Double Cross by James Patterson Read Free Book Online

seemed to be going nowhere, or at least Bree thought so. The facial image from the video had no match in the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. The voiceprint had been contracted out to the same agency that worked with the Bureau on Osama bin Laden’s recordings after 9⁄11. So far, no luck there either, but it was too soon to expect much.
    Also, the killer hadn’t identified himself with any jihad or cell. And no one had stepped up with information about him after seeing—on repeated news broadcasts—still pictures made by spectators of the murder.
    Bree shared every shred of information with the Feds, but she also continued her own investigation. That meant sixteen-hour days for her.
    On Thursday evening, I stopped by her office, hoping to coax her out for a bite to eat. The MPD’s Violent Crimes Unit is fairly inconspicuous, located behind an ordinary-looking strip mall in Southeast. There’s more than enough parking, though, which some cops joke is the real reason everybody wants to work there. It just could be.
    I found Bree’s cube empty. The computer was still on, with a yellow sticky note on the monitor that said
Call Alex
in Bree’s handwriting. I hadn’t heard from her, though—not all day.
So what was she up to now
?
    “You looking for Bree?” The detective from the next cubicle gestured with his half-eaten sub. “Try the conference room. Down that hallway to your left. She’s been camping out in there.”
    When I entered the room, Bree was sitting with her feet up and a remote in one hand, scratching her head with the other. The killer’s video was playing on the television. Open files, pages of notes, and crime-scene photos were spread out everywhere. And still, just seeing her there turned me on more than I cared to admit.
    “Hey, you. What time is it?” she called when she spotted me hovering across the room.
    I closed the door before kissing her hello a couple of times. “Dinnertime, break time. You hungry?”
    “Starved, actually. Just watch this with me a few more times? I’m going cross-eyed in here by myself.”
    I was happy to help out and then not terribly surprised when “a few more times” became dozens of viewings, and dinner at Kinkead’s turned into take-out empanadas from around the corner.
    The grisly murder tape from the Riverwalk never got any easier to watch. Neither did hearing my name spoken on it. I compensated by lasering in on the killer. Maybe there was some nuance of his speech or behavior, something nobody had noticed yet. I knew this exercise wasn’t about giant leaps right now; it was about making small connections. Like Tess Olsen being a crime writer. Or maybe even the Hallmark greeting cards I’d noticed in the apartment. The killer’s need for an audience.
    So it surprised us both a few minutes later when we found something important, something that might be huge.

Chapter 20

    IT STARTED OUT as a barely discernible flash, something almost subliminal in the static just before the second half of the tape began. Bree and I had been staring so much at what the killer wanted us to see, we hadn’t really looked anywhere else.
    “Hold it a second,” I said.
    I picked up the remote and rewound the tape a bit, then froze it.
    “There,” I said to Bree. “See it?”
    It was almost nothing. More like the suggestion of an image, almost too fast for the human eye or even the slow-motion feature on the VCR. A ghost is what it was. A clue.
Left there on purpose
?
    “This tape’s been used before,” I said.
    Bree was already putting on her shoes, which were size-ten black flats. “You know anyone at the Cyber Unit over at the Bureau?” she blurted out.
    The police department relied heavily on the FBI for video-forensics assistance. I knew a few names over there, but it was now nine o’clock at night. That didn’t seem to matter to Bree, who was up out of her seat and pacing.
    She finally picked up the phone herself. “Let me try Wendy Timmerman. She