Roses Are Red

Chapter Fifteen

The siren on the roof of my car was screaming. So was my body.

And my brain.

I arrived at the First Union Bank in Falls Church, Virginia, at almost the same time that Kyle Craig and his FBI team got there.

A black helicopter was just settling into the mostly empty shopping-mall parking area directly behind the bank. Kyle and three other agents climbed out of the chopper and headed toward me at a fast trot. They were stooped over and looked like monks hurrying to chapel. All four wore blue FBI windbreakers, which meant the Bureau wanted the public to know the FBI was involved with the investigation. The murders so far were gross and chilling for everyone. People needed to be reassured, to have their hands held.

"You been inside the bank already?" Kyle huffed as he came jogging up to me. He too looked like he hadn't slept.

"I just got here myself. Saw the big bad Belljet sputtering in. Figured it had to be you, or Darth Vader. Let's go in together."

"This is Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre," Kyle said, indicating a smallish woman with lustrous black hair and eyes almost as dark. She wore her oversized FBI windbreaker over a white T-shirt, khaki trousers, running shoes. She was probably in her mid-thirties. Intense-looking and also pretty, though certainly not glamorous.

"This is the rest of the first team. Agents Michael Doud and James Walsh," Kyle continued with the introductions. "This is Alex Cross. He's the VICAP liaison with the DC police. Alex found the bodies of Enrol and Brianne Parker."

There were quick, polite hellos and handshakes all round. Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre seemed to be sizing me up. Maybe it was because her boss and I were friends. Or maybe because I was VICAP, the official liaison between the FBI and the Metro police. Kyle took me by the elbow and steered me away from his agents.

"If the original two bank robbers are dead, who the hell did this job?" Kyle asked as we walked past ribbons of yellow crime tape snapping loudly in a crisp breeze from the southeast," This is as bad as it gets. You see why I brought you in?"

"Because misery likes company," I said.

The FBI ADIC, or assistant director in charge, walked with me inside the bank lobby. My stomach fell. Two female tellers were lying on the floor. They were dressed in dark blue business suits, now stained with their blood. Both were dead. Their head wounds indicated they had been shot at close range.

"Executed. Goddamn it. Goddamn it," Agent Cavalierre said as we stopped at the bodies. An FBI crime-scene unit immediately began videotaping the scene and taking still photographs. We headed toward the open bank vault.