Double Cross

Chapter 86

I WAS THE FIRST ONE up on the roof. Bree was next, with two very nervous EMTs right behind her. After a quick visual scan to make sure the area was clear, the EMTs scampered over to help the victim, who, we hoped, was still alive.

There was a wooden deck next to the hatch. A flat, open area of tar paper stretched beyond that, which was where the body lay. The roof was steaming in the sun. Heat vapors rose up around the body too, and I could see that the pool of blood leaking from his neck had grown considerably.

“Doesn’t look very good,” Bree groaned.

“No, it doesn’t.”

The most jarring thing of all was the mask over the victim’s face. That’s why he had looked so strange in the shot from the helicopter. It was another Richard Nixon caricature-like the one used at the George Washington Memorial Parkway murder scene.

“Why do I think this isn’t the copycat?” I shouted in Bree’s ear over the roar of helicopters swarming above us. “Or that there ever was one?”

She nodded. “I suspect you’re right.” We were thinking the same thing again. The so-called copycat murders were DCAK’s own homage to himself. And this was the moment when we were all meant to know it-with the television cameras rolling overhead. The whole world was supposed to be watching as the bastard put one over on us again.

“Is he alive?” I shouted to the nearest EMT. I hadn’t seen any movement from the victim since we’d come up on the roof.

“BP’s nonpalpable. Pulse one twenty,” he called to us. Meanwhile, his partner was radioing down for a gurney.

“Get that mask off him!” Bree said.

Easier said than done. Apparently the latex had melted onto the hot roof at the back of his head. Finally the EMTs had to cut the mask up the front.

Then, as the latex pulled away, a familiar face emerged.

Bree gasped, and I took her arm, partly for the support that I needed myself.

It was Kitz!

The FBI man who’d given us so much computer intel was ghostly pale and covered with swollen beads of sweat. His eyes were closed.

I dropped to my knees next to Brian Kitzmiller. The pads at his neck couldn’t keep up with the bleeding. It was a sad, horrendous mess.

“Kitz!” I took his hand and applied slight pressure. “It’s Alex. Help is on the way.”

His fingers fluttered in mine, barely a squeeze, but he was still with us.

His eyes finally opened, and he seemed confused at first.

When he saw it was me, though, he tried to say something. His puffy and blistered lips moved, but if he made a sound, I couldn’t hear it.

“Hang in there,” I told him. “We’ve got you now. You’re going to be okay. Hold on, Kitz.”

He tried to talk again, but nothing that I could understand came out of his mouth.

With what looked to be great effort, he blinked twice. Then his eyes rolled back in his head. The EMTs kept at it, but by the time the gurney got there, it was all over.

Kitz was gone. And he had died on camera, just the way DCAK planned it.

I turned to Bree. My mind was working overtime. “Kitz blinked twice. Two killers?”