Cross Fire

Chapter 56

SAMPSON KNEW I was usually awake by five, or even earlier, but it wouldn’t have made a difference today. I could tell he was already at work from the street sounds in the background and the tension in his voice.

“I need a favor, Alex. Maybe a big one.”

Instinctively, I started eating my eggs a little faster while Nana gave me the hairy eyeball. Very early and very late calls in our house are never a good thing.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m listening. Nana is watching me listen. I can’t tell if her evil eye is for you, me, or both of us.”

“Oh, it’s for both of you,” Nana said in a low voice that could have been mistaken for a growl.

“We’ve got a homicide in Franklin Square. A John Doe. It looks a lot like that freaky one I had before, over in Washington Circle?”

My fork stopped in midair. “With the numbers?”

“That’s the one. Any chance I can get you over here for a consult before things heat up too much?”

“I’m on my way.”

John and I never keep track of who owes how many favors to who. Our unwritten rule is, if you need me, I’m there. But make sure you need me.

A few minutes later, I was knotting my tie on the way down the back stairs toward the garage. It was practically still dark out, but light enough to show a mass of slate-gray nothingness overhead – cloudy with a chance of a shit storm.

Based on what I remembered of Sampson’s earlier case, this was exactly the kind of thing MPD could not afford to be investigating right now.

Months ago, a young homeless man had been found beaten to death, with a series of numbers carved carefully across his forehead. It probably would have hit every headline inside the Beltway – if the poor man hadn’t been a street junkie. Even at the department, the case hadn’t generated much heat, which wasn’t exactly fair, but you could drive yourself crazy over “fair” in this capital city of ours.

Now it had happened again. This was a whole new ball game. With the sniper case raging, MPD brass were going to have a hair trigger on anything even remotely sensitive. They’d want to flip this thing up to Major Case Squad before the morning was out.

I figured that was why John called. If the case got transferred to my unit, I could say I was already consulting on it, ask to take the lead, and then put Sampson back in charge. Just our version of creative accounting, and God knows it wouldn’t have been the first time.

Chapter 57

THE NUMBERS KILLER – Jesus God – not now.

When I got to Franklin Square, the entrances were already cordoned off. Additional units were parked on the longer K and I Street sides of the rectangular park, although the action seemed to be just off of Thirteenth, where Sampson was right now waving me over.

“Sugar,” he said when I came up close to him, “you’re a lifesaver. I know the timing sucks.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

Two crime-scene techs in blue Windbreakers were working inside the tape line, along with a medical examiner whom I easily recognized from behind.

Porter Henning’s unofficial nickname is “Portly,” and, widthwise, he makes “Man Mountain” Sampson look practically dainty. I’ve never been sure how Porter squeezes into some of those tighter crime scenes, but he’s also one of the most insightful MEs I’ve worked with.

“Alex Cross. Gracing us with your presence,” he said as I walked up.

“Blame this guy.” I thumbed at Sampson but then stopped short when I saw the victim.

People say the extreme stuff is my specialty, which it kind of is, but there is no getting used to human mutilation. The victim had been left faceup in a clump of bushes. The multiple layers of dirty clothes marked him as homeless, maybe even someone who slept right there in the park. And while there were signs of a severe beating, it was the numbers carved into his forehead that made the biggest impression. As in the previous murder, it was almost too bizarre.

2^30402457–1

“Are those the same numbers as the last time?” I asked.

“Similar,” Sampson told me, “but no, not the same.”

“And we don’t know who the victim is?”

John shook his head. “I’ve got guys asking around, but most of the bench crashers made themselves scarce as soon as we showed up. It’s not exactly a trust fest around here, you know?”

I knew, I knew. This was part of what made homeless deaths so hard to trace.

“There’s also the shelter just a few blocks up on Thirteenth Street,” John went on. “I’m going to head up there after this, see if anyone knows anything about this man.”

The scene itself was hard to interpret. There were fresh footprints in the dirt, flat soles as opposed to boots or sneakers. Also, some kind of grooved tracks, maybe a shopping cart, but that could have been completely unrelated. Homeless folks rolled through here all day, every day. All night, too.

“What else?” I asked. “Porter? You find out anything yet?”

“Yeah. Found out I’m not getting any younger. Other than that, I’d say cause of death is tension pneumothorax, although the first strikes were probably here, here, and here.”

He pointed at the crushed side of the dead man’s head, where a pink ooze had filled his ear. “Basal skull fracture, jawbone, zygomatic arch, the whole frickin’ works. If there’s any silver lining, the poor guy was probably out cold when it happened. There’s track marks all over him.”

“All just like the last time,” Sampson said. “Has to be the same perp.”

“What about the cutting on the forehead?” It was the cleanest knife work I’d ever seen. The digits were easily readable, the cuts shallow and precise. “Any initial thoughts about the cuts, Porter?”

“This is nothing,” he said. “Check out the real masterpiece.”

He reached down and rolled the young man onto his side, then lifted up the back of his shirt.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

The math equation covered the whole area from his waistband to his shoulder blades. I’d never seen anything like it. Not in this context anyway. Sampson motioned the scene photographer over to get a shot.

“This is new,” John said. “The last numbers were just on the face. Makes me wonder if our guy’s been practicing. Maybe other bodies we haven’t found.”

“Well, he definitely wanted you to see this one,” Porter told us. “That’s the other thing. There’s not near enough blood here for the amount of blunt force trauma. Someone pounded this kid, then brought him here, and then did the fancy knife work.”

“Doo-doo, doo-doo.” The photographer let out a snatch of The Twilight Zone theme before Sampson stared him down. “Sorry, man, but… damn, I’m glad I don’t have your jobs today.”

