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THE HOUSE OF CROSS
Chapter 4
The alarm on my phone went off at eight thirty the next morning. I’d gotten home around two. I forced myself out of bed and into the shower.
I was in the bathroom shaving when Bree came in, carrying coffee and the Washington Post and looking as frustrated as I’d ever seen her.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I knew we should have gone to Boston two weeks ago when we had momentum.”
“What’s going on?” “He’s dead.”
“Who’s dead?” “Malcomb.” “C’mon!”
She showed me the headline on the front page of the paper’s business section:
Reclusive Billionaire Dies in Nevada Accident
Beneath it was a picture of Ryan Malcomb, dead at the age of forty‑eight. He’d founded Paladin, a data‑mining company based in suburban Boston that did contract work for federal security and law enforcement agencies, including the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI.
I flashed on Malcomb, whom I’d met on several occasions, see‑ ing him in his wheelchair explaining how his remarkable proprietary algorithms were able to sort through stupefyingly large amounts of raw data and home in on specific subjects.
“Read it to me,” I said, rinsing my face.
Malcomb, the story said, had been on a sabbatical of sorts for the prior two months and had crashed his van on a remote mountain road during a snowstorm.
A graduate of MIT, Malcomb had been stricken with muscular dystrophy as a teenager, which put him in a wheelchair much of the time. He had been traveling alone around the West in a van adapted for his use, looking for ranch land to buy, and had apparently lost control of the vehicle in the remote Independence Mountains, northwest of Elko, Nevada.
Elko County sheriff’s investigators said Malcomb had skidded on a notoriously bad turn and hit the guardrail; the vehicle flipped into a canyon and caught fire.
“ ‘The van’s VIN and the handicap plates identified the vehicle as Malcomb’s, and the billionaire’s Massachusetts driver’s license survived the fire in a metal wallet,’ ” Bree read. “ ‘The Elko medi‑ cal examiner will take DNA samples of the remains found and seek dental records to confirm the identity of the billionaire, as the crash victim’s body was burned beyond recognition.’
“ ‘According to an Elko real estate agent, who asked not to be named because of a nondisclosure agreement with Malcomb, the day before, the entrepreneur had visited a ranch at the top of the same canyon he died in.’ ”
I shut off the water. “What’s the company saying?”
Bree read, “ ‘Steven Vance, the CEO of Paladin, said he and the rest of the company’s four hundred employees were in shock. He added that Ryan was their visionary and that without him, there would’ve been no Paladin.’ ” Bree stopped, turned the page. “Vance also said, ‘This loss is enormous. He is irreplaceable.’ ”
She tossed the paper onto the counter. “So that’s the end of the story. M is dead. He got away with all of it.”
“We still can’t say Malcomb was M,” I said.
“Of course he was. Who else could have run something like Maestro? Like Sampson always said, it had to be someone who had access to all sorts of law enforcement and national security files. No one had more access than Malcomb.”
John Sampson, my best friend and former partner when I worked full‑time at DC Metro, had taken his young daughter, Willow, to Disney World for the week. And it was true that John had been the first to suggest that Maestro must have access to top secret files. That had led to our early suspicions about the vigilante group, which was headed by a mysterious character who called himself M.
At times, M had helped us, sending us leads on various investigations. At other times, he had hindered and taunted us. And he had tried to have me and Sampson killed when we were on a wilderness rafting trip in Montana.
In the wake of that trip, Bree, who used to be DC Metro’s chief of detectives, had become obsessed with finding M and taking down Maestro.
“There’s more evidence right in that article that Malcomb was M,” she said. “He started his sabbatical two months ago, which was about the time I began suspecting him.”
That was also true. Prior to that rafting trip, M and Maestro had been involved in the killing of U.S. drug agents and the leaders of a Mexican drug cartel that had corrupted them. More recently Maestro had been behind the murders of several pedophiles and a famous fashion designer who had been involved in human trafficking. Evidence we’d gathered during those investigations had led Bree to the conclusion that M was Ryan Malcomb. “The FBI still has to look into him,” Bree said. “We need to know for certain that he was M. Or I do, anyway.”
