CHAPTER 3

I WAS HOME, FINISHING the dishes, when Ned Mahoney called.

Mahoney was the supervising special agent in charge of an elite FBI unit that worked high-profile investigations. I was a consultant to that unit, focusing on criminal psychology.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“We’re not going to Boston in the morning, Alex.”

“C’mon.” I groaned. “This is the third time we’ve postponed going up there.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve caught a major one. Judge Emma Franklin, only Black woman on the DC Court of Appeals, and her driver were gunned down in Franklin’s driveway in Alexandria about an hour ago. The acting director wants us on it pronto.”

Aaron Gleason, the prior FBI director, had died of a massive stroke two days after the election. The lame-duck president had named Marcia Hamilton, a former U.S. attorney for Chicago, as acting director until the incoming president took office.

“Jesus. Text me the address. I’m on my way.”

I hung up and turned around to see my wife, Bree, standing there with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. “On your way where? And you’d better say Boston.”

I held up both palms. “This is out of my control.”

“This is the third time we’ve put it off!”

“A District Court of Appeals judge, Emma Franklin, was just gunned down in her driveway and the FBI director wants us there,” I said.

Bree softened. “Franklin? Didn’t her husband die recently in a plane he was piloting?”

I nodded. “Got into wind shear and went down in the Chesapeake last spring.”

“This is going to set the city even more on edge than it already is with the inauguration coming up.”

Before I could reply, my phone buzzed, alerting me to the text.

“Go,” Bree said. “Maybe we’ll get to Boston before the inauguration.”

“We can only hope,” I said, giving her a kiss. “Don’t wait up.”

“Maybe,” she said, and kissed me back.

I left the kitchen and went through the dining room and down the hall, past the front room where Nana Mama, my ninety-something grandmother, was on the couch watching a documentary on rock and roll drummers. My daughter, Jannie, eighteen, a freshman at Howard University, was home after finals and sitting on the couch with her laptop. Ali, my youngest, was on the floor studying a math textbook.

Nana Mama looked over and saw me. “You ever watch this? I guess I never knew how influential Ringo was to generations of drummers.”

“Sounds like a good one, but duty calls,” I said.

My grandmother frowned. “I thought you were going to Boston in the morning.”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“Bundle up, Dad,” Jannie said. “Gonna be freezing tonight.”

“I heard that,” I said. I went to the front hall closet and took out a down jacket, a hat, gloves, and my credentials, then retrieved my pistol in its holster from the lockbox there.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled up and parked by an Alexandria police cruiser. A length of yellow tape had been stretched across the road to seal off the crime scene. Despite the cold, there were neighbors out on their porches up and down the street.

Ned Mahoney, a fireplug of a man in his late forties wearing an FBI windbreaker over a heavy jacket, was on the sidewalk in front of the bungalow looking at the bodies. Judge Franklin was on her back, slack-jawed, one bullet hole between her open eyes, another above her right eyebrow. Her briefcase and purse lay beside her.

The driver, who had been identified as thirty-seven-year-old Agnes Pearson of Bowie, Maryland, was sprawled facedown on the driveway, two bullet holes through the back of her black wool overcoat.

The car was still running.

“Pretty sharp shooting even at close range,” Mahoney said.

“Double tapper,” I said. “Casings?”

Mahoney shook his head. “Looks total pro to me.”

“Me too,” I said. “Who found her?”

“Cop said the lady across the street saw them lying here when she took her dog for a walk. I haven’t talked to her yet.”

I looked over and saw an older woman dressed for a blizzard sitting on her front porch and smoking a cigarette, a small dog in her lap.

After a criminalist arrived and photographed the scene, we shut the town car off, put on gloves, and went through the judge’s purse. We found her wallet, credit cards, two hundred in cash, her cell phone, and the keys to her house.

The briefcase was unlocked. In it was a laptop, legal briefs relating to a case she was hearing, and four tickets to a Miami Heat home game against the LA Lakers on December 23.

“I think we can safely assume they weren’t killed as part of a robbery,” Mahoney said. “I’m going to go through the car.”

“I’ll talk to the lady with the dog.”

The little black-and-brown shorthair dachshund wore a Christmas sweater and was snuggled in the lap of the smoker. He growled when he saw me approach.

“Hush now, Bernie,” the woman said.

“I’m Alex Cross,” I said. “I work with the FBI.”

“Eileen Dawson,” she said, then coughed. “And I know exactly where I’d start if I were investigating this.”

“Where’s that?”

“George Washington University Law School,” she said. “Professor Willa Whelan. She hated Emma’s guts, made all sorts of threats against her at a fundraiser at the Hilton not two weeks ago.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was an eyewitness.”