Deadly Cross by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

52

I hate phone calls at two fifteen in the morning, especially when I’ve fallen asleep past midnight after hours of grief therapy with Sampson (in the form of work) and listening to Bree as she dealt with the emotional upheaval of quitting a seventeen-year career in law enforcement.

So I was not happy when I heard my phone ringing and even less happy when I peered groggily at the caller ID and saw SPARKMAN.

“Not a chance, Clive,” I grumbled. I sent the call to voice mail, put the phone on vibrate, and tried to go back to sleep.

He called twice more. I could hear the phone buzzing. I was about to turn it off altogether when he texted me: Damn it, Cross, pick up! Higgins was attacked!

Higgins? I thought. Kelli Ann Higgins? The dirt-monger?

I got up without waking Bree, went into the bathroom, and shut the door. My phone started buzzing in my hand. I answered, said, “Tell me.”

“She was beaten and her apartment ransacked,” Sparkman said, a tremor in his voice. “I…I found her.”

“Where is she?”

“The back of an ambulance headed to Georgetown Medical,” he said.

“She conscious?”

“In and out,” he said. “I must have just missed whoever did it. Thank God.”

“Where are you?”

“Outside her place in Foggy Bottom. I’ll text the address.”

“Police there?”

“A patrol officer.”

“Tell him to seal her apartment. Move nothing and stay where you are.”

Before he could reply, I cut the connection, slipped out of the bathroom, went into the walk-in closet, and dressed as quietly as I could. But when I came out, Bree sat up in bed and asked me what was going on.

I told her and she flipped on the light. “I’m coming with you.”

“You resigned.”

“It’s not official until noon and I want to see this.”

I knew better than to argue and waited while she got dressed. The city’s streets were virtually empty, and by a quarter to three we were parked and hustling up the sidewalk past a patrol car to a swank townhome in Foggy Bottom.

Sparkman was outside the front door, smoking a cigarette, his hands shaking, speaking to the uniformed officer on the scene. “I’m a wreck,” he said when he noticed us. “Look at me.” He broke down crying. “She always said I was so naive, that I didn’t begin to understand how cruel and ruthless DC could be. She told me she feared for her life, and I didn’t believe her. Is she still alive?”

“We don’t know,” Bree said. “Explain how you came to find her, Mr. Sparkman.”

He looked at me. I said, “Answer Chief of Detectives Stone, Clive.”

Sparkman got himself together and told her that what had started as a purely professional relationship with Higgins had changed in the past few weeks. It had been one-way up to then, Higgins teasing him, leading him on, and, when it suited her, feeding him informed dirt for his blog.

But then there’d been this one drunken night.

“She seemed embarrassed when she woke up, and she asked me to leave as discreetly as possible.

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