Him and everyone else.

“So the question is, why bring him here?” Sampson said. “What’s he trying to say to us? To whoever?”

Porter shrugged. “Anyone speak math?”

“I know a prof at Howard,” I said. “Sara Wilson. You remember her?” John nodded, still staring down at those numbers. “I’ll give her a call if you want me to. Maybe we can head up there this afternoon.”

“I’d appreciate it, that’d be good.”

So much for my quick consult. I had no time for this, but God help me, now that I’d seen the damage this perp was capable of, I wanted a piece of him.

Chapter 58

I’D KNOWN SARA WILSON for more than twenty years. She and my first wife, Maria, were freshman roommates at Georgetown and remained good friends until Maria’s death. Now it was just Christmas cards and the occasional chance meeting between us, but Sara hugged me hello when she saw me and still remembered Sampson by name – first and last.

Her tiny cell of an office was in the unimaginatively named Academic Support Building B on the Howard campus. It was crammed with bookshelves to the ceiling, a big sloppy desk just like mine, and a huge whiteboard covered in mathspeak, in different colors of dry-erase marker.

Sampson took the windowsill, and I sat down in the lone guest chair.

“I know you’ve got exams coming up,” I said. “Thanks for seeing us.”

“I’m happy to help, Alex. If I can help?” She tipped a pair of rimless specs off her forehead and looked down at the page I’d just handed her. It had transcripts of the numbers and equations that were found on the victims. We also had crime-scene photos with us, but there was no reason to share the gory details if we didn’t have to.

As soon as she looked at the page, Sara pointed at the more complicated of the figures.

“This is Riemann’s zeta function,” she said. It was the one we’d seen that morning on John Doe’s back. “It’s theoretical mathematics. Does this really have something to do with one of your cases?”

Sampson nodded. “Without going into too much detail, we’re wondering why this might be on someone’s mind. Maybe obsessively.”

“It’s on a lot of people’s minds, including mine,” she said. “Zeta’s the core of Riemann’s hypothesis, which is arguably the biggest unsolved problem in mathematics today. In the year two thousand, the Clay Institute offered a million dollars to anyone who could prove it.”

“Sorry, prove what?” I said. “You’re talking to a couple of high school algebra cutups here.”

Sara sat up straighter, getting into it now. “Basically, it’s about describing the frequency and distribution of all prime numbers to infinity, which is why it’s so difficult. The hypothesis has been checked against the first one and a half billion instances, but then you have to ask yourself – what’s one and a half billion compared to infinity?”

“Exactly what I was about to ask myself,” Sampson said, straight-faced.

Sara laughed. She looked almost exactly the same as she did back when we were all pooling our pocket change for pitchers of beer. The same quick smile, the same long hair flowing down her back.

“How about the other two sets of numbers?” I asked. These were the ones that had been carved into the victims’ foreheads.

Sara glanced down for a second, then turned to her laptop and googled them from memory.

“Yeah, right here. I thought so. Mersenne forty-two and forty-three. Two of the biggest known prime numbers to date.”

I scribbled some of this down while she spoke, not even sure what I was writing. “Okay, next question,” I said. “So what?”

“So what?”

“Let’s say Riemann’s hypothesis gets proved. What happens then? Why does anyone care?”

Sara weighed the questions before she answered. “There’s two things, I suppose. Certainly, there are some practical applications. Encryption could be revolutionized with something like this. Writing and breaking code would be a whole new game, so whoever you’re chasing might have that in mind.”

“And number two?” I asked.

She shrugged. “The whole because-it’s-there aspect. It’s a theoretical Mount Everest – the difference being that people have actually been to the top of Everest. Nobody’s ever done this before. Riemann himself had a nervous breakdown, and that guy John Nash from A Beautiful Mind? He was obsessed with it.”

Sara leaned forward in her chair and held up the page of numbers so we could see them. “Let’s put it this way,” she said. “If you’re looking for something that could really drive a mathematician crazy, this is as good a place to start as any. Are you, Alex? Looking for a crazy mathematician?”

Chapter 59

MITCH AND DENNY left DC in the old white Suburban before the sun had even come up that morning, with Denny at the wheel as always. He’d handed Mitch some easily digestible bullshit the day before, all about reconnecting with his people now that he was a “real man,” and Mitch had gobbled it up, even taken it to heart.

In truth, the less Mitch knew about the reason for this little road trip, the better.

It was about five hours to Johnsonburg, PA, or, as Denny thought of it when they got there, Johnsonburg, PU. The paper mills here put up the same sour stench as the ones he’d grown up around, on the Androscoggin. It was an unexpected little reminder of his own white-trash roots, the ones he’d ripped out of the ground twenty years ago. He’d been around the world more than once since then, and this small town was as close to going home again as he ever cared to get.

“What if she don’t want to talk to me, Denny?” Mitch asked for about the eighty-fifth time that morning. The closer they got, the faster his knee jacked up and down, and he clutched at the stuffed yellow monkey on his lap like he wanted to strangle the damn thing. It already had a tear in its fur where Mitch had pulled off the security tag at a Target in Altoona, right before he’d stuck it under his jacket.

“Just try to relax, Mitchie. If she don’t want you here, it’s her loss. You’re an American hero, man. Don’t ever forget that. You are a bona fide hero.”

They came to a stop outside a bleak little brick duplex on a block of bleak little brick duplexes. The front lawn looked like the place where old toys went to die, and there was a rusty blue Escort heaped in the driveway.

