Page 58 of The House of Cross

“I don’t know,” Bree said, throwing up her hands in frustration. “But I didn’t come all the way out here just to give up on day one. You know I was air force military police before I joined Metro.”

“I did know that.”

“They taught us that when in doubt, dig deeper than you think is reasonable.”

Sampson sighed and started the Jeep. “Salmon it is.”

They got on I-80 heading east, then took U.S. 93 north toward Idaho. As John drove, Bree reviewed the medical examiner’s reports on the autopsy, the DNA test, and the tox screen. Death was attributed to massive blunt-force trauma.

The DNA report was conclusive on Malcomb’s identity. And the tox screen showed that at the time of the accident, the tech entrepreneur had had a blood alcohol level that was twice the legal limit and more than a trace of fentanyl in his system.

“There’s something off about this tox screen, though,” Bree said as they neared the Idaho border and night began to fall.

“What?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I just have a feeling I’m missing something.” She got out her phone and called Alex. The connection was weak and crackly, and the call went straight to voice mail. “This is Bree. We’re heading to Idaho. Love you.” Bree looked at the reports in her lap and almost put them aside. But something clicked in her mind.

She studied the tox screen one more time. “There it isn’t,” Bree said.

“What’s that?” Sampson said, glancing over at her.

“Malcomb had muscular dystrophy,” she said, tapping on the report. “I read a profile of him from a couple of years ago and he said he used drugs to delay the progression of the disease andcontrol some of the symptoms. The treatment is almost always steroids, like prednisone.”

“No steroids in the tox screen?”

“No test done yet. Has to be specially ordered.”

“But they think it’s an open-and-shut case and it’s unnecessary.”

“Yeah,” she said, feeling even more frustrated.

CHAPTER 42

Athens, Georgia

FOR SOME REASON, THEway Detective Forbes downloaded the footage from the doorbell camera to his thumb drive had corrupted it and the camera’s hard disk.

It was by no means a total loss, but we had to upload and send the pertinent footage to my friend Keith Karl Rawlins, a computer expert who, like me, worked as a consultant for the FBI. It took Rawlins a good six hours to isolate and repair the video footage and another two to get the audio to jibe.

Mahoney, Detectives Forbes and Warren, and I were eating in a cafeteria at the Athens police department and thinking about calling it a night when the file finally came back. We went to their office and pulled it up on Warren’s computer.

Professor Carver appeared across the street from the camera, on the sidewalk. He seemed a little off balance, a little tipsy, as he went up his driveway.

Similar to the previous video, we got only a two-second look at the assassin. She appeared in a dark hoodie, moved left to right down the middle of the street, and squared off in front of the driveway in a combat shooting stance, her back to the camera, Carver’s back to his killer and the gun.

Her shoulders moved. He turned around to look at her with puzzlement in his eyes.

She shot him square in the chest, knocking him backward on his driveway. She took five quick strides, stopped beside him, and shot him in the face.

“Cold bitch,” Forbes said.

Mahoney said, “I could not agree with you more, Detective.”

The killer moved quickly across the driveway and vanished from the screen a moment later. We rewound the footage and watched it all again, pausing whenever a frame showed some of her face.

The best view we had was as she left Carver and moved diagonally back to the sidewalk. We froze the image when we could see the color and cut of her hair clearly. Her nose, cheeks, and eyes were blurry for some reason.

“Blond,” Mahoney said. “Short spiky hair. It’s her again.”

---