Chapter 5
As I’d predicted, as soon as Mahoney learned that Ryan Malcomb was dead, he decided to hold off on a deep dive into the late billionaire and his company.
“I spoke with Director Hamilton earlier,” Ned told me in the car after he picked me up at home. “Franklin’s case is our top priority.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Hard to believe Malcomb’s dead, though.” “Yeah. What’s a guy in a wheelchair doing up on a mountain road alone in a snowstorm, even if he’s driving a handicap van?” “The Post article said he was interested in buying property up there,” I said. “The Independence Mountain range is mostly U.S. Forest Service land, but evidently there’s a big landlocked place up there he wanted.”
“Good luck,” I said, heading to the closet. “I don’t think Ned’s going to get a whole lot of traction with that idea now that Mal‑ comb is dead and a federal judge has been murdered in a professional hit. I mean, with the inauguration coming up, this murder puts us all in the hot seat.”
“All the billionaires are buying up big ranches out west. I read a piece about it in the Wall Street Journal. They’re all looking for hard assets.”
“Good to know for when I make a billion. Where are we going, by the way?”
“DC Metro headquarters. I contacted them first thing. They’re pulling together footage of Franklin’s car between the courthouse and her home.”
“How do they know the route?”
“Pearson, the driver, was running Waze on her phone, which was still active and linked by a USB cable to the car’s onboard computer when we arrived on the scene. We know exactly how they went to Alexandria.”
Quinn Davis, a Metro PD sergeant who specialized in video surveillance, met us in the lobby, and took us to a control room where a team of eight people were monitoring cameras all over the nation’s capital.
“We’ve got your car all the way into Alexandria,” Davis said. “No CCTV cameras in the judge’s neighborhood, though.”
“We’ll take what we can get,” Mahoney said.
Davis called up the footage. We watched the Cadillac sedan leave the courthouse parking annex, take a right on C Street, then another right onto Third. South of Pennsylvania Avenue, Third was blocked off for construction, and Pearson started driving side roads, angling west toward Fourteenth Street and the bridge to Northern Virginia.
When the town car was crossing Seventh on Madison Drive, Mahoney said, “Stop. Back it up. There.”
Davis froze the footage on the town car as it sat at the traffic light. You could see Agnes Pearson clearly in the streetlamp glow. “See the gray Dodge Durango, three cars back?” Mahoney said. “It’s been following her three cars back and turn for turn the entire time.”
“Good catch,” Davis said, typing. “Let’s slightly expand the time frame to include our Dodge Durango.”
A few minutes later, she stopped typing, and the footage of the Cadillac town car continued along with the Durango, which stayed three or four cars back on Fourteenth Street, across the bridge, and down the George Washington Memorial Parkway to Alexandria. But when Pearson left the parkway at West Abingdon Drive, the gray Dodge SUV drove on.
“We lose the town car just ahead here,” Davis said, and froze the picture.
I looked at the time stamp on the video and did the math in my head.
“We lost them at six twenty‑two p.m.,” I said. “It could not have taken more than three minutes for them to reach Franklin’s house. Can we get cell transmissions around this time? See if there was a call from that Dodge to the killer?”
“Maybe,” Mahoney said. “I’ll try.” His cell phone buzzed with a text. He looked at it, said, “Well, this is good.”
“What’s that?”
“Alexandria police canvassed the neighborhood first thing this morning. They got footage from several doorbell cameras. They’ve got the shooter.”
“That definitely helps,” I said.
“Have them send it here,” Davis said, and gave him her secure email address.
“Meanwhile, can you reverse the footage?” I asked. “See if we can get a good look at the Durango’s license plate?”
While Mahoney contacted the Alexandria police, Davis rolled the footage we had backward. We quickly determined by the black lettering on a reflective white background that the plate was from Maryland. But the plate lights were dim at best. All we could make out was 9‑UU.
Before Davis could check the Maryland DMV, the video from the Alexandria police came in. She loaded it and hit Play, and we were suddenly looking out at Judge Franklin’s street from a house on the corner.