“Seems pretty nice,” Denny said with a frown. “Let’s go see if someone’s home.”

Chapter 60

SOMEONE SURE WAS. You could hear the music coming right through the front door, some kind of Beyonce shit or something like that. It took a couple of rounds of knocking before the volume finally went down.

A second later, the door opened.

Alicia Taylor was prettier than her surveillance photo, by far. Denny wondered for a second how Mitch had ever bagged her in the first place, but then Alicia saw who it was on her stoop, and her face got ugly and nasty real quick. She stayed behind the screen door.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said by way of hello.

“Hey, Alicia.” Mitch’s voice was husky with fear. He seemed a little flustered, and he held up the stuffed monkey. “I, uh… brought a present.”

Behind Alicia, a little waist-high girl was giving them wide eyes from under her braided and beaded bangs. She smiled when she saw the toy, but those lights went out as soon as her mother spoke again.

“Destiny, go to your room.”

“Who is that, Momma?”

“No questions, baby. Just do as I say. Right now. Go ahead.”

Once the girl had disappeared back into the duplex, Denny figured it was time to insert himself into the mix. “How you doing?” he said, all friendly-like. “I’m Mitch’s buddy and expert driver, but you can call me Denny.”

Her eyes flitted his way just long enough to throw a few poison darts. “Mister, I don’t have to call you shit,” she said, and then turned back to Mitch. “And I asked you what the hell you’re doing here. I don’t want you around here. Neither does Destiny.”

“Go ahead, man,” Denny said, and nudged him in the shoulder.

Mitch pulled a small envelope out of his pocket. “It ain’t much, but here.” Inside was a twenty, two fives, and fifty rumpled singles. He tried to hand it to her right through the broken screen, but she shoved it back at him.

“Oh, hell no! You think that little envelope gon’ make you a daddy?” Her voice dropped. “You’re just an old mistake, Mitch, that’s all. Far as Destiny’s concerned, her daddy is dead, and that’s how we gon’ keep it. Now, are you two getting off my property – or am I calling the police?”

Mitch’s round face looked about as long as it could get.

“At least take this,” he said.

He opened the screen door, and when she stepped back fast, he dropped the stuffed monkey on the floor at her feet. It was pathetic to watch. Besides, Denny had seen all he needed to.

“Alrighty, then,” he said, “we got a long drive back to Cleveland, so we’ll just be on our way to O-hi-o. Sorry to bother you, ma’am. I guess this little visit wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

“You think?” she said, and slammed the door in both their faces.

On the way down the walk, Mitch looked like he wanted to cry.

“It sucks, Denny. She’d be proud if she knew what we were doing. I wanted to tell her so bad–”

“But you didn’t.” Denny threw an arm around his shoulder and spoke close. “You stuck to the mission, Mitchie, and that’s what counts. Now come on – let’s hit ourselves a Taco Bell on the way out of town.”

While he walked around to the driver’s side of the car, Denny reached inside his jacket and flipped the safety on the Walther nine millimeter holstered there. As it turned out, Mitch was more of a hero than he’d ever get to know. He’d just saved his own daughter’s life.

Alicia may have been fairly cunty, but she was clueless; and there was no way in hell Denny was going to shoot a five-year-old girl who didn’t even know who Mitch was. The whole point of the assignment was threat assessment, and there was no threat here.

If the man back in DC didn’t like it, he could find himself another contractor.

Chapter 61

ACTUALLY, IT HAD been kind of a fun day – relaxing and surprising, especially Mitch’s pretty ex-wife. It was just after dark when they reached Arlington that night. Mitch had spent most of the trip watching the side of the road, sighing and tossing around like someone who couldn’t sleep.

But now, as they came up on the Roosevelt Bridge, he sat bolt upright, looking straight ahead through the windshield.

“What the hell is that, Denny?”

Cars were backed up on the highway in either direction. There were cruisers with lights flashing on both sides, and uniformed officers out on the road. It wasn’t just a traffic jam, and it didn’t look like an accident either.

“Traffic checkpoint,” Denny said, realizing what it was.

The city had been instituting them for a few years now, but only in the really violent neighborhoods. He’d never seen anything like this before.

“Something big must have happened. Like, really big.”

“I don’t like this, Denny.” Mitch’s knee started bouncing. “Ain’t they been looking for a Suburban since we made that hit in Woodley Park?”

“Yeah, but a dark-blue or black one. Besides, they’re stopping everyone, see? Hell, I wish we had some papers to sell in this traffic,” Denny said, as upbeat as he could make it. “Might earn back some of that gas money we spent today.”

Mitch wasn’t buying it. He stayed all hunched down and tense as they crawled along toward the head of the line.

Then, out of the blue, Mitch said, “Where did we get the gas money, Denny? And that envelope for Alicia? I don’t get how we’re paying for this.”

Denny gritted his teeth. The one thing Mitch could usually be counted on for was a distinct lack of probing questions.

“You know what happened to that curious cat, don’t you, Mitchie? D-E-D, dead,” he said. “You just focus on the big stuff and let me handle the rest. Including this.”

They were coming up on the checkpoint now, and an NBA-size officer motioned them forward.

“License and registration, please.”

Denny reached into the glove compartment and handed them over without a blink. Here’s where it paid to work for the right people. “Denny Humboldt” had a record as clean as a show cat’s ass – even that parking ticket would be history by now.

“What’s going on, Officer?” he asked. “It looks big.”

The cop answered with a question, while his eyes played over the piles of junk in the backseat. “Where are you two coming from?”

“Johnsonburg, PA,” Denny said. “Nowhere you ever want to go, by the way. The place is a hole.”

