CHAPTER 14
A FEW MINUTES LATER, the elevator opened, and I agreed with Sergeant Baker’s fashion assessment. The woman before me was slim, tall, and beautiful in tight black leather pants, purple stiletto heels, a black blouse with a diving neckline, and pearls.
My first guess was that she was a model of some sort. Or had been. She smiled and stuck out her hand. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Dr. Cross. I’m Suzanne Liu.”
I shook her hand. “You have information about the family killings, Ms. Liu?”
“Suzanne, please, and I do,” she said, staring at me evenly. “I also have three other big cases you should be looking at. Or the FBI should.”
“Three?” I said. “We’ve run the MO of the killer through databases around the world and have not—”
“These are completely different,” she said. “But I believe that the various killings are ultimately the work of one person.”
I took in her body language, her tone of voice, and her confident posture and decided she did not seem crazy. “Who?”
Liu looked around at the police officers and detectives streaming by us, going to the elevators and the bullpen. “Isn’t there somewhere quieter so I can explain fully? This is sensitive. I believe the killer is someone in the public eye—a celebrity, you could say.”
Inwardly, I groaned. It sounded nuts. But I saw the same confidence, the same even gaze and authority in her voice.
“Follow me,” I said and led her back to our desks, introduced her to Sampson, and asked him to join us in a conference room.
When I closed the door, I said, “Suzanne thinks she knows the identity of the Family Man. She believes he’s a celebrity and that he has also murdered other people.”
I could see John struggling not to roll his eyes.
Liu seemed not to notice as she took a seat and put down her sleek silver briefcase. “It just makes too much sense when I think about it and I wanted you both to know.”
Sampson growled, “Time out. Who are you exactly, ma’am, and how did you find all this information?”
She seemed a bit taken aback by John’s rough demeanor but said, “I’m a book editor in New York. You can Google me. I was recently fired from my job at Alabaster Publishing for not keeping a superstar writer in the fold. He went free agent and found a better offer, and now I’m out of a job, which has given me lots of time to think about things.”
Sampson and I traded glances. He played bad cop better than I did.
He leaned across the table. “Suzanne, can you please get to the point and tell us who you believe the killer is?”
Liu looked at her lap a moment and swallowed. Her voice was shaky when she said, “I think the killer is my former superstar writer Thomas Tull.”
Our reaction was clear and the same.
“I knew you’d be shocked,” she said.
“Thomas Tull?” I said. “The guy who writes the crime books?”
“I’ve seen him a bunch of times on television,” Sampson said. “Always comes across as a straight shooter to me.”
“To me too,” Liu replied. “And we worked together for ten years. I was his editor. You heard about the size of the deal for his next book?”
“We’ve been kind of busy to keep up on things like that,” I said.
“Well, it hasn’t been formally announced, but I know for certain that the advance was huge, and the book is about this case—your case, the Family Man case. He’s doing research here in Washington, DC, now.”
“Tull is?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” she said. “He was here in DC last night. He’s rented a town house in Georgetown. Don’t you see? He had the opportunity and the motive.”
Her voice had gotten higher, her delivery quicker, and her eyes just a little wilder.
“To kill the Elliotts?” Sampson asked, incredulous.
“Yes,” she snapped. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
“What’s the motive?” I asked.
The editor flipped open her briefcase and came out with three thick paperbacks, all by Thomas Tull: Electric, Noon in Berlin, and Doctor’s Orders. Liu tapped them with her fingernails. “Here’s your motive.”
“I’m not following you,” Sampson said.
“You’ve read them, of course.”
“Can’t say I have.”
I shook my head.
“They are all great, different, and intricate stories in their own right,” she said. “But in some ways, they are the same. There’s a series of baffling murders. Intrigue. Drama. Very little evidence. The police are getting nowhere, and suddenly the author insinuates himself into the investigation, helps the cops, gets crazy access, then writes a blockbuster.”
Sampson said, “He helped in the investigations?”
Liu lifted her chin. “Thomas’s role is debatable. Some say he was involved in framing and railroading the men who were convicted.”
CHAPTER 15
SAMPSON SEEMED AMUSED. “THOSE are some strong accusations you’re throwing around about the author whose books you edited.”
Liu sat back. “Don’t you think I’ve thought about that? I haven’t talked to a lawyer, but does that make me an accessory after the fact?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself by a mile, Suzanne,” I said, gesturing at the three paperbacks. “Why do you think he’s the real killer in these books?”
She’d obviously been thinking about this. But from the way Liu stared at the table, as if seeing long-ago events spin by, I could tell she was still confused, still not quite convinced herself.
“It helps to start at the beginning,” I said.
“Maybe it started in the Marines,” Liu said at last. “After high school, Thomas enlisted as shore police. The end of his second tour, he joined the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Did you know that?”
I shrugged. “I may have read it somewhere.”
“Anyway, while Thomas was posted at Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego, there were several prostitutes murdered in northern San Diego County. You can look it up. Anyway, the San Diego sheriff’s investigators had no clues. The killer was that good, that clean.”
Sampson checked his watch. “Where’s this going, Suzanne?”
That irritated her. “To Thomas Tull, if you’ll be patient a moment. Most of northern San Diego County borders the Marine base. The second body was found in a canyon area about a hundred yards inside the boundary of Camp Pendleton, which got Thomas involved.”
“Okay. Did he solve the murders?” I asked.
“He did indeed,” she said. “The case made him. Writing about it in his admission essay is what got him into Harvard when he finally left the Marines and NCIS.”
“How old was he at that point?” Sampson asked, picking up a pen.
Liu thought about that. “Thirty?”
“Kind of late to be starting college,” I said.
The editor said Thomas had been a mediocre student in high school with little or no desire for higher education. Eight years in the Marines changed his mind. He wanted to study writing at Harvard because he thought the prestige of having a degree from that college would help his career in the long run.