No sign of Hennessey, though.
I came to the edge and looked out. Twelfth Street was quiet down below. Other than the Bureau car with its doors open and a patch of broken glass on the ground, there wasn't any indication of what had just happened.
A few people were even walking by, oblivious to the damage.
Then, as I leaned out for a better look, my foot hit something that made a small, metallic clinking sound. I took out my Maglite and pointed it at the ground to see what it was.
Shell casings. Several of them.
My pulse spiked, and I turned around – right into the barrel of a Walther nine millimeter.
The man with his finger on the trigger, presumably Steven Hennessey, held the pistol up about an inch from my forehead.
'Don't move,' he said. 'Not a goddamn muscle. I won't miss from this distance.'
Chapter 106
HE'D DONE A pretty good job of changing his appearance – glasses, dark hair, clean-shaven. Enough to let him move around the city anyway.
And probably enough to walk away from here unrecognized, too, I realized. It was all starting to fall into place.
'Hennessey?'
'Depends who you ask,' he answered.
'You left that anonymous tip at the Bureau yourself, didn't you?' I said. This whole thing was a setup, I felt sure, and we'd given him exactly what he wanted – a quiet surveillance detail by the people who knew the most about him. Whether he'd been trying to kill us in the car or draw us closer, I still didn't know.
'And look what I caught,' he said. 'Now, I want you to reach back slowly and drop that Glock right off the roof.'
I shook my head. 'I'll throw it over there. I can't put this thing in the street.'
'Sure you can,' he said. The tip of his Walther was cool when he pressed it into my forehead. Presumably he'd been using something bigger a few minutes ago.
I reached back and let the Glock fall. When it smacked onto the concrete below, my stomach clenched.
He took a step back then, out of arm's reach.
'To tell you the truth, I just wanted you dead and out of the way. But now that you're here, I'm giving you thirty seconds to tell me what you've got on me,' he said. 'And I'm not talking about what's already in the papers.'
'No, I don't imagine you are,' I said. 'You want to know how deep you need to go before you can disappear again.'
'Twenty seconds,' he said. 'I might even let you live. Talk to me.'
'You're Steven Hennessey, aka Frances Moulton, aka Denny Humboldt,' I said. 'You were with U.S. Army Special Forces until two thousand two, most recently in Afghanistan. There's a grave in Kentucky with your name on it, and I'm assuming you've been running freelance off the radar since then.'
'What about the Bureau?' he said. 'Where else are they looking for me?'
'Everywhere,' I said.
He adjusted his grip and locked his elbows. 'I know who you are, too, Cross. You live on Fifth Street. No reason I can't make a stop there tonight, too. Understand?'
I felt a rush of anger. 'I'm not messing with you. We've been grasping at straws. Why do you think we don't have a whole team here?'
'Not yet you don't,' he said. The sirens were definitely getting closer, though. 'What else? You're still alive. Keep talking.'
'You killed your partner, Mitch.'
'Not what I'm asking about. Give me something I can use,' he said. 'Last chance, or you won't be the only Cross to die tonight.'
'For God's sake, if I had something, I'd tell you!'
The first police cruiser came screaming up the block down below.
'Looks like your time's up,' he said.
A gun fired – and I flinched before I realized it wasn't Hennessey's. His eyes opened wide. A line of blood rolled onto his upper lip, and he collapsed straight down in front of me, as if someone had just dropped his strings.
'Alex?'
I looked to the right. Max Siegel was standing on the roof of the next building, lit from behind by a small shaft of light from the stairwell. His Beretta was still up and pointed my way, but he lowered it when I turned to him.
'You okay?' he called.
I stepped on Hennessey's wrist and took the Walther out of his hand. There was no pulse at the neck, and his eyes were like blank saucers. He was gone. Max Siegel had taken him out and saved my life.
By the time I stood up again, the street was filling fast. Besides the sirens, I could hear doors slamming and the squawk of police radios. The block was locked down, but I still needed to go and find my Glock.
Siegel appeared to stare after me as I headed for the door. I owed him a thank-you, to say the least, but the street noise would've swallowed my words, so I just flashed a thumbs-up for now.
All good.
Chapter 107
IT RAINED THE NEXT MORNING. We had planned to do our big press briefing outside but ended up moving it to the Daly Building lineup room instead. A hundred reporters, maybe more, had shown up for this thing, and we put a live audio feed in the lobby for the spillover and also for any latecomers.
Max and I sat at a table at the front with Chief Perkins and Jim Heekin from the Directorate. The sound of camera shutters was everywhere, most of them pointed at Max and me. We were most definitely the odd couple.
This was one of my famous moments. I'd had a few before. There would be a couple of weeks of constant interview requests, maybe a book offer or two, and definitely some number of reporters waiting outside my house when I got home that night.
The briefing started with a statement from the mayor, who took about ten minutes to explain why all of this meant we should vote for him in the next election. Then the chief gave a rundown of the basics of the case before we opened up the floor to questions.
'Detective Cross,' a Fox reporter asked right out of the gate, 'can you walk us through the events of what happened on that roof last night? A real blow-by-blow? Only you can tell that story.'
This was the 'sexy' part of the case – the stuff that sells papers and ad space as well. I gave an answer that was short enough to keep things moving along but detailed enough to keep them from spending the next hour hounding me about how it feels to come face-to-face with a cold-blooded killer.
'So, would you say that Agent Siegel saved your life?' someone followed up.
Siegel leaned into his mike. 'That's right,' he said. 'Nobody takes this guy out but me.' They gave him a good laugh for that one.
'Seriously, though,' he went on, 'we may have had our bumps in the road, but this investigation is a perfect example of how federal and local authorities can work together in the face of a major threat. I'm proud of what Detective Cross and I accomplished here, and I hope the city's proud of us, too.'
Apparently even Siegel's good side had a huge ego. But I was in no mood to be picky or small. If he wanted the face time, he could have it.