“How long have you been gone?”

“Just since this morning. Day trip. So I guess you can’t tell me anything, huh?”

“That’s right.” The officer handed him back his items and motioned them on. “Move along, please.”

As they pulled away, Mitch pried his hands off his knee and heaved a big sigh. “That was too damn close,” he said. “That sonofabitch knew something.”

“Not at all, Mitchie,” Denny told him. “Not at all. He’s like everybody else – none of ’em have a clue, not a clue.”

It didn’t take them long to find some coverage on the radio. Word was coming in fast that the DC Patriot sniper had struck again. An unnamed police officer had been gunned down from a distance, right there on the DC side of the Potomac.

Sure enough, as they crossed the Roosevelt Bridge into the city, they could see a whole mass of law enforcement parked along Rock Creek Parkway off to the left. Denny hooted out loud. “Check out the piggy convention! Looks like Christmas came early this year.”

“What are you talking about, Denny?” Mitch still looked a little glazed from the checkpoint stop.

“The dead cop, man. Aren’t you listening?” Denny said. “It’s all going down exactly like we hoped. We just bagged ourselves a goddamn copycat!”

Chapter 62

NELSON TAMBOUR HAD been shot just before dusk, on a grassy strip of no-man’s-land between Rock Creek Parkway and the river. The highway was already shut down by the time I got there, all the way from K Street to the Kennedy Center. I parked as close as I could and walked the rest of the way in.

Tambour had been a detective with NSID, the Narcotics and Special Investigations Division. I didn’t know him personally, but that didn’t make this incident any less of a nightmare. MPD had just lost one of its own, and horribly so. Detective Tambour had been found with his skull blown half open – a large-caliber bullet had passed right through his head.

It was dark now, but several klieg lights had the scene lit up like the inside of a football stadium. Two tents had been erected off to the side, one as a command center, and another for evidence collection out of sight of the pesky news choppers circling overhead.

We also had Harbor Patrol on the water, keeping pleasure craft at a good distance from the shore. And command staff were everywhere.

When I saw Chief Perkins, he motioned me right over. He was huddled off to the side with the assistant chiefs from NSID and Investigative Services, as well as with a woman I didn’t recognize.

“Alex, this is Penny Ziegler from IAD,” he said, and the knot in my stomach tightened right up. What is Internal Affairs doing down here?

“Something I should know about?” I said.

“There is,” Ziegler told me. Her face was just as creased with tension as ours were. Murdered cops tend to make everyone wiggy.

“Detective Tambour’s been on no-contact status for the last month,” she said. “We were going to be filing criminal charges against him later this week.”

“What charges?” I said.

She looked to Perkins for a nod before she went on. “Over the last two years, Tambour oversaw an undercover operation at three of the big housing projects in Anacostia. He’s been skimming half of everything they’ve seized, mostly PCP, coke, and Ecstasy. He was reselling it through a network of street dealers in Maryland and Virginia.”

“He may have been on a drop right here,” Perkins added with a shake of his head. “They found a key of coke in his trunk.”

Four words flashed through my mind: Foxes in the henhouse.

Suddenly Tambour was a lot more in line with the snipers’ victim profile than he’d been a minute ago.

At the same time, though, he was an unknown to the general public. He hadn’t been in the headlines like the others, at least not yet, and that was a difference.

An important one? I couldn’t be sure, but I also couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe something was off here.

“I want to impose radio silence on anything to do with the investigation,” I told Perkins. “Whoever made this hit obviously has some kind of inside line.”

“Agreed,” he said. “And, Alex?” Perkins put a hand on my arm as I turned to go. His eyes looked strained. Maybe even a little desperate. “Work the hell out of this,” he told me. “This is close to getting out of control.”

If this hit wasn’t by our sniper team, it already was out of control.

Chapter 63

FBI PERSONNEL STARTED showing up right after I did. That was definitely a double-edged sword for me. Their Evidence Response Teams bring some of the best toys in the business – but it also meant Max Siegel wouldn’t be far behind.

In fact, we bumped heads over Nelson Tambour’s body.

“That’s a hell of an exit wound,” Siegel said, coming into my airspace with his usual sensitivity. “I heard the guy was dirty. Is it true? I’ll find out anyway.”

I ignored the question and answered the one he should have been asking. “It was definitely long-range,” I said. “There’s no stippling at all. And, given the body position, the shots probably had to come from over there.”

Directly across from us, maybe 250 yards offshore, we could see flashlight beams crisscrossing the underbrush on Roosevelt Island. We had two teams over there, scouring for shells, suspicious footprints, anything.

“You said shots, plural?” Siegel asked.

“That’s right.” I pointed at the slope behind the spot where Tambour had gone down. Four yellow flags were stuck into the ground, one for each of the slugs that had been recovered so far.

“Three misses and one hit,” I said with a sigh. “I’m not sure we’re looking at the same gunmen here.”

Siegel peered back and forth between the river and Tambour’s body several times. “Maybe they were firing from a boat of some kind. There’s a decent chop out there today. Could explain the multiple shots, the misses.”

“There’s no cover on the open water,” I said, “and all kinds of risk for an eyewitness. Besides, it’s always been one shot, one kill with these guys. They don’t miss.”

“The sniper’s motto,” Siegel said. “What about it?”

“I think it’s a point of pride for them. If nothing else, the work’s been immaculate. Up until now.”

“So it’s more likely that we have another wackjob with a high-powered sniper rifle running around out there?”

I could just hear the disdain rising in his voice. Here we go again.

“Isn’t that exactly the contingency your office has been working on?” I said. “That’s what Patel told me – at the meeting you blew off.”

