Cross Kill

Chapter 7

Outside a blizzard wailed, a classic nor’easter with driving wet snow that was already eight inches deep. It takes only four inches to snarl Washington, DC, so completely that there’s talk of bringing in the National Guard.

Georgetown was a parking lot. I trudged to the Foggy Bottom Metro station, ignoring my freezing-cold feet, and reliving old times with big John Sampson. I met him within days of moving up to DC with my brothers after my mother died and my father, her killer, disappeared, presumed dead.

John lived with his mother and sister. His father had died in Vietnam. We were in the same fifth-grade class. He was ten years old and big, even then. But so was I.

It made for a natural rivalry, and we didn’t much care for each other at first. I was faster than him, which he did not like. He was stronger than me, which I did not like. The inevitable fight we had was a draw.

We were suspended for three days for fighting. Nana Mama marched me down to Sampson’s house to apologize to him and to his mother for throwing the first punch.

I went unhappily. When Sampson came to the door equally annoyed, I saw the split lip and bruising around his right cheek and smiled. He saw the swelling around both of my eyes and smiled back.

We’d both inflicted damage. We both had won. And that was that. End of the war, and start of the longest friendship of my life.

I took the Metro across town, and walked back to St. Anthony’s in the snow, trying to will myself not to remember Sampson in the ICU, more machine than man. But the image kept returning, and every time it did, I felt weaker, as if a part of me were dying.

There were still Metro police cars parked in front of the school, and two television trucks. I pulled the wool hat down and turned up the collar of my jacket. I didn’t want to talk to any reporters about this case. Ever.

I showed my badge to the patrolman standing inside the front door, and started back toward the cafeteria and kitchen.

Father Close appeared at his office door. He recognized me.

“Your partner?”

“There’s brain damage, but he’s alive,” I said.

“Another miracle, then,” Father Close said. “Sister Mary Elliott and Theresa Ball, the cook, they’re still alive as well. You saved them, Dr. Cross. If you hadn’t been there, I fear all three of them would be dead.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “But thank you for saying so.”

“Any idea when I can have my cafeteria and kitchen back?”

“I’ll ask the crime-scene specialists, but figure tomorrow your students bring a bag lunch and eat in their homerooms. When it’s a cop-involved shooting, the forensics folks are sticklers for detail.”

“As they should be,” Father Close said, thanked me again, and returned to his office.

I returned to the cafeteria and stood there a moment in the empty space, hearing voices in the kitchen, but recalling the first shots and how I’d reacted.

I went to the swinging industrial doors and did the same. We’d done it by the book, I decided, and pushed through them again.

I glanced at where the cook and nun had lain wounded, and then over where Sampson had lain dying before turning my attention to the pantry. This was where the book had been thrown out. In retrospect, we should have cleared the rest of the building before tending to the wounded. But it looked like femoral blood and...

Three crime-scene techs were still at work in the kitchen. Barbara Hatfield, an old friend, was in the pantry. She spotted me and came right over.

“How’s John, Alex?”

“Hanging on,” I said.

“Everyone’s shaken up,” Hatfield said. “And there’s something you should see, something I was going to call you about later.”

She led me into the pantry, floor-to-ceiling shelves loaded with foodstuffs and kitchen supplies, and a big shiny commercial freezer at the far end.

The words spray-painted in two lines across the face of the fridge stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Right?” Hatfield said. “I did the same thing.”