Double Cross

Chapter 35

I’D BEEN OUT to the supermaximum-security prison in Florence a couple of times since Kyle Craig had been incarcerated there. On the flight, I made a few notes about him from the papers I’d collected over the years. Even as I scribbled the notes, I was recalling certain incidents between us. At one time, Kyle had been a friend, at least I’d thought so. He’d fooled a lot of people along the way, and I have always been a terrible sucker for those who seem to lead a good life.

I wrote in my notepad:

Expects to be recognized as superior; has a grandiose sense of his own self-importance; narcissistic to an extreme.

Interpersonally exploitive; complex thinker.

Superficial charm. Can turn it on and off at will.

Sibling rivalry (probably killed one brother).

Severely abused, physically and emotionally, by his father. Or so he claims.

Duke University undergraduate and law school. Top of his class. Made it look easy.

IQ: 145-155 range.

No conscience.

Father, William Hyland Craig, former army general, chairman of two Fortune 500 companies, now deceased.

Mother, Miriam, still living in Charlotte.

Former FBI DIC, trained at Quantico, where he also taught new agents.

Highly competitive, especially with me.

I arrived in Florence, Colorado, around noon the day after Kyle’s escape, and very little seemed to have changed about the supermaximum-security prison. I spent the first hour talking with two of the guards who knew Kyle Craig particularly well; then I interviewed Warden Richard Krock. The warden seemed more shocked than any of us that Kyle, or anybody else, could have escaped from Florence. No one ever had before; no one had even come close.

“As you now know,” Krock told me, “the lawyer went back to Craig’s cell, wearing a prosthetic mask, and then hung himself there. What you don’t know is that we videotaped some of his early visits with Craig. Would you like to see them?”

I sure would.