Kiss Of Evil

68

The house is dark.

Bobby Dietricht had rung the bell, knocked on the front door, knocked on the back door, listened for a dog, listened for footsteps, peered in the windows. He had even tossed a few pebbles at the upstairs windows before hiding behind the huge maple tree on the front lawn.

Nothing.

Then he had repeated everything, just to be sure.

The house is unoccupied, he concluded.

Or else someone inside sleeps the sleep of the dead.

Carla rolls up in front of Jeremiah Cross’s house, headlights off. She meets Bobby around back and apprises him of her meeting with Denny Sanchez. Together they climb the small back porch, position themselves on either side of the door. Bobby pulls open the storm door and knocks one last time. He presses the doorbell and, in the stillness of the night, they can both hear the bell, loud and clear.

No answer, no lights flipping on upstairs, no response at all. They draw their weapons.

Bobby holds open the storm door, tries the handle of the inner door, turns it. It is unlocked. He nods at Carla.

Weapons out front, the two police officers step inside, knowing that establishing probable cause to enter these premises, at this moment, is going to be uphill all the way if Jeremiah Cross has anything to do with these homicides.

But Jack Paris is in trouble, and thus there is no hesitation.

Silently, they agree to take their chances in court.

Five minutes later, at eleven-forty, the house has been searched, but not scoured. The first floor and basement contain nothing out of the ordinary, nothing any other upwardly mobile lawyer wouldn’t have in his house. They had found no bodies, no blood, no sacrificial altars, no body parts in the freezer. If Jeremiah Cross is a serial murderer, he is one of the tidiest ever.

As Bobby Dietricht and Carla Davis begin to mount the stairs to give the second floor a more thorough search-drawers, nightstands, some boxes they had seen in closets-Carla’s phone rings. “Hang on,” she says, but Bobby continues up the stairs.

Carla steps into the kitchen. The raid is coming down in twenty minutes and this is probably the call. Thankfully, she is still within five minutes or so of the Westwood Road address. She steps into the kitchen, pulls her phone from her pocket. “Davis.”

“Sergeant Davis, this is Dennis Sanchez.”

“Yes, Denny, thanks for calling me right back. I appreciate it.”

“Have you got a minute right now?”

“Absolutely.”

“I think we’ve got something,” Bobby yells from upstairs. “There’s a door at the back of the bedroom closet…”

“Wait for me, Bobby,” Carla says, then puts her finger in her other ear. “Go ahead. I’m sorry.”

Sanchez continues: “I talked to Chief Blake and he asked me to call you. Earlier, you made an inquiry about a man named Cross, yes?”

“That’s right.”

Bobby yells: “It looks like… like some kind of altar. I think we’ve got this prick.”

Sanchez asks: “As in Jeremiah Cross of Powell Road, Cleveland Heights?”

“Yes,” Carla replies, trying to pay attention to two things at once. “Why?”

“Can I ask what your interest is in Mr. Cross?”

“We like him in a homicide,” Carla says. “That’s really all I can say at this point.”

Bobby says: “Holy shit.”

Sanchez takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “Bad news, then, I’m afraid. We just got the dental lab records an hour ago. Jeremiah Cross was shot to death in Cain Park a week ago. Had his hands cut off, too.”

Jesus, Carla thinks. Cross is not our actor.

Cross was the DOA in Cain Park!

And that means Sanchez adds: “As of an hour ago, my John Doe became a good lawyer. I’ve got a team on the way to his house right now.”

— setup.

Bobby.

From upstairs: “There’s some kind of… hel-lo… what the fuck is this?”

“Bobby, no!”

In the instant before the explosion, as Carla rounds the corner and mounts the steps, she feels the air being sucked out of her lungs, even before she feels the searing heat of the blast.

On the third step, something punches through the drywall, just over her head, showering her in blackened gypsum. Then, a streak of flames chases down the stairs to her left, followed by a dark shape.

Carla Davis falls to her knees, lungs full of smoke, eyes burning, and realizes that the smoldering shape is Bobby Dietricht.