“Yes. He wants to know if you know a Russian mobster named Dusan Volkov.”
“Volkov? I haven’t heard that name in quite a while. But yes, I know of him. They call him Wolf because of his last name in Russian and because he’s secretive, reclusive, operates deep behind the scenes.”
“Do you know how Alex can get in touch with him?”
“Volkov?” she said doubtfully. “I don’t know. I’d have to do some reaching out, and even then …”
“All they’re looking for is corroboration of an alibi,” Bree said, and she explained.
“Tull and Volkov, huh?” Salazar said. “Strange bedfellows, Chief. I’ll make a few calls and see what I can—”
Bree heard a slight gasp.
“Gotta go, see you tomorrow.” The detective groaned. “Big kick. Big, big kick.”
CHAPTER 80
AROUND THREE THAT AFTERNOON and finally armed with warrants, Sampson, Mahoney, and I donned blue booties, hairnets, and latex gloves while an FBI criminalist picked the lock to Thomas Tull’s Georgetown rental.
The green door swung open. After the criminalist photographed the narrow front hallway, Mahoney led us inside.
The writer had done little to make the lower floor of the luxury town house his own. The furniture in the living area was all steel and black leather. There were no televisions and no pictures whatsoever.
The kitchen had top-of-the-line major appliances but was otherwise sparsely outfitted: a cheap toaster, a cheap coffeemaker, basic cooking utensils, plates, pots, and pans.
“Looks like someone bought it in one swoop at Walmart,” Sampson said.
The fridge was empty save for a can of coffee, a carton of half-and-half, and leftover takeout Chinese food.
“Place is spotless,” Mahoney said.
“I wonder how much time he spends here,” Sampson said.
“You think he has another place in town?”
“There could be another local one, right? I mean, he’s loaded. Big bestselling author.”
“If he has somewhere local, we’ll find it,” I said, climbing the stairs to the second floor.
A door on the right revealed the master suite. The king-size bed was made military taut. Tull’s clothes were crisply folded in an armoire, his shoes set in tight order below. Books were stacked on both sides of the bed.
Sampson and Mahoney went through a locker in one corner. I went through the bathroom and into the second bedroom, which was the writer’s office.
It wasn’t what I’d anticipated. Or was it?
I guess I’d expected a rat’s nest, a disorganized mess that only Tull could make sense of. Or maybe an elaborate setup with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a heavy old writing desk.
Instead, the office was spartan, ordered, and efficient, a former Marine’s place of work: a ladderback chair with a cushion, a long folding table, an iMac, a MacBook Pro laptop, a smaller folding table supporting a printer, and two three-drawer filing cabinets. All of it faced the far long wall of the room, which had been transformed into a visual case control, with sections of each set of victims in the Family Man’s killing spree.
The murders were arranged in order of occurrence from left to right. The Hodgeses, the Landaus, the Carpenters, the Elliotts, and the Kanes.
Sampson and Mahoney found me studying the evidence that Tull had considered worthy of inclusion on the wall.
“Anything jump out at you?” Ned asked, going to the laptop and lifting the lid.
“Yes,” I said, waving at the right side of the wall. “He left room for more cases. He’s got strips of paper cut there on the desk just waiting for a name.”
Mahoney gestured at a sticky note on the wall above the desk. “Laptop password: FamilyMan.”
“That right?” Sampson said, coming over.
“He’s got multiple applications and files open here,” Mahoney said and started working the trackpad.
I left the wall for the moment and came around behind them; I saw a Microsoft Word document labeled family man notes. Before I could scan it, Mahoney clicked on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
We looked at the list of what appeared to be his monthly budget items: Car payments. Mortgage on a house in Maine. Credit cards.
Something odd caught my eye: Cold/Cold $57. I pointed. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know, but he’s got an Arlington storage unit,” Sampson said, gesturing to the last item on the list.
“Costs three fifty a month so it’s got to be a good size,” I said while Mahoney clicked on the Google Earth icon at the bottom of the screen.
We gaped when the app came up and showed that Tull had been searching in the Lake Barcroft area.
CHAPTER 81
AFTER TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS WITH our phones of the Google Earth search and the budget spreadsheet with the name and address of the storage unit, we left the computers to the FBI criminalists, who bagged them for transport to Quantico for further analysis. We searched the rest of the house and came up with nothing.
Mahoney opted to stay on the scene when Sampson and I announced our intention to go see what Tull had hidden in Arlington.
“That storage facility is on the way to Lake Barcroft,” Sampson said.
“It is,” I said.
Indeed, Greenbriar Storage turned out to be just a short detour off the most direct route to Lake Barcroft and the Allison family home. Edna Martinez, the fifty-something owner, was working in the office when we entered. She remembered Thomas Tull.
“I’m in two book clubs,” she said and cackled. “How could I not know him?”
“Did you hear he’s under arrest?” Sampson asked.
Ms. Martinez’s shock was complete. “Thomas Tull?”
“In connection with the Family Man murders,” I said. “We need to get into his storage unit, please.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Do you have a fax number? We’ll get the warrant for his town house amended to add the storage unit.”
The owner of the facility became more helpful, giving us her fax number and telling us she’d call the woman who cut the locks off her units.
By the time we watched the amended warrant print out on her fax machine, a forty-something woman named Lenora Sands had arrived with a special carbide saw designed to cut the curved locks that Martinez demanded clients use on each unit.
Sands led us to unit 1204 E, a six-by-ten-foot space with a red roll-down door and a stout lock that the carbide tool cut like it was butter. It fell at our feet. Sands bent down to pick it up, but I stopped her.
“Could be evidence,” I said.
“Oh?” she said.
“You never know,” Sampson said, putting it into a bag.
The locksmith seemed interested in seeing what we found, but we politely asked her to leave while we did our work. “Of course,” she said and walked off.
I waited until she’d rounded the corner before squatting and rolling up the door. After taking a long look at the room, I turned to John and said, “I’ll go get her.”
Luckily, I caught up to Sands in the parking lot. “Lenora, have you ever cracked a safe?”
She closed one eye, said, “Make?”
“I think it said Liberty.”
“Helps. Tumbler?”