“I see.” Siegel rocked back on his heels. “So are you working up any theories of your own these days – or just going by what you overhear at the office?”

My guess was that he felt threatened by me, and it helped him if he could goad me into some kind of unprofessional behavior. I’d already put a toe in, but I pulled back now and focused on the ground around Tambour’s body instead.

When it became clear I wasn’t going to respond, he tried again from a different angle.

“You know, it’s possible these guys are just that good,” he said casually. “Terrorism One Oh One, right? Best way to stay ahead of the police is to keep everything unpredictable. That’s a valid perspective on this, right?”

“I’m not ruling anything out,” I said without turning around.

“That’s good,” he said. “It’s good that you learn from your mistakes. I mean, isn’t that what tripped you up with Kyle Craig?”

Now I did look up.

“He basically just outthought you, right? Just kept changing up his game? I mean – that’s what he’s still doing, isn’t it? Even today?” Siegel shrugged. “Or am I getting that wrong, too?”

“You know what, Max? Just – stop talking.” I stood up to face him now, getting closer than I needed to be. I wasn’t trying to “manage” Siegel anymore. I just needed to say what I was going to say.

“Whatever issues these are that you need to work through, I can recommend some professionals. But in the meantime, if you haven’t noticed, we lost an officer here today. Show a little respect.”

I guess I’d given him the rise he was looking for. Siegel took a step back, but still kept that obnoxious grin on his face. It was as if he always had some kind of private joke going on.

“Fair enough,” he said, and motioned over his shoulder. “I’ll just be over here if you need me.”

“I won’t need you,” I said, and went right back to work.

Chapter 64

BY NINE O’CLOCK, I’d had an emergency phone call with the Bureau Directorate and the Field Intelligence Group; a briefing with the mayor’s office; and a separate report-in with my own team from MPD, who were all on the scene by now.

The important question at this point was whether we were dealing with the Patriot snipers or someone else. Ballistics was the fastest way to prove a connection, if there was one, and Cailin Jerger from the FBI lab in Quantico was brought out by chopper for a consult.

It was an amazing sight, watching the black Bell helicopter come in for a landing right there on the deserted parkway.

I ran out to greet the chopper and walk Jerger back in.

She was in jeans and a hooded Quantico sweatshirt; they probably pulled her right out of her living room. You’d never guess to look at this small, unassuming woman that she knew more about firearms examination than anyone in a three-state radius.

When I showed her where Tambour had gone down, and the spread on the four shots, she looked back at me with a knowing glance. I didn’t respond at all, not a word. I wanted Jerger to draw her own, unfettered conclusions.

At the evidence tent, the whole world was waiting for us. Outside, there was a crowd of cops and agents, including most of Tambour’s unit from NSID. Inside, we found Chief Perkins, Jim Heekin from the Directorate, Max Siegel, various assistant chiefs from MPD and assistant SACs from the Bureau, and a few reps from ATF. Jerger looked around at the sea of expectant faces and then dove right in as if she and I were the only ones there.

Each of the four slugs was bagged separately on a long folding table. Three of them were in relatively good shape; the fourth was badly mangled, for obvious reasons.

“Well, they’re definitely rifle shot,” Jerger said right away. “But these weren’t fired from an M110 like the previous incidents.”

She took a pair of tongs off the table and plucked one of the good slugs from its bag. Then she used a magnifier from her pocket to look at the base.

“Yeah, I thought so, .338,” she said. “And see this ‘L’ stamped here? That tells me it’s an original Lapua Magnum. They were developed specifically for long-range sniping.”

“Can you get any kind of weapon report off of these?” I asked her.

She shrugged one shoulder. “Depends. I’ll look for rifling patterns back at the lab, but I have to tell you ahead of time – these puppies have some pretty tough jackets on them. Striations are going to be minimal.”

“How about first impressions?” I asked. “We’re really in a jam here.”

Jerger took a deep breath. I don’t think she liked speculating. Her job was all about precision.

“Well, outside of equipment failure, I don’t know what the motivation would be for coming off an M110 and using something else.”

She held up another evidence bag and looked at it. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. This is damn fine ammo, but in terms of long-range shooting, the 110’s a Rolls-Royce, and everything else is just… well, everything else.”

“So you think this was a different gunman?” Chief Perkins asked, probably leading her more than he should.

“I’m saying it would be kind of strange if it wasn’t, that’s all. I don’t know the shooter’s motivations. As for the weapon itself, I can tell you that some possibilities are more likely than others.”

“Such as?” I asked.

She rattled them right off. “M24, Remington 700, TRG-42, PGM 338. Those are some of the most common applications, militarily anyway.” Then she looked right at me, with a grim kind of smile on her face. “There’s also the Bor. Ever heard of it?”

“Should I have?” I said.

“Not necessarily,” she said, and continued to stare at me. “Just that it would be a really weird coincidence. The .338 variant on that one’s called an Alex Rifle.”

Chapter 65

KYLE CRAIG WORE a ridiculous grin on his face – on Max Siegel’s face – all the way home to Second Street. He couldn’t help himself. In his entire career and all of its incarnations, he’d never had such a good time as tonight.

Big kudos went to Agent Jerger for picking up on the Alex Rifle reference, and so quickly!

Maybe the Bureau still had a few sharp knives in the drawer after all. These arcane little clues of his had become something of a hallmark, but to actually be there when one of them was discovered? A unique thrill, to say the least. A total blast.

But also just a prelude. This little drama down by the river was the “one” in a one-two punch that nobody was going to see coming – and no one would feel more than Alex when it landed.

