Page 92 of Cross Down
“I’ve got to show you something right now,” Jannie says.
In the living room, Jannie points out the large bay window and says, “There’s a van parked at the end of the cul-de-sac, under that streetlight. It’s been there for at least fifteen minutes. I checked it out a few minutes ago with Mrs. Balantic’s old spyglass, the gift she got when she retired from the navy.”
Bree picks up the heavy and ungainly spyglass. It trembles in her hand, and when she looks through the window, the view isn’t that sharp. It’s a typical GMC van belonging to a catering company.
Bree lowers the spyglass. “Some caterers. Maybe they’re prepping for an early event.”
Jannie shakes her head. “The van says Lorenzo’s Deli and Catering.”
“So?”
“That catering company belongs to Lorenzo DeMarco. I go to school with his niece Stacy. She told me he had to close his business a few months ago because he has high blood pressure and his wife told him enough was enough. There’s no more Lorenzo’s Deli and Catering.” Jannie points to the van again. “That’s a fake.”
Chapter
103
About forty-five minutesafter the late-night landing at Joint Base Andrews and after I steal yet another car, I’m back at the Cross house.
With the new spare key to the back door I secured from Bree during my last visit—which seems ages ago—I let myself into the kitchen and quietly close the door behind me. I pause for a few sweet seconds, taking in the familiar smells of this blessed place, recalling all the fun times here with Alex and his family, the wonderful meals from Nana Mama, the shrieks and yells from his children, my own Willow lovingly being part of the action, part of this family.
I feel like standing here forever. But God, I can’t.
When my eyes have adjusted to the dim light of the kitchen appliances, I gingerly make my way through the first-floor rooms and up the stairs.
It’s darker up here, so I keep a hand on the wall as I walk to Alex’s office. The door is open and I go in, then stand still.
Is it here, what he’s been talking about? What Alex talked about just before he got shot, what he whispered to me before I flew off to Afghanistan, and what he’s been saying to Bree?
It’s not random.
I gently close the door behind me.
I fumble a bit as I draw the shades to two of the office’s windows, and with a small penlight cupped in my large hand, I sit at Alex’s wide and cluttered desk, feeling like an intruder. There are bookshelves, filing cabinets, piles of folders.
How can I be here, in his office, in his chair, pretending to be one-fifth the man he is when it comes to figuring out puzzles and seeing details with his cold and smart logic?
“Patterns,” I whisper. “Get your ass to work, John.”
I carefully go through the papers and notepads on his desk, seeing the information we received during that very first briefing, the list of the terrorist attacks beginning April 15 in Columbus, Georgia, scribbled in Alex’s handwriting. There are check marks next to a few, probably meaning Alex had done confirming research on those cases.
At the bottom is a circled handwritten notation:Pros are the source!
True. But whose pros? Foreign? Domestic? Combination of both?
Not random,he had said.Not random.
But nothing in the papers on his desk suggests who the source was or why it wasn’t random.
I think back to the day Alex was shot. He was carrying his briefcase when he was cut down. Was the evidence in there? And where is that briefcase now? In the evidence room at police headquarters or stolen by one of those taking part in these terrorist attacks?
I know how Alex works. He’d have a nice, prepared report, but that nice work would be based on lots of earlier work and drafts and—
I move my big left foot. Hit a wastebasket. Bend over and pull it out from underneath the desk. It’s filled with scribbled notes, printouts of Google maps, arrows and numbers and lines connecting names.
I spread out on his desk the three most important crumpled sheets of paper.
There it is.
