Page 37 of Cross Down
I get in and return to Route 210; the highway is fairly busy. “What did Agent DeGrasse say to you?”
“Not much,” he says. “She started chatting and I slipped in my friend’s name and that was that.”
“What was she chatting about?”
“This and that,” Mel says. “You know.”
“Working in DC homicide, you get familiar with chitchat. Hold on, I need to take a leak.”
I turn into a large lot containing a Waffle House, a Piggly Wiggly, and a plumbing-supply store. I drive to the far end of the lot, where there’s nothing but a guardrail and low brush and trees. I pull up and take a look around, making sure we’re not being watched or followed.
Mel says, “Looks pretty isolated.”
“Exactly.”
With my left hand I open the door; with my right, I grab my Glock 17, whirl it around, jam it into Mel’s left ear. I let go of the door, grab his shirt collar, and give it a sharp twist.
“Hey, hey, hey, what the hell—”
I twist the muzzle of the Glock harder into his ear. “What the hell is that your story is bullshit, and you know it,” I say. “You’re active-duty army, you’re pulled in for an interrogation from a CID special agent, and now you’re out because of a supposed friend in CID? You don’t think that story is hard to believe?”
I stop talking, remembering FBI agent Ned Mahoney’s parting words:Don’t trust anyone.
Chapter
43
In her hospitalbed, the handcuffed woman smiles, even though she feels like she’s tripping something awful; the light green curtains over there look like they’re melting.
“Lady, I hate to disappoint you, but as you know, this isn’t the first time I’ve had a pistol pointed in my direction,” she says, smiling wider. “And this isn’t the first time I’ve been wounded either.”
“I don’t doubt that at all,” Brianna says. “Let’s start by finding out who you are. Your ID was fake. There’s no Mary Mullen employed in this hospital. But your identification looked just like the real thing, and you even had key-card access.”
“Wow,” she says.
“Your fingerprints aren’t in any database,” Brianna says. “And I expect DNA analysis and facial-recognition software will have the same results. So who are you?”
She says, “Just a hardworking gal trying to make her way in this crazy, mixed-up world.”
“By committing murder?”
“That’s the way of the entire world, isn’t it? Survival of the fittest.”
“And killing an unarmed man in a hospital bed, that’s survival of the fittest?”
“It had to be done for the greater good.”
“Says who?”
She’s fighting sleepiness but she likes giving this member of the deep state the runaround. “I’ve said too much already.”
“Not a word, then?” Brianna asks.
“Not a word…”
The curtain slides open and there are two men and one woman in scrubs, and the woman says, “Sorry, we need to take this patient to surgery.”
She whispers, “See, cop? Not…one…word…”