At 6:24:50 p.m., a blond woman wearing a reflective vest, head‑ lamp, neck gaiter, safety glasses, and a small hydration pack ran by. Seconds later, at 6:24:58, the Cadillac rolled past the camera.
The footage cut to a second doorbell camera, more wide‑ angled than the first, positioned cattycorner to and west of Frankin’s house. At 6:25:10, the Cadillac pulled into the drive at the far right of the frame. Pearson exited the car and went around the back to open Franklin’s door. At 6:25:16, as Pearson passed the trunk, the runner appeared and cut diagonally across the street.
“Pack is off and in her left hand,” I said.
When she hit the sidewalk, Mahoney said, “She’s got a gun.”
We saw the whole thing. The killer dropped the pack beside her on the sidewalk and adopted a classic combat‑shooting stance, both hands on the suppressed pistol, squared off to the target and slightly crouched. She said something that caused the judge and her driver to turn, shot Franklin twice in the face and Pearson twice in the back as she tried to escape.
Then she calmly picked up the pack and her spent shells, put the gun with the shells in the pack, and put the pack back on. With her left hand, she pushed against her neck as if to crack it and jogged off at 6:25:28.
The footage ended.
“We don’t know where she came from or went afterward?” I asked.
“That’s all they’ve sent us so far,” Mahoney said.
“It’s phenomenal. Just wish we could see her face without the glasses, headband, and neck gaiter. Do me a favor, Sergeant Davis?”
“Sure, Dr. Cross, anything.”
“Google ‘Professor Willa Whelan, George Washington University Law School.’ ”
Davis did and up popped a picture of a pretty blond woman in her forties, very fit, who was lecturing a group of students in an amphitheater. Below was a link to a faculty bio. The sergeant clicked on it and I read that, like Emma Franklin, Whelan had attended Harvard Law School; they had been in the same class. After graduation, Whelan had done a clerkship with a judge in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, worked ten years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Little Rock, then joined the faculty of GW.
I read all the way to the bottom and smiled at the last line, which I read to the others: “ ‘And in her free time, Professor Whelan enjoys running and competitive shooting.’ ”
CHAPTER 6
Bree sat alone in the kitchen, staring at her laptop, reading more coverage of Ryan Malcomb’s death, which was not as extensive as she would have expected, given that his personal wealth was in excess of four billion dollars.
She kept picking up the remote control and changing the channel on the small TV in the kitchen from one financial‑news network to another. All of them were giving Malcomb’s death airtime, and the reports all told the same story: a brilliant young man with physical challenges who had managed to build a powerful, ultra‑secretive tech company, only to die looking for a ranch in the American West.
Bree knew Mahoney thought getting involved in Malcomb’s death would be a waste of time. But she couldn’t shake the feel‑ ing that they did not have the entire story.
After leaving DC Metro, Bree had been almost immediately hired by the Bluestone Group, an international investigative and security firm based in Arlington, Virginia. She no longer had the apparatus and clout of law enforcement behind her, but the move had given her the freedom to pursue leads wherever they took her.
She searched for real estate agents in Elko, Nevada, and took out her phone. On the second ring of Bree’s first call, a woman picked up. “High Desert Realty,” she said in a nasal voice. “Regina Everly speaking.”
“Hi, Regina. I’m Bree Stone with the Bluestone Group here in Washington, DC. We have been hired to independently look into the death of Ryan Malcomb and I am trying to find the real estate agent who signed the nondisclosure agreement with him.” There was a long pause before Everly answered. In a much quieter voice, she said, “You did not hear this from me, but that would be CeCe Butler over at Nevada Ranch and Land Company.”
“Regina, if I’m ever looking for real estate in Elko, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“Why, thank you, Ms. Stone,” she said, and hung up.
Bree found the number for the Nevada Ranch and Land Company, called, and asked for CeCe Butler. Bree was told Butler wasn’t in at the moment, so she left a vague message asking her to call back.
She figured it was probably common knowledge in Elko that Butler was the real estate agent who had helped Malcomb, which meant reporters knew. Bree feared the woman might not return the call, but to her surprise, twenty minutes later, she did.
“This is CeCe Butler,” she said. “You’re not a reporter, are you?” “No, ma’am,” Bree said. “I work for a private investigative firm out of Washington, DC. We look into stuff all over the world for our clients.”
