Chapter 3
I got home around two a.m. My phone started ringing less than five hours later, at six forty.
“Cross,” I grumbled.
“It’s Kane,” the caller said. “I just got off the phone with New Jersey state police captain Alexander Barthalis.”
“I know Alexander,” I said to my chief of detectives. I got out of bed and padded into the bathroom so as not to wake Bree.
Chief Kane said, “Which is why Captain Barthalis wants you and Sampson to meet him in Batsto, New Jersey, ASAP. Got a pen?”
I shut the bathroom door. “Not handy. Text it to me. Can you tell me what—”
The line went dead. Kane had hung up on me in mid-sentence, as he often did.
As I showered and shaved, I tried not to stew over Kane’s rudeness. After I’d dressed and snuck out of my bedroom, Bree still snoozing, I saw that he’d texted me and Sampson an unfamiliar address in the Pine Barrens.
John called a minute later. “I don’t recognize it. You?”
“Never even heard of Batsto. But Alexander Barthalis requested us personally.”
Over the years, we had collaborated with Barthalis several times, including on an investigation into a serial rapist who worked the I-95 corridor between Newark and DC.
“Oh. I like Alexander. Good cop. I’ll pick you up in twenty.”
Ali, my youngest child, was already up and eating granola and bananas at the kitchen island, scrolling on his iPad while Nana Mama sat at the table drinking coffee and reading the newspaper in her nightgown and robe, her sparse gray hair looking like silk lace above her ageless face.
“Eggs?” she asked when she saw me.
“Toast and coffee will be fine,” I said. “John and I have to drive to the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.”
“Egg sandwiches for the both of you, then,” Nana Mama said, getting to her feet and starting toward the stove.
“How was Hamilton?” I asked Ali. He’d seen the play on a school trip.
He beamed at me. “Greater than great! I’d go again tomorrow.”
“I would too, actually,” I said, pouring myself coffee from the pot.
Ali said, “Did you see the Alphonso brothers getting shot, Dad? It’s on the Washington Post website.”
“It was hard to see,” I said. “But we were there. Given their history and their actions last night, they gave the SWAT team no choice.”
“World’s better off without brothers like that,” Nana Mama said, frying eggs.
“I’d rather have seen them brought to trial.”
She said nothing in reply as she made two egg sandwiches on sourdough bread, with jack cheese and her special mustard.
I heard a honk out front, so I kissed Ali and Nana Mama goodbye, grabbed the sandwiches, and hurried outside.
When I got in the car and handed Sampson his breakfast, he smiled and moaned. “Did she put the special mustard in there?”
“Twice as much as usual, just the way you like it.”
Three hours later, after devouring breakfast and stopping twice for coffee, we were in a desolate area of New Jersey on a two-lane highway flanked by dense pines. We didn’t need the exact address in the end.
North of Batsto, we saw FBI vehicles, coroner’s office vans, and New Jersey state police patrol cars parked on both sides of a rutted gravel driveway that snaked uphill and into the pines. We got out of the car and walked over to two young FBI agents standing at the end of the driveway.
“Captain Barthalis called us in,” I said, showing them my credentials. “Who’s in charge?”
“Agent Mahoney,” one of them said. “He just arrived on scene.”
Ned Mahoney’s presence meant this was a very high-profile case. It helped that he’d been my partner back when we both worked in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit.
“This way?” Sampson asked, gesturing up the driveway.
“Yeah, they’re up there.”
We climbed the steep driveway in the oppressive heat. I could hear dogs barking in the woods as we broke into a clearing and saw a cabin with a small porch and a shed, both of which looked like they were about to rot away and collapse at any minute.
Moss grew on the roof. The shake shingles had not been stained in years. Most were curling upward, and many were missing. Paint hung in spirals from the eaves.
Ned Mahoney, a short, lean man with gray-flecked sandy hair, stood near the cabin talking to Alexander Barthalis.
Mahoney nodded at us. “I was going to call you two, but Alexander beat me to it.”
Barthalis, a burly, florid-faced guy wearing gray suit pants but no jacket, a shoulder holster with a weapon, and dark Terminator sunglasses, said, “Well, who else would I call? Been a long time.”
“Five years?” I said, reaching out to shake Barthalis’s hand. “Good to see you, Captain.”
Barthalis pumped my hand. “Always Alexander to you and Detective Sampson, Dr. Cross.”
“It’s Alex, Alexander,” I said.
“And John,” Sampson said, shaking Alexander’s hand. “So, bring us up to speed. What’s going on?”
Barthalis turned all business. “Four bodies have been found by the cadaver dogs, all of them in the woods right around here. There are probably more.”
Mahoney said, “But we think you’re going to be more interested in what was found behind a false wall in the cabin’s basement. That’s what got us to bring in the dogs and the FBI.”
He and Mahoney started toward the sagging front porch; Sampson and I followed. “Who’s the owner?” I asked.
“Guy named Adam Brenner. He bought it last month when the county auctioned off the property because the owner of record—a Delaware company called MKM Holdings—was decades behind on taxes and unreachable, having gone out of business years ago,” Barthalis said.
“We know this because Mr. Brenner had a title search done on the property before making his bid. Here’s where it gets interesting. ”
He stopped on the porch. “MKM’s address was a post office box in Camden, and a long-dead lawyer was listed as treasurer. The president was given as M. K. Murphy, and his address was a different post office box in Camden.”
I frowned. “Okay?”
“Who sold M. K. Murphy the property?” Sampson asked.
Barthalis pointed at Sampson. “Smart man. The property was sold to MKM by one Gary Murphy shortly after he inherited it from his uncle.”