Criss Cross

Chapter 75

I’m sure I’ve been to worse airports than Miami International, but I can’t remember when.

I didn’t notice the problems as much when I flew in, but trying to depart, I waited for almost an hour to clear security, and I found most of the toilets broken and the floors filthy. There weren’t enough benches or chairs, and the service people were deeply unhappy; some were downright rude. It put me in an even fouler mood than I’d been in when I left Dr. Bombay’s office. I still had no answers to any of my questions, including whether Kyle Craig had indeed had his face surgically altered to match that of a missing FBI agent.

I’d hoped Dr. Bombay could prove that my idea that Craig might still be alive was wrong. But getting off my flight home, I felt no closer to doing that.

I grabbed a cab, gave an address a block from my house, and waited until I was on the Fourteenth Street Bridge before putting the battery back in my burn phone. When I turned it on, I found eight phone messages and eight texts waiting for me.

My phone rang before I could listen to or read any of them. John Sampson.

“Where the hell are you, Alex?” he asked after I’d said hello. “You haven’t been answering your phone.”

“I needed to disconnect for a few hours.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Okay, well, whatever. Can you receive text pics wherever you are?”

“I’m almost home, and yes.”

“It’ll take only a minute. I’ll send them and call you back.” Stuck in traffic ten minutes later, I felt the phone buzz. I dug it out and glanced at the two pictures. I felt a blinding headache coming on.

Pseudo-Craig had been caught on-camera, in color, both in profile and straight on. He wore jeans, a tan leather jacket, no sunglasses, tooled cowboy boots, and a white baseball cap on backward.

My phone rang.

“You see him?”

“Couldn’t miss him. Where was he?”

“Union Station. Four o’clock yesterday afternoon. Those are only two taken from the security footage, but I’ve looked at all of it, and... it’s like he wants to be seen, Alex.”

“Okay?”

“He deliberately walked in front of at least four cameras.”

“Where’d he go after that?”

“We lost him when he dropped down the escalators to the Metro station. The cameras there were being repaired.”

Of course they were. I groaned inwardly.

“What’s he up to, Alex?”

“Let me think on it,” I said. “I’ll call you back.”

The phone buzzed the moment I hung up. A text from Ned Mahoney:

We’ve got the federal court order to exhume Craig’s remains tonight. I figure you’ll want to be there.