“Who hired you to look into Malcomb’s death?”
“That, I am not at liberty to say,” Bree said, knowing she was walking a fine line between truth and fiction.
“Uh‑huh,” Butler said. “I suppose the nondisclosure agree‑ ment I signed doesn’t matter anymore, but I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t told the police already. He contacted me about a month ago. We went back and forth on a couple of ranches, big, big properties. But he liked the look of the Double T Ranch in the Independence Mountains, so we arranged to go see it.”
Bree said, “You drove up in his van?”
“No. We flew there from Elko in a helicopter he rented and piloted.”
“I didn’t know he was a helicopter pilot.”
“Had trouble getting in and out of it, but he was excellent once he was seated.”
Bree asked the woman what Malcomb had thought of the ranch. Butler said they’d flown all over it, and he’d loved certain aspects, like the high alpine meadows and timber. “But he was concerned it had been overgrazed,” Butler added.
“By the current owners? Who are they?” Bree said.
“A big beef conglomerate, own cattle ranches all over the world.”
“Why were they selling?”
“Who knows?” Butler said. “They probably couldn’t use it as a write‑down anymore. That’s what usually happens. People come in, hold the land for ten, fifteen years, run cattle hard, take all the depreciation they can, then sell at a profit to wannabe gentle‑ men ranchers like Malcomb.”
“He went back up in his van,” Bree said. “Why?”
“Honestly, I have no idea,” Butler said. “He sure did not tell me he was going up there alone. I would have told him it was a bad idea in a vehicle like his with tough weather on the horizon. Patty Rogers said it was because he was from back east. You know, oblivious to the dangers out here.”
“Who’s Patty Rogers?”
“Elko County sheriff’s deputy. She was first on the scene.” Bree thanked the real estate agent and hung up. She called the
Elko sheriff’s office and asked for Deputy Rogers.
A few minutes later, a woman with a hoarse voice said, “This is Patty Rogers. How can I help you?”
Bree identified herself as the former DC chief of detectives, named her current employer, and again implied that Bluestone had been hired to look into Ryan Malcomb’s death.
“There’s nothing to look into,” the deputy said firmly. “He was an inexperienced driver on a road that is difficult on the best of days. There was two inches of wet snow on the ground, and black ice from a freeze‑thaw we had about a week ago. It’s a tragedy, but he was in over his head and he paid for it.”
“I heard he was up there the day before in a helicopter that he flew himself.”
“True. With Mr. Malcomb’s physical issues and the kind of terrain involved, it’s not surprising that he wanted to view the site from the air. He would have been unable to see large pieces of the ranch otherwise because there was deep snow on the ground at higher elevations.”
“How long after the car crash was he down in the canyon before he was found?”
“Not long at all,” Rogers replied. “A guy from our county roads department was driving a dump truck and backhoe up there to put in a culvert, and he spotted the smoke. He radioed it in. I responded. End of story. Now I need to go. I have to be on patrol in five.”
“You’ve been so helpful, Deputy Rogers,” Bree said. “Two more questions?”
She sighed. “Go on.”
“Is there a ranch manager?”
“They’re between managers, evidently. A caretaker lives up there during the winter, but he was visiting his ailing mother in Denver.”
“And, last question, who are the ranch owners? I heard it’s a beef conglomerate.”
“Correct. O Casado Cattle Company. They’re out of Brazil.
They’ve owned the ranch a little over ten years.”
Something about that struck Bree as odd, but she couldn’t figure out what. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“My pleasure. Can I ask who your clients are?”
Bree felt she had to give the woman something, so she said the first thing that came to mind. “Insurance company.”
“Makes sense,” the deputy said. “Good to know. Have a nice day, Ms. Stone.”
“You too, Deputy Rogers.”
They hung up. Bree went over her notes of the conversation, beginning to end, and kept coming back to the ranch owners.
O Casado. A Brazilian beef conglomerate.
She couldn’t shake the sense that there was something import‑ ant there, and then she saw it. With her pen, she circled the words Brazilian beef and added three exclamation points.
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