Double Cross

Chapter 87

BEFORE THE POLICE and TV news choppers got there, DCAK had worked his way across two sections of roof. Then he scuttled down a wobbly painting scaffold to a community parking area in the back, where he would be safe.

He was traveling heavy today, with a laptop and camera in a black satchel slung over his shoulder-but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He was jacked up, and he was definitely into this new role… and the story.

He slipped off the latex gloves, then plucked a silver lighter out of his pocket. Seconds later, the gloves were a lump of melted rubber on the cement. Let the cops try to print that and trace the puddle back to him.

Everything else about him stayed as it was: long blond hair in a ponytail, light growth of beard to match the bleached eyebrows, brown contacts, steel-rimmed glasses, and a White Sox cap turned backward on his head.

The name for today was Neil Stephens, he had decided. He was supposed to be an AP photographer based out of Chicago. The camera was a brand-new Leica. He’d blend right in here. No problems about that. Plus, he’d get to watch the whole thing come to a climax. See all the players close-up, check out their reactions under pressure. No one could have done this better, not even Kyle Craig on his best day.

When he came around from the A Street side of the development, the block on Nineteenth looked like a Barnum and Bailey Circus-in a good way. He stood on the bumper of a parked car and took several wide-angle shots-police cruisers up and down the block, ambulances, a SWAT truck in the armory parking lot, a dozen or more TV and radio stations on the scene. Hundreds of locals, it looked like. They were loitering up and down the street, trying to figure out what the hell was going down.

Did anybody know yet? Had they figured it out? DCAK was about to put their mopey little neighborhood on the map. Soon they would all start thanking God it hadn’t happened to them.

Yes, little minds would be blown sky-high tonight. He was one of the best ever now, wasn’t he? Right up there with Kyle Craig.

By the time the helicopters arrived, the police on the ground had gotten their act together enough to wrangle the masses out of harm’s way. Alex Cross was on the scene-and Bree Stone too. Actually, she was getting a little too big for her britches, he was thinking. Maybe it was time to do something about that.

That could be his next story.