'Well, never mind about what might have been. Thank you, Professor. It's been an education.'
'No,' Stanislaw said. 'Thank you.'
He saw the ice pick then, and followed it with his eyes as the man raised it up and to the side until it disappeared into silhouette against a bare bulb in the ceiling. Then Stanislaw lifted his own chin high, opening himself as widely as possible so that no matter what happened, the man would be sure not to miss.
Chapter 93
I'M SO USED to my own phone going off at all hours that I was reaching for the nightstand before I realized it was Bree's cell ringing, not mine. The clock by the bed said 4:21. Oh, good God Almighty, what now?
'This is Stone.' I heard her in the dark. 'Who's this?'
Right away, she sat up. When she turned on the light beside the bed, the phone was pressed against her chest, and she whispered so low that she practically mouthed the next words to me.
'It's Kyle Craig.'
Now I was up, too. When I took the phone, I could hear Kyle still talking on the other end of the line.
'Bree, sweetheart? Are you there?'
If he'd been in front of me, I honestly believe I could have killed him without thinking twice. But I kept my head as best I could. I grabbed control of my emotions.
'Kyle, it's Alex. Don't ever call this number again,' I said, and hung up.
Bree's jaw literally dropped. 'What was that?' she said. 'Why did you do that?'
'My line in the sand. It doesn't do me any good to let him keep setting the rules.'
'Do you think he'll call back?'
'Well, if he doesn't, we'll both get a little more sleep,' I said.
Something had changed in me. I wasn't going to keep playing this game forever. I couldn't.
And, in any case, my own cell phone rang a few seconds later.
'What?' I answered.
'Bree never answered my question,' Kyle said. 'About how the wedding plans were coming along. I figured that was more her department than yours.'
'No,' I said. 'You wanted to make yourself seem more threatening.'
He laughed almost congenially. 'Did it work?'
'I'm hanging up, Kyle.'
'Wait!' he said. 'There is something else. It's important, or I wouldn't be calling so early.'
I didn't ask what it was. In fact, I was about to hang up anyway when he went on.
'I got you an engagement present,' he said. 'Of sorts. Since I'm allowing you to get married and all. A little something to free up your schedule, so you can focus on that pretty little bride to be.'
Now my heart sank. I had to know. 'Kyle? What have you done?'
'Well, if I told you, that would spoil the surprise, wouldn't it?' he said. 'Twenty-ninth and K, northeast corner. And you might want to hurry.'
Chapter 94
BY SUNRISE, we had a full tactical team in place at the corner of Twenty-ninth and K. There was very little I'd put past Kyle, and while it could be a mistake to show up when and where he specified, I couldn't just ignore the phone call. So we took precautions, as much as we possibly could.
The location was at the edge of Rock Creek Park, with the Whitehurst Freeway running overhead. We put officers with MP5s on the overpass, and a barrier of armored SWAT vans hugging the corner to block as many sight lines as possible.
Our nerve center was a coffee shop on K, where the SWAT unit commander, Tom Ogilvy, could stay in radio contact with his team. Sampson and I listened in on headsets.
EMS was on standby, with patrol units barring the street a block away in each direction. All personnel were outfitted with Kevlar and helmets.
And maybe it was all for nothing. Was Kyle actually watching? Was he armed? Ready with something up his sleeve? Or maybe none of the above. I think that's exactly what he wanted me to wrestle with now.
In any case, it didn't take long for the entry team to find something. Less than five minutes after they'd snaked into the park from Twenty-ninth, their lead man radioed over.
'We've got a body here,' he said. 'White male, middle-aged. Looks like it could be a homeless guy.'
'Proceed with caution,' Ogilvy radioed back. We'd already briefed everyone about the possibilities here. 'I want a full visual check around that body before anyone touches it. B Team, I need you on high alert.'
Three more minutes of silence ticked by until the 'all clear' came back – such as it was. When I reached for the coffee shop door, Sampson grabbed my arm.
'Let me do this one, Alex. If Kyle's here, it could be you he's waiting for.'
'No way,' I told him. 'Besides, if Kyle ever comes for me, it's going to be face-to-face, not from a distance.'
'Oh, because you know everything there is to know about that maniac?' he said.
'I know that much,' I said, and headed outside.
Even before we got close to the body in the park, I recognized Stanislaw Wajda's filthy barn coat. He'd been left on his side, shoved under a clump of bushes, just like his own victims before him.
There was no carving this time. The only visible injury was a single puncture wound to the throat, similar to the one we'd seen on Anjali Patel.
The skin on his neck was a solid stain of dried blood, and it continued down under his shirt. That meant he'd most likely been sitting up when he was stabbed. Probably when he died, too.
We'd already run prints on the shopping cart and sledgehammer from Farragut Square. There was no doubt anymore that Wajda was our Numbers Killer. Still, whatever he'd done when he was alive, I felt a wave of pity for him now.
'What's this?' Sampson pointed at something in Wajda's hand. I pulled on some gloves and knelt down to take whatever it was from between the clenched fingers.
It was a small greeting card – the kind you usually send with flowers. This one had a picture of a wedding cake on the front, with an African-American bride and groom at the top.
'It's my engagement present,' I said. I felt a little sick to my stomach.
When I opened the card, I instantly recognized the precise block letters of Kyle's handwriting. TO ALEX:
YOU'RE WELCOME.
– K.C.
Chapter 95
AFTER FIVE DAYS of lying low with Mitch in the West Virginia woods, Denny got the call he'd been waiting for. Then it was another several days for reconnaissance in DC before they were good to go. It wouldn't be much longer now, just a little while and he'd be a free man. A very rich, free man.
The door banged open behind him as they came out onto the roof of the National Building Museum.
