Cross - James Patterson [53]
He slowly turned back to me and puffed himself up. “What are you trying to start with me, asshole? Who the hell are you? She screwing you?”
“It’s nothing like that. I told you, I just came here to talk. If you know what’s good for you, you should listen.”
That’s when Stemple threw the first punch. I stepped back, and he missed, but not by much. He was definitely hot-tempered, and strong.
It was all I needed, though, maybe all I wanted. I feinted to the left, then countered with an uppercut into his gut. Some of the air rushed out of him.
But then his powerful arms latched around my middle. Stemple drove me hard against a row of lockers. The metal boomed with the impact. Pain radiated through my upper and lower back. I hoped nothing was broken already.
As soon as I could get my footing again, I bulldozed him back, and he stumbled, losing his grip. He swung again. This time, he connected hard with my jaw.
I returned the favor—a solid right to the chin—followed with a looping left hook that landed just over his eyebrow. One for me, one for Kim Stafford. Then I hit him with a right to the cheekbone.
Stemple spun halfway around; then he surprised me and went down to the locker room floor. His right eye was already starting to close.
My arms pulsed. I was ready for more of this punk, this coward. The fight never should have started, but it had, and I was disappointed when he didn’t get up again.
“Is that how it is with Kim? She pisses you off, you take a swing?”
He groaned but didn’t say anything to me.
I said, “Listen, Stemple. You want me to keep what I know to myself, not go any higher with this? Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Ever. Keep your hands off her. And your cigars. Are we clear?”
He stayed where he was, and that told me what I needed to know. I was halfway to the door when one of the other cops caught my eye. “Good for you,” he said.
Chapter 71
IF NANA HAD BEEN WORKING the Georgetown case, in her own inimitable style, she’d have said it was “simmering” about now. Sampson and I had tossed a bunch of interesting ingredients into the mix, and we’d turned the heat up high. Now it was time for some results.
I looked at the big man across a table full of crime reports spread out between us. “I’ve never seen so much information lead to so little,” I said grumpily.
“Now you know what I’ve been dealing with on this,” he said, and squeezed and unsqueezed a rubber stress ball in his fist. I was surprised the thing hadn’t burst into a million pieces by now.
“This guy is careful, seems smart enough, and he’s cruel. Got a powerful angle too—using his souvenirs to threaten these women. Making it personal. In case you hadn’t figured that out already,” I said. I was just talking it through out loud. Sometimes that helps.
My thing lately, my habit, was pacing. I’d probably covered about six miles of carpet in the past fourteen hours, all in the same Second District station conference room where we were holed up. My feet hurt some, but that’s how I kept my brain going. That and sour-apple Altoids.
We’d started that morning by cross-referencing the last four years of Uniform Crime Reports, looking for potentially related cases—reaching for anything that could start to tie this thing together. Given what we now knew about our perp, we had looked at female missing persons, rape cases, and especially murder where mutilation was involved. First for Georgetown and then for the whole DC metro area.
To keep our mood as light as possible, we’d listened to “Elliot in the Morning” on the radio, but even Elliot and Diane couldn’t brighten our moods that day, good as they are at mood-brightening.
In order to cover all our bases, we made a second pass, checking unsolved murders in general. The result was a list of potential follow-ups that was just as large as it was unpromising.
One good thing had happened today. Mena Sunderland had granted us another interview, where she went