Brace yourself, my friend. It’s on the way!

Kyle checked his watch as he closed the front door behind him. It was only twelve thirty, and the sun didn’t come up for hours. There was still plenty of time for what he had to get done.

Chapter 66

FIRST THINGS FIRST, he unlocked the basement door and let himself down the narrow stairs to the cinder-block-walled workshop underneath the house. It wasn’t exactly his father’s old walnut-paneled den, with the twelve-foot fireplace and rolling ladders, but it did the trick and would work just as well. A big bulkhead door at the back had allowed him to bring down a new chest freezer the other day, and he went to it now.

Agent Patel was sleeping peacefully inside. She still looked basically like herself, but she’d grown quite stiff, which seemed fitting. The girl had been pretty much the same way when she was alive.

“Ready for a change of scenery, my dear?”

He lifted her out and laid her on a sheet of four-millimeter painter’s plastic to loosen up while he went about his other business. It reminded him of his not so dear but very much departed mother, Miriam – the way she used to leave a frozen tray of pork chops or a flank steak on the counter in the morning so it would be ready to cook up for dinner that night. He couldn’t say the old girl never taught him anything useful.

Next, he tackled the walls. Dozens of new photos were taped up alongside the old, the result of several mind-numbing days of additional surveillance on Cross’s movements. Not the most stimulating part of the process so far, but it had certainly paid off.

Here were Alex Cross and John Sampson, working the scene of that wonderfully twisted new case in Franklin Square.

And there was Alex with his son Ali, and the mother, Christine, who seemed to have brought quite a bit of Sturm und Drang of her own to the table.

It all came down now – every picture, every map, every clipping he’d collected since coming to Washington. None of it was necessary anymore. He’d committed it all to memory. And besides – now was the time to get the details out of his head and really start to fly!

Once upon a time, Kyle knew, he would have wanted – no, needed – to have this thing mapped out down to the finest details. But that wasn’t true anymore. Now his options just hung there in the air, like so many pieces of fruit waiting to be picked.

Maybe the final narrative went something like this: Alex wakes up on the bathroom floor, the knife still in his hand. He gets up, disoriented, and stumbles into the bedroom to find Bree gutted in their bed. When he runs to check on the children, it’s more of the same. The grandmother, too. Alex can’t remember a thing, not even how he got home that night. Flash forward a year or two, and he’s learning all about the unique hell that is maximum-security lockup, festering in his own innocence while the walls close in around him a little more every day.

Or – maybe not.

Maybe he’d take Alex out definitively, once and for all. Good old-fashioned torture and murder, not to mention getting to actually watch Cross die, had considerable appeal, too.

In the meantime, there was no specific hurry to decide the final option. His only job for now was to breathe Max Siegel’s air, stay open to the possibilities, and focus on whatever was right in front of him.

And, at the present moment, that was Agent Patel.

When he went back to check on her, she was just starting to soften up around the edges. All well and good. By the time she started putting up any kind of smell, he’d be rid of her.

“Fun while it lasted, roomie,” he said, and leaned down to give her a chaste good-bye kiss on the lips. Then he rolled his departing guest into a standard white body bag and zipped her up for transport.

Chapter 67

ANOTHER EARLY MORNING, and another phone call from Sampson. This time, I wasn’t even out of bed. “Listen, sugar, I know you had a hell of a night out on the parkway, but I thought you’d want to know. We just got another body in this numbers case.”

“Great timing,” I said, still flat on my back with Bree’s arm slung over my chest.

“I guess nobody’s getting my memos about that. Listen, I can cover this if you need to take a pass.”

“Where are you?” I asked him.

“The bus terminal behind Union Station. Seriously, though, you sound like the bad half of a hangover, Alex. Why don’t you stay put, and forget I called?”

“No,” I said. Every part of me wanted to stay attached to that mattress, but you get only one first shot at a crime scene. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Bree grabbed at my arm as I sat up and swung my feet to the floor.

“God, Alex, this is, like, the definition of ‘early.’ What’s going on now?”

“Sorry to wake you,” I said, and leaned back far enough to kiss her good morning. “You know, I can’t wait to marry you, by the way.”

“Oh yeah? How’s that going to change any of this?”

“It won’t,” I said. “I just can’t wait.”

She smiled, and even in the semidark it was a beautiful thing to see. No woman I’ve ever known can look as good as she does in the morning. Or as sexy. I had to get up again fast before I started something I couldn’t finish.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, a little groggy but up on one elbow now.

“Thanks, no. I’ve got this. But if you could get the kids to school–”

“Done. Anything else?”

“A couple of quick, unspeakable acts before I leave?”

“Rain check,” she said. “Sampson’s waiting. Now go – before we both do something we won’t regret.”

I was gone a few minutes later, and had to wave off the security detail in the backyard when they saw me launch out the door. It had been only a few hours since I’d come dragging past them, moving in the opposite direction.

“Hey, guys. Regina’s just getting up,” I said. “Coffee’ll be out for you soon.”

“And biscuits?” asked one of them.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” I said, and laughed.

This was getting out of hand, though. I knew about crazy hours as well as the next guy, but leaving the house before Nana Mama even gets her kitchen up and running for the day? That is the definition of “early.”

Chapter 68

ALL OF THE EARLY-MORNING buses were lined up on the street outside Union Station when I got there.

Sampson had already shut down the rear terminal, and there were traffic cops in orange vests everywhere, pointing people to where they needed to go. One more colossal headache, but at least it wasn’t mine.

I pulled around back and walked up from street level to the cavernous main deck of the parking garage. Sampson was waiting for me with a large coffee in each hand.

