Triple Threat - James Patterson Page 0,22
Dr. Cross. The intrusion was almost six hours ago. But here you are. At last. In the flesh.”
“Kimiko Binx?” I said, holding up my badge and ID.
“Correct,” Binx replied, walking toward me, palms held open at her sides, and studying me with great interest.
The closer she got, I noticed a device of some sort, orange, and strapped to her upper right arm. When I saw it blink, I thought bomb, and went for my gun.
“What’s that on your arm?” I demanded, the pistol out, pointed her way.
Binx threw her hands up, said, “Whoa, whoa, Detective. It’s a SPOT.”
“What?”
“A GPS transmitter. It sends my position every thirty seconds to a satellite and to a website,” she said. “I use it to track my running routes.”
She turned sideways and held up her arm so I could examine the device. It was smaller than a smartphone, commercially made, heavy-duty plastic, with the SPOT logo emblazoned across the front of it and buttons with various icons. One said SOS and another was a shoe tread. The light blinked beside the shoe.
“So it tracks you?” I said.
“Correct,” Binx said. “What do you want, Dr. Cross?”
I held the search warrant up and said, “If you could open the door.”
Binx read the warrant without comment, fished out a key, and opened the loft. It was an airy work-and-living space with a view of an alley, a hodgepodge of used furniture, and a computer workstation that featured four large screens.
She moved toward the station.
“Do not go near your computer, Ms. Binx. Do not go near anything.”
Binx got aggravated and took off the SPOT device. “You want this, too?”
“Please. Turn it off. Put it on the table there, and your phone if you’ve got it. I’d like to ask you some questions before I call for my evidence team.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked, using her thumbs to play at the buttons on the transmitter.
“Why do you worship Gary Soneji?”
Binx didn’t answer, hit one last button, and looked up at me before setting the SPOT on the table with the light no longer blinking.
“I don’t worship Gary Soneji,” she said finally. “I find Gary Soneji interesting. I find you interesting, for that matter.”
“That why you built a high-security website about Soneji and me?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting down calmly. “Other people find you two interesting also. Lots of them. It was a safe way to handle our common passion.”
“Your members cheered when they found out my partner, John Sampson, was shot,” I said.
“It’s a private forum of free expression. I didn’t approve of that.”
“Didn’t you?” I said angrily. “You provided space for sickos to plot terror in the name of a man who committed utterly heinous acts and died ten years ago.”
“He’s not dead,” Binx said flatly. “Gary Soneji will never die.”
I remembered the coffin coming up out of the ground in New Jersey, wondered how much longer the FBI’s DNA testing would take, but said nothing of the exhumation of her idol.
Instead I said, “I don’t get this, smart woman like you. Virginia Tech graduate. Write code for a living. Paid handsomely. Yet you get involved in something like this.”
“Different strokes,” she replied. “And it’s my personal business.”
“Not when it involves the shooting of a police officer. Nothing’s personal.”
“I had nothing to do with that, either,” Binx said evenly. “Nothing. I’ll take a lie detector.”
“Who did, then?” I asked.
“Gary Soneji.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe Claude Watkins?”
Binx shifted her eyes ever so slightly to look just over my right shoulder before shaking her head.
I said, “Watkins’s name is on your company’s incorporation documents.”
“Claude’s a limited partner. He lent me some start-up money.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “You know his background?”
“He had problems when he was younger,” she said.
“He is a sadist, Ms. Binx. He was convicted of carving the skin off a little girl’s fingers.”
“He was chemically imbalanced back then,” she said defiantly. “That was the diagnosis of both the state and his personal psychiatrists. He took the drugs they recommended, paid his dues, and moved on. Claude’s a painter and performance artist now. He’s brilliant.”
“I’m sure he is,” I said.
“No,” Binx insisted. “He really is. I can take you to his studio. Show you. We’ve got nothing to hide. It’s not far. He rents space in an old factory down by the Anacostia River, west bank.”
“Address?”
She shrugged. “I just know how to get there.”
I thought for a moment, said, “After my team gets here, you’ll take me?”
She nodded. “Be glad to. Can I take a shower in the meantime?