small blue-black halo around the entry. Sampson pointed to it with the tip of a pen.
'Let's say he gets shot here,' he said, and raised the pen about six inches to where Dlouhy's head would have been positioned. 'And it comes in' – he drew the pen in an arc until it was pointing at the broken glass – 'over there.'
'That's a downward angle,' I said. The bullet had pierced one of the top panes in a six-over-one window that looked out to the backyard. Without any discussion, we both walked around to the dining room and outside through a pair of French doors.
A brick patio in the back gave way to a long, narrow yard. Two floodlights on the side of the house lit about half the space, but it didn't look like there were any outbuildings or trees big enough to support someone's weight.
Beyond that, the rear neighbor's three-story Tudor was backlit by the streetlamp on Thirty-first. Two huge oaks dominated that yard, mostly obscured in the shadow of the house.
'You said nobody was home over there?' Sampson asked. 'That right?'
'Out of town, in fact,' I said. 'Someone knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe showing off. Shooter's got a reputation to live up to after that first hit.'
'Assuming this is he.'
'It's he,' I said.
'Excuse me, Detective?' Sergeant Ed Fleischman was suddenly standing there. I looked down at his hands, to make sure he was gloved.
'What are you doing back here, Sergeant? There's plenty for you to do out front.'
'Two things, sir. We've had a couple of neighbors reporting strange vehicles.'
'Vehicles, plural?'
Fleischman nodded. 'For whatever it's worth. One old Buick with New York plates parked up the street off and on for several days.' He checked the pad in his hand. 'And a large, dark-colored SUV, maybe a Suburban, definitely beat up. It was out on the street for a few hours late last night.'
This wasn't the kind of neighborhood where old cars looked at home, at least not outside of service hours. We'd have to follow up on both the vehicles right away.
'What was the other thing?' I asked.
'FBI's here.'
'Tell them to send ERT around to the neighbor's yard,' I told the sergeant.
'Not 'them,' sir. It's an agent. He asked for you specifically.'
Peering back inside, I could see a tall white guy in a generic Bureau suit. He was leaning over, with his blue- gloved hands on his knees, staring at the hole in Mel Dlouhy's head.
'Hey!' I called through the broken window. 'Why do you need to be in there?'
He either didn't hear me or didn't want to.
'What's his name?' I asked Fleischman.
'Siegel, sir.'
'Hey, Siegel!' I shouted this time, and then I started inside. 'Don't touch anything in there!'
Chapter 25
WHEN ALEX CAME INTO THE ROOM, Kyle stood up and looked right into his eyes. Dead man walking, Kyle thought, and smiled as he extended a hand.
'Max Siegel, Washington field office. How're you doing? Not so good, I imagine.'
Cross shook Kyle's hand begrudgingly, but it was still an electric moment, like the tip-off of an NBA game. Here we go, here we go, here we go, now!
'What are you doing in here?' Cross wanted to know.
'I'm just hitting the ground on this one,' Kyle told him.
'No shit. I mean, what specifically do you need on this body?'
It was magnificent – Cross had no idea who he was looking at! The face was flawless, of course. If there was any danger here, it was with Alex's ears, not his eyes. This was where the weeks of audio surveillance on Max Siegel in Miami would really start to pay off.
But first he did exactly what Cross wouldn't expect. He turned his back on him and knelt down to look at the entry wound again.
A blue-and-black residue covered the skin around the opening. Some of the man's hair had been sucked inside with the bullet as it broke through the skull. So efficient. So impersonal. He was beginning to like this killer.
'Ballistics,' he said finally, and stood up again. 'My money's on 7.62 by 51 NATO match grade, but not jacketed. And some kind of military training on this shooter.'
'You've read the file,' Alex said, not offering any compliment, just noticing. 'Yeah, we could definitely use some ballistics support from the Bureau to confirm, but let's get the ME in here before anything else. In the meantime, I need you to step out.'
Cross couldn't have been easier to read. Right now, he was hoping a little bluster would tamp down this aggressive new FBI agent, who was no doubt just another overreaching Bureau asshole with an inflated sense of entitlement – kind of like Alex himself had been when he was an agent.
'Listen,' said Kyle, 'I'm not going to stress about who gets credit for what on this one. I mean, the U.S. attorney's going to step in and get all front and center no matter who brings it home, am I right?'
'Siegel, I don't have time for this right now. I -'
'But make no mistake.' Kyle let the last of Siegel's buddy-buddy smile fade away. 'We've got two incidents and three homicides, all inside the District. That's a federal crime. So you can work with us if you like, or you can get the fuck out of the way.'
He showed Cross his sweet little encrypted Sigillu, fresh off the line. 'One call, and I can make this whole crime scene my own private country club. It's up to you, Detective. What do you want to do?'
Chapter 26
IT TOOK ABOUT ten seconds for me to figure out what Max Siegel was all about, and I wasn't going to have any of it.
'Listen, Siegel, I'm not going to pretend I can keep you off this case any more than you can do the same to me,' I told him. 'But let me make one thing very clear here. This is an MPD crime scene. I'm ranking Homicide, and if you want to take that up with the chief, he's right outside. Meanwhile, if I have to tell you how quickly a room like this can cool, then you shouldn't be here to begin with.'
No doubt, there would be a full task force after tonight, and I'd probably find myself working with this Bureau jerkoff as we moved forward. But right now was not the best time for pissing contests. By him – or by me.
Sampson came in from the yard, looking at me as if to say, Who is this guy? I made the necessary introductions.
'Agent Siegel and I were just comparing theories,' I said, trying to lighten things up a little and put us back on track. 'He's got a military take on this, too.'
Right away, Siegel started talking again. 'Holding forth' was more like it.
'Military snipers go after high-value targets – officers, not enlisted men,' he said. 'The way I see it, that's what these victims are. Not the bank president but the congressman and the lobbyist who keep him juiced. And not the taxpayer who's been ripping off Uncle Sam but the other way around.'
'A killer for the common man,' Sampson said.
'With the very best training in the world.' Siegel reached out until he was almost touching the black hole centered one inch above Mel Dlouhy's left ear. 'That kind of accuracy doesn't lie.'
I listened without saying too much. This guy wanted to lecture, not collaborate, but he was also pretty good at what he did. If there were things he could see here that I couldn't, then I needed to bite my tongue long enough to
