watching. She climbed up to Alex’s attic office with a pair of earphones.

  After closing the door, Bree sat on the couch and listened to the recording she’d made the previous day in Ohio. At first, she heard only branches scraping her jacket and the wind blowing as she ducked through the back hedge of Theresa May Alcott’s estate and crossed the lawn.

  Her feet crunched gravel; the door to the greenhouse creaked. But then the big Polynesian’s voice came through loud and clear: “Who are you? What are you doing here? You do not have permission to be here.”

  And then Alcott herself saying, “It’s all right, Arthur. You have exceeded my expectations, Chief Stone. I predicted a phone call or a knock at my front door, not a barging into my greenhouse.”

  Bree smiled when the billionaire laughed and said, “But then I guess you are a barging-in kind of person, aren’t you?”

  After hearing herself say, “I guess I am. All elbows and knees,” Bree paused the recording. Alcott’s demeanor had been disarming. She’d liked the woman almost instantly, and when was the last time that happened?

  Still, there was something about their interaction that had nagged at her most of the day. Bree fast-forwarded the recording to where she and Alcott were in the library.

  She listened closely as the billionaire described her dear granddaughter’s downward spiral at the hands of Paula Watkins and perhaps Frances Duchaine. Alcott then said she believed some kind of cosmic justice had been done.

  Bree heard herself say, “You won’t go to the journalists with the evidence I dug up?”

  “Again, will that bring back my granddaughter?” Alcott replied. “The media will get its meat when Frances Duchaine goes on trial.”

  “She claims she’s innocent.”

  “So did Saddam Hussein.”

  Listening to the recording, Bree again noted the chill in Alcott’s voice. The phone on the desk rang.

  “Can you hold on a moment?” the billionaire asked. “I rarely get calls on the landlines anymore.”

  Her footsteps were audible as she crossed to the desk. Bree heard her say, “This is Terri…Give me a minute, will you, Emma, dear? I’m with someone and I’ll need to pick up in another room…I am sorry, Chief Stone. This won’t take long, but it can’t wait.”

  Bree listened to herself say, “Please. Take your time.”

  Bree stopped the recording, rewound it several seconds, and hit Play.

  “This is Terri…Give me a minute, will you, Emma, dear?”

  Bree stopped the recording again, feeling puzzled. But what about? She played that sequence again.

  “This is Terri…Give me a minute, will you, Emma, dear?”

  Bree had that same internal response—something was off there, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what. The inflection of the words? The tone of voice? The emphasis on certain syllables? What was it? What was being said on that tape that she wasn’t getting?

  Bree listened two more times before yawning and glancing at the clock. It was nearly eleven. She needed sleep.

  Climbing down the stairs, she thought, Emma is probably someone who works for Paladin in the investor relations office, and it’s nothing more than that.