Page 91 of The Family Cross

Brundage looked from me to Hayes and back again. “Who do you think got him the job? O’Hare had a fill-in gig pumping fuel at that private airfield long before Hawk did.”

78

I ASKED SEAN BRUNDAGE to contact either me or Sampson if he heard anything about Anna Stein’s murder, then I left, motioning to Tommy Hayes to follow me down the embankment.

When we were out of earshot of Sean, Hayes said, “You’re not seeing things that are right in front of you, Dr. Cross. We should be bringing Brundage downtown and sweating him. He knows stuff he’s not telling us.”

“Maybe, but he just gave us an important lead, something he’s done several times,” I said. “Until that changes, I’m not altering my take on him.”

“If you’re a good cop, you will eventually,” Hayes said firmly. “I’ll leave it at that.”

My cell rang. Ned Mahoney.

“Ran those names,” he said by way of greeting.

“Tell me,” I said, walking away from Hayes with my finger in my ear.

“David Lear sold most of his stake last year to Delaware companies described as ‘real estate investment entities.’”

“Any overlap with Tatiana Volt or Egon Bijan?”

“Volt,” he said. “She’s the widow of Arcady Volt, a minor Russian oligarch who died about ten years ago. She moved here shortly afterward, got her green card three years ago, and maintains a very low profile, though she owns a jet and homes in Miami and Aspen. All her investments seem to be in large real estate projects.”

“Where a lot of cash moves,” I said. “What about Egon Bijan?”

“Appears to be an alias. We have nothing on him. Do you have a photograph? We could run it through facial-recognition software.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I’ll ask Bree, but I doubt it. Alejandro Rodriguez?”

“Arraignment in federal court at two.”

“How many counts?”

“Eleven so far.”

“Let me know how it goes. I’ll keep you updated on my end,” I said and hung up.

The ME and the forensics team were well into their work when I got back to the murder scene. Hayes was standing off to the side having an intense conversation with his partner.

Sampson waved me inside the yellow tape. “ME is estimating time of death around four a.m. And I found a trail of blood moving away from Anna’s body. Killer hit her from behind hard enough to break her skull and spray blood, then walked off with the weapon held low by the left side,” he said, showing me the streaks of blood on the brush and partial footprints in the mud.

I said, “Tall person wearing old sneakers with the weapon held at waist height.”

“Yep,” he agreed. “But not a heavy person. Prints are shallow. They go toward the river, so I called in divers to see if the weapon was tossed in. You find the kids?”

“Negative,” I said. Then, lowering my voice: “Hayes and Winthrop have a jones for Brundage being behind all this.”

“Any evidence of that?”

“None that I’ve seen,” I said. “Boog still not answering?”

“Tried three or four times, left a message telling him to call me ASAP, but nothing yet.”

I told him that I’d asked Bree to look for the kids at the St. Anthony’s breakfast and brought him up to speed on everything I’d learned from Locket, Brundage, and Mahoney.

“You questioning whether Hawk’s our guy on the other murders?” John asked.

“He’s going down on the federal charges even if he was on shrooms, but I think we owe it to ourselves and the victims to look at O’Hare again. Brundage says he has not been around the past few days. And Boog’s mother, Nelly, actually came back.”