Criss Cross

Chapter 68

I thought about that for a moment and then said, “I can’t say positively that I’ve seen M, but I have absolutely seen someone who claims to be in contact with M. We call him Pseudo-Craig because he looks a heck of a lot like Kyle Craig, or what Kyle Craig might have looked like had he not had plastic surgery and had he lived.”

Chief Michaels squinted at me. “You have a picture of Pseudo-Craig?”

“We do,” Bree said and gave her laptop a command. The stills I’d gotten from the detention center appeared on the screen.

The chief said, “I can’t remember what Craig looked like.”

Bree typed and said, “I can show you the last known photo of him.”

A third picture appeared, this one taken when Craig was first processed into the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons system. Despite the prison jumpsuit and the handcuffs, he sneered arrogantly at the camera.

“That is an incredibly close resemblance,” Michaels said. “You’re sure there’s no way it could be Craig? What if he hadn’t gotten his face changed?”

“He did.”

“How do you know?”

“Craig told me. He mocked me with it right up until the time I saw him blown up.”

“Still doesn’t answer my question,” Chief Michaels said. “Did you do DNA testing on whatever was left?”

Bree said, “I was there, Chief. He had a different face, but it was Kyle Craig. We didn’t need to do any DNA testing.”

Chief Michaels said, “Well, I think we need to do it now, don’t you?”

I said, “I think we should. Just deal with it and get it done. But I’m telling you, there is zero doubt in my mind that the real Kyle Craig is dead.”

Ned Mahoney said, “I’ll submit the necessary paperwork to exhume what’s left of him, but it will take a few days.”

Bree ordered detectives back to the neighborhood where the bomb went off, all of them armed with pictures of Pseudo-Craig. The BATF promised a preliminary assessment of the bomb by day’s end, and the meeting broke up.

I was getting ready to leave with Sampson when a female FBI agent who’d been sitting behind Mahoney came up to me. She was in her early forties with short brunette hair and a no-nonsense style.

“Kim Tillis,” she said, shaking my hand. “It’s an honor to finally meet you, Dr. Cross. It turns out we have a mutual acquaintance.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“Marty Forbes,” she said. “Once upon a time he was my partner.”

“Okay?”

“I had a lot of problems with the guy, but — and this is not a popular position within the Bureau — I think Marty is innocent.”

“As a matter of fact, I do too.”

Tillis seemed both relieved and confused. “Chief Stone didn’t mention Marty.”

“Come again?”

“Marty said he’s been contacted by M multiple times.”

“It must have slipped Chief Stone’s mind.”

The veteran FBI agent raised her eyebrow and tilted her head toward her shoulder before saying, “And see? That’s the key, I think.”

“The key to what?”

Tillis twirled her finger around. “This whole thing. I tried to tell Mahoney, but he wouldn’t listen when I told him to focus on Marty’s case. Still, it’s what my gut says will lead us to M, especially with all the headless bodies on that yacht and now these heads in play.”

That took me aback for a moment, but then it made total shocking sense.