“I’m hating this one, sugar. Hating it real bad,” he said, handing over my morning fuel.

We walked toward the back, where I could see a row of big brown Dumpsters against the wall on the H Street side. Only one of them was sitting open.

“Nude this time,” Sampson said. “And the numbers are all down her back. You’ll see. Also, it looks like she was stabbed instead of beaten to death. All in all, a real nasty scene.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s do this. See what we’ve got.” I slipped on my gloves and stepped up to survey the damage.

She was facedown on top of the refuse inside – mostly bags of garbage from the terminal. The numbers were etched into her skin in two parallel rows on either side of the spine. It wasn’t an equation, though. This was something else.

N38°55′46.1598"

W94°40′3.5256"

“Are those GPS coordinates?” I said.

“Be curious to see where they point, if they are,” Sampson said. “This guy’s evolving, Alex.”

“Anyone move the body?”

“ME still hasn’t gotten here. I don’t know what the holdup is, but I don’t think we should wait anymore.”

“I agree. What a way to start the day. Give me a hand here.”

We both took a deep breath and climbed up into the Dumpster. It was hard to maneuver with the shifting bags underfoot, much less try to maintain the scene. As quickly as we could, we got a grasp of the victim and gently turned her over.

What I saw there knocked me right back on my ass. I leaned over the edge of the Dumpster and, for the first time in a long while, nearly lost the contents of my stomach.

Sampson was right there with me. “Alex, you okay? What’s going on?”

The taste of metal filled my mouth; I felt dizzy from the rush of adrenaline, from being blindsided so badly.

“She’s an agent, John. At the Bureau. Remember her? The DCAK case? It’s Anjali Patel.”

Chapter 69

POOR ANJALI. And goddamnit! How did this happen? How the hell could it?

There’s something inescapable about knowing the victim of a homicide, especially a killing as brutal as this. Unwelcome questions kept pushing to the surface: Did she see it coming? Did she suffer much? Was it over quickly for her?

I tried to remind myself that any precision knife work would have been postmortem, but that thought was cold comfort right now. Besides, the best I could do for Patel was to focus on my job and on this crime scene as objectively as possible under the messed-up circumstances.

Right away, I got on the phone to the ME’s office. I wanted to make sure Porter Henning was assigned to this one, and also to find out what the hell was taking them so long. They should have been here by now. Hell, I was.

Sampson took down the numbers we’d found on Anjali’s back and got on his BlackBerry to see what he could find out about them in the short term.

By the time I’d spoken with Porter, who was caught in traffic on the Eisenhower Freeway, John was waving me back over to see something.

“I don’t know, Alex. This is pretty random.” He turned the screen around to show me the map he’d pulled up.

“It’s an address in Overland Park, Kansas. This thing’s just getting weirder and weirder. Maybe it’s some kind of math formula after all.”

“What about a reverse search on the address?” I asked.

“Working on it.” It was slow going, though, with his man paws and that tiny keyboard. This is why Sampson almost never texts anyone.

“Here we go, I got it. It’s a restaurant,” he said. “KC Masterpiece Barbecue and Grill?”

Sampson was shaking his head as if it couldn’t be right, but the name hit me like cold water. It must have shown on my face, too, because Sampson waved his hand in front of my eyes.

“Alex? Where’d you go?”

My own hands had tightened into fists. I wanted to hit something. Bad. “Of course,” I said. “This is exactly how the son of a bitch works.”

“How who works?” John said. “What are you–?”

But then he got it.

“Oh Jesus.”

It all made sense now, in the worst possible way. There was the Alex Rifle reference from the night before, and now this – KC Masterpiece.

Kyle Craig’s masterpiece.

He’d done this before, leaving tokens behind at crime scenes, always aimed at getting him credit where credit was due. Both of these murders were references to my own open cases – the sniper-style hit on Tambour, and the numbers so brutally etched into Anjali Patel’s skin.

Obviously Kyle had killed them both. Or had someone do it for him.

Then, with a horrible kind of aftershock, I remembered something else: Bronson “Pop-Pop” James, my young client. He’d been shot trying to rob a store – a place called Cross Country Liquors. Of course. Why hadn’t I come back to that fact until now?

It all added up – another ton of bricks dropped onto my shoulders. Kyle was circling me and closing in as he did it, wreaking as much havoc as possible in the process. This wasn’t just blind savagery either. It was much more specific than that and, unless I was mistaken, much more personal.

It was all part of my punishment for catching him the first time.

Chapter 70

IN ONE PHONE CALL, I re-upped with Rakeem Powell for additional twenty-four-hour security coverage at the house. I’d take out a loan if I had to; cost was not my concern right now. I couldn’t be sure what Kyle’s endgame was, but I wasn’t going to wait for him to come at me again.

I spent most of the day at the Hoover Building. With Anjali’s sudden death, it was like a wake over there, except in the SIOC, which was buzzing like an air traffic control tower.

The Bureau director himself, Ron Burns, made his designated operations room available to us, and the manhunt for Kyle Craig was back on full steam. This wasn’t personal for just me. Craig was already the biggest inside scandal in the Bureau’s hundred-year history. And now he’d killed another agent, maybe to get back at the FBI, too.

Every seat in the operation center’s double horseshoe of desks was filled. The five main screens at the head of the room showed alternating pictures and old video of Kyle, plus national and world maps with electronic markers for his known victims and associations, and past movements.

We were on the line all day with Denver, New York, Chicago, Paris – everywhere Kyle had been known to live since his escape from ADX Florence. And every field office in the country was put on high alert.

