Cross Kill

Chapter 21

By the time I reached the cemetery, the superintendent had already loaded the casket into the FBI van that would take it to Quantico for examination. I explained the urgency of my situation, and left.

I called ahead to New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland state police dispatchers, asking for help. When I reached I-95, there were two Jersey state trooper cruisers waiting. One in front, the other behind, they escorted me to the border, where two Delaware cruisers met me. Two more waited when I reached the Maryland line. At times we were going more than a hundred.

Less than two hours after I’d read the text, I got off the elevator to the ICU at GW Medical Center, still in damp clothes and chilled as I ran down the all-too-familiar halls to the waiting area. Billie sat at the back, her feet drawn up under her. Her elbows rested across her knees and she had a skeptical, faraway look in her eye, as if she couldn’t believe that God was doing this to her.

Bree sat at her left, Nana Mama on her right.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They decided to bring him up out of the chemical coma,” Billie said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“He flatlined. They had to paddle him,” Bree said. “He came back, but his vitals are turning against him.”

“Billie’s called in the priest,” Nana Mama said. “He’s giving John the last rites.”

Whatever control I’d maintained until that point evaporated and I began to grieve in gasps of disbelief and an explosion of sorrow and tears. It was real. My best friend, the indestructible one, Big John Sampson, was going to die.

I sank into a chair and sobbed. Bree came over and hugged me. I leaned into her and cried some more.

The priest came in. “He’s in God’s hands now,” he said, consoling us. “The doctor says there’s nothing more they can do for him.”

“Can we go in?” Billie asked.

“Of course,” he said.

Nana Mama, Billie, and Bree got up. I looked at them, feeling numb.

“I can’t do it,” I said, feeling helpless. “I just can’t watch this. Can you forgive me?”

“I don’t want to either, Alex,” Billie said. “But I want him to hear my voice one last time before he goes.”

Nana Mama patted me on the shoulders as she followed Billie into the ICU. Bree asked if I wanted her to stay, and I shook my head.

“Going in there scares me more than anything has in my entire life,” I said. “I need to take a walk, get my courage up.”

“And pray,” she said, kissed me on the head, and went inside.

I got up and felt like a coward walking toward the men’s room. I went inside and washed my face, trying to think of anything but John and all the good times we’d had over the years, playing football and basketball, attending the police academy, and finding our way through the ranks to detective and partners against crime.

That would never happen again. John and me would never happen again.

I left the restroom and wandered off through the medical complex, sure that any minute now I’d get a text that he was gone. Guilt built up in me at the thought that after all we’d been through, I wouldn’t be there at Sampson’s side when he passed.

I stopped and almost turned around. Then noticed I was standing outside the plastic surgery offices. A beautiful Ethiopian-looking woman in a white jacket came out the door.

She smiled at me. Her teeth gleamed and her facial skin was so taut and smooth she could have been thirty. Then again, she could have been sixty and often under the knife.

“Dr. Coleman?” I said, reading her badge.

She stopped and said, “Yes?”

I showed her my badge, said, “I could use your help.”

“Yes?” she said, looking worried. “How so?”

“I’m investigating the shooting of a police officer,” I said. “We want to know, how difficult would it be to make one person look almost exactly like another?”

She squinted. “You mean, good enough to be an imposter?”

“Yes,” I said. “Is it possible?”

“That depends,” Dr. Coleman said, glancing at her watch. “Can you walk with me? I have to give a lecture about twenty minutes from here.”

“Yes,” I said, glad for the diversion.

We walked through the medical center and out the other side, ending up on the George Washington University campus. Along the way, the plastic surgeon said that similar facial structure would be key to surgically altering a person to look like someone else.

“The closer the subject was to looking like the original to begin with, the better the results,” she said. “After that it would all be in the skill of the surgeon.”

“So, even the similar bone structure wouldn’t guarantee success for your everyday surgeon?”

Dr. Coleman smiled. “If the end product is as close to the original as you say it is, then there is no way an average boob-job surgeon did it. You’re looking for a scalpel artist, Detective.”

“What kind of money are we talking?”

“Depends on the extent of surgical alteration required,” she said. “But I’m thinking this is a hundred-thousand-dollar job, maybe less in Brazil.”

A hundred thousand dollars? Who would spend that much to look like Gary Soneji? Or go to Brazil to get it done?

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and sickened.

“Here I am,” Dr. Coleman said, stopping outside one of the university’s many buildings. “Any more questions, Detective?”

“No,” I said, handing her a card. “But if I do, can I call?”

“Absolutely,” she said, and hurried inside.

I swallowed hard and then got out my phone.

The text was from Bree: “Come now or you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

I started to run.

Ten minutes later, I went through the door of the ICU, trying to keep my emotions from ruining me all over again.

When I reached the doorway to John’s room, Billie, Bree, and Nana Mama were all sobbing.

I thought I’d come too late, that I’d done my best friend and brother the ultimate disservice, and not been there when he took his last breath.

Then I realized they were all sobbing for joy.

“It’s a miracle, Alex,” Bree said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Look.”

I stepped inside the crowded room. A nurse and a doctor were working feverishly on John. He was still on his back in bed, still on the ventilator, still hitched up to a dozen different monitors.

But his eyes were open and roving lazily.