Violets are Blue

Jamilla had her service revolver pointed at his chest. Her hand was amazingly steady. His nose was bleeding badly from where I'd hit him. He was well built, probably early thirties, short haired, a light-skinned black man.

Everything was complete chaos in my brain.

'Who the hell are you? Who are you?' I yelled at the dazed, bleeding man on the floor.

'FBI,' he panted. 'I'm a federal agent. Put down the gun. Put it down now.'

Jamilla was yelling too. 'I'm San Francisco PD, and I'm definitely not putting down my gun, mister. What are you doing in my apartment?' she shouted. I could almost see her mind working, and she wasn't thinking nice thoughts. 'Talk to us!'

He shook his head. 'I don't have to answer your questions. Wallet's in the rear left pocket. Badge and ID. I'm FBI, goddamnit!'

'Stay down,' I yelled. 'There could be someone outside with a gun. Did Kyle Craig send you here?' I asked.

The look on the agent's face answered the question for me, but he refused to confirm or deny. 'I told you, I don't have to answer questions.'

'You sure as hell do.' Jamilla got in the last word.

I did the only thing I could under the circumstances — I called the FBI.

Four agents from the San Francisco office got to the apartment at a little past five in the morning. We were wary of the windows, though I doubted that Kyle was still nearby. Or even in San Francisco. The Mastermind was a step ahead. I should have known, and in a way I had known, that he wouldn't do the expected.

During the next couple of hours, exasperated agents from the Bureau tried to reach Kyle Craig. They couldn't, and it shook them up. They began to give some credence to my story that Kyle might be the man behind murders going back for several years. Kyle had sent the agent to Jamilla's apartment and ordered him to break in. He'd told the agent that someone had murdered an SFPD inspector and Alex Cross inside.

Then things started to get really hot.

I was the one who heated them up.

Chapter 101

At seven-thirty in the morning, I was on the receiving end of a phone call from FBI director Ronald Burns in Washington. Burns was cautious and wary, so I knew he wouldn't call me himself unless he had evidence that there were serious problems with Kyle. I was still confused, and hurt, but I recognized the emotions as appropriate and sane. Kyle Craig was the madman, not me.

'Tell me whatever you know, Director,' I said. 'I know a lot about Kyle, but you know things that I don't. Tell me what they are. It's important that I know everything.'

Burns didn't answer right away. There was a long pause on his end of the line. I knew him well enough to know that he was a friend of Kyle's. At least he thought he had been. We'd all been wrong, for so long. We'd been fooled, and betrayed, by someone we had trusted.

Finally, Burns began to speak. 'This probably goes back to the days of the Kiss the Girlscase. Maybe before it. You know that Kyle was an undergrad at Duke University. He knew Will Rudolph — the Gentleman Caller — from his student days at Duke. During the case, Kyle may have been responsible for the death of a reporter named Beth Lieberman with the L.A. Times. She was closing in on Will Rudolph.'

I shut my eyes and shook my head. I had helped solve the 'Kiss' case. I knew that Kyle had attended Duke, but not about his relationship with the Gentleman Caller, a killer who had terrorized L.A. I had briefly suspected Kyle in the case, but his alibis held up perfectly. Of course they had.

'Why didn't you talk to me?' I asked Burns. I was trying to understand the FBI's position. So far, I couldn't.

'We didn't begin to really suspect Kyle until the murder of Betsey Cavalierre. We had no proof, even then. We weren't sure if he was a possible killer or the best agent in the Bureau.'

'Jesus, Ron, we could have talked. We should have talked. Well, he's on the run now. You should have told me. I hope you're telling me everything now.'

'Alex, you know what we know. Maybe more. I hope you're telling useverything.'

After I finished with Burns, I called Sampson in Washington. I told him the latest, and it blew John's mind. He had moved Nana and the kids out of our house on Fifth Street. Only he and I knew where they were now.

'Everything okay there?' I asked. 'Everybody settled in all right?'

'Are you fucking kidding, Alex? Nana is pissed off like I've never seen her before. If Kyle Craig came after her, I'd put my money on Nana. The kids are cool, though. They don't know what's happening, but they've guessed it isn't good.'

I cautioned him again. 'Don't leave them for a minute, not a second, John. I'm coming back to Washington on the next flight. I don't know how Kyle could trace you there, but don't underestimate him. He's loose. He's very dangerous. For some reason, he wants to hurt me, and maybe my family. If I can figure out why that is, maybe I can stop him.'

'And if not?' Sampson asked.

I let the question hang.

Chapter 102

I had to say good-bye to Jamilla Hughes again, and each time it was a little harder. We'd been through so much together in such a short time. I made her promise to be extremely careful, even paranoid, for the next few days. She promised. Then finally I got on a plane out of San Francisco International.

The mysterious phone calls had finally stopped, but that was scary and unsettling too. I didn't know where Kyle was, or what he was doing.

Was he still watching me? Had he somehow followed me back to Washington? I shouldn't have been entertaining thoughts like that, but I was, and I couldn't stop them from coming.

Did he have binoculars focused on me as I walked up the sidewalk to my Aunt Tia's house in Chapel Gate, Maryland, about fifteen miles from Baltimore? How could Kyle know I was here? Why, because that's what he did for a living. Could he get past Sampson and me? I didn't think so. But how could I know with complete certainty?

The kids were enjoying their short vacation from school. Aunt Tia had always spoiled them, just as she had spoiled me as a kid. 'Same old, same old' she likes to say when she serves you a piece of hot pie in the middle of the afternoon, or gives you an unexpected present. Nana was more understanding than I thought she would be. I think she liked being with her 'little sister.' Tia was younger than Nana, 'only seventy-eight,' but she was spry, very contemporary in her outlook, and she was a fabulous cook. That night, she and Nana made penne with gorgonzola cheese, broccoli rabe, and sock-it-to-me cake. I ate as if it were my last meal.

Then the kids and I played and talked until the outrageous hour of eleven o'clock, way past their usual bedtimes. They are by no means perfect, but the good times with them certainly outweigh the bad. I tend to talk more about the good, and why not? I'm a father and I love Damon, Jannie, and little Alex more than life itself. Maybe that says something too.

I went back to Washington the following morning. A team of FBI agents had been assigned to my family. It was the kind of attention I'd hoped we would never need. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me.

That afternoon, I attended a meeting at the FBI building and learned that more than four hundred agents were assigned to finding and capturing Kyle Craig. So far, nothing had gotten out to the press, and Director Burns