Even so, with all this flurry of activity, we had to accept the fact that nobody had any idea where Kyle was.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Alex,” Burns said, pacing. We’d just hung up after a marathon conference call. “We’ve got nothing useful here, no physical proof that Kyle killed Tambour or Patel, or even that he’s been in Washington. And nothing on that Beretta you pulled out of evidence either, by the way.”

The Beretta he was referring to was the one Bronson James had used in the armed-robbery attempt. My original idea had been that Pop-Pop had gotten it from a gang member off the street, but Kyle Craig could have just as easily put that gun in his hand. I knew that Kyle favored Berettas, and he knew that I knew.

“I’m the proof,” I said. “He’s called me on the phone. He’s made threats. The man is obsessed with me, Ron. In his mind, I’m the only one who’s ever beaten him, and Kyle Craig is nothing if not highly competitive.”

“What about these disciples of his? Just for the sake of argument.” Burns was talking to me but also to a dozen other agents who took notes and banged away on laptops as he spoke. “The man’s got followers, some of them apparently ready to die on his command. It’s happened before. How do we know he didn’t commission one of them for these hits?”

“Because the hits were directed at me,” I said slowly. “This is the part Kyle would want to do himself.”

“Even so” – Burns stopped pacing and sat down – “we’re getting off point here. Whether Craig made these kills or he didn’t, our hand is pretty much the same. We keep scouring the crime scenes. We make sure that our radar’s up and that our people are as ready as they can be the next time he strikes.”

“That’s not good enough. Goddamnit!” I said, and swiped my notes off the desk, taking with them a few other people’s papers, too. Right away, I regretted it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sorry.”

Burns bent to where I was picking up the papers and put out a hand. He pulled me to my feet. “Take a breather. Go get some dinner. There’s nothing else to do right now.”

Like it or not, he was right. I was exhausted and a little embarrassed, and I definitely needed to go home for a while. Once I’d gathered up my stuff, I headed out.

Waiting at the elevator, I felt my phone vibrate for the umpteenth time that day. It had been a steady stream of calls from MPD, Sampson, Bree, Nana –

But this time, when I looked at the ID, it just said, “A. Friend.”

“Alex Cross,” I answered, and I was already heading back to the operations center.

“Hello, Alex,” Kyle Craig said. “Really in the thick of things now, aren’t we?”

Chapter 71

“THIS PHONE I’M CALLING ON is encrypted, so don’t bother trying anything,” Kyle went on. “Now, if I’ve timed this correctly, you’re right in the belly of the beast. Is that right? And don’t put me on speaker – or I’m hanging up.”

I came into the conference room, gesticulating like crazy to let them know something was going on. Agents started scrambling, although there wasn’t much they could do. I had no doubt Kyle was telling the truth about the encrypted phone.

Someone handed me a pad and pen, and Burns sat down with his ear close to the cell, until an assistant ran over with a laptop. He took the director’s place and started transcribing as much as he could hear.

“You killed Anjali Patel and Nelson Tambour, didn’t you, Kyle?”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“And what about Bronson James?” I said. “Did you do that, too?”

“Remarkable little boy, wasn’t he? Just vegetable soup, last I checked.”

My big mistake the previous time with Kyle had been to lose my shit during the manhunt. I was determined not to let that happen again, but my heart was pounding with as much hate as I’ve ever felt for anyone in my life.

“Do you see the swath of destruction you’re creating here?” he went on. “How much better off these people would be if you simply didn’t exist?”

“What I see is a man with an obsession against me,” I told him.

“Not true,” he said. “I think you’re fascinating, especially for a Negro. If you weren’t, you’d be dead by now, and Tambour, Patel, and little Bronson James would all be wondering what to have for breakfast tomorrow. It’s quite a compliment, really. Not many people are worthy of my time.”

His voice sounded almost… playful? He appeared to be in an especially good mood. Killing seemed to do that for him. Kyle also loved to talk about himself.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Interesting. You don’t usually ask permission. Go right ahead, Alex.”

“I’m curious about the way you killed Tambour and Patel. It’s not like you to imitate anyone–”

“No,” he said right away. “It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it?”

“But that’s exactly what you did here. Twice.”

“So what’s your question, Alex?”

“Have you been in touch with them?” I asked. “The original killers. Are they yours, Kyle?”

He thought for a second, maybe trying to slow this down a little. Or maybe concocting a lie?

“I haven’t, and they aren’t,” he said then. “This Patriot character is a bit pedestrian for me. But that other one, with the numbers? Much more interesting. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t mind a little tete-a-tete with that chap.”

“So you don’t know who either of them are,” I said.

There was another long pause. Then he laughed, as heartily as I’d ever heard from Kyle.

“Alex Cross, are you asking me for advice?”

“You used to be a good agent,” I said. “Remember? You used to advise me.”

“Of course. They were the second-worst years of my life. The first being my time in that so-called Supermax out in Florence – which I have you to thank for.” He stopped, and I heard another long, slow breath. “Which also brings us full circle, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” I said. “Your whole life seems to revolve around paying me back for that.”

“Something along those lines.”

“So why all the running around, playing games, Kyle? What are you waiting for?”

“The right inspiration, I suppose,” he said without a trace of irony. “That’s the beauty of creation and imagination. Remaining open to what comes. The more seasoned the artist, the more capable he is of responding in the moment.”

“So you’re an artist now?”

“I suppose that I always have been,” he told me. “I’m just getting better at it, that’s all. It would be foolish to quit while I’m in my prime. But I will tell you one thing, my friend.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“When the end comes – trust me – we’ll both know it.”