Double Cross

The message we’d been waiting for was all of six words. He was efficient, wasn’t he?

19th SE and Independence Ave. Now.

Chapter 83

MY STOMACH HAD NEVER been tied in so many knots, not that I could remember, anyway. DCAK was bad enough, but now I was sure Kyle Craig had been added to the mix, and I couldn’t figure out why, or where this freight train could be headed. Nowhere I wanted to go.

The drive over to Nineteenth and Independence was a paparazzi nightmare of the sort that had probably killed Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed in a dark, scary tunnel in Paris. We cut diagonally through the city toward Southeast, sirens wailing and an unbelievable entourage following us the whole way. Hell, we were like the pied pipers of DC, with trailing rats that wanted nothing more than to take our picture and run it in the National Enquirer. If they were gambling we wouldn’t stop to issue traffic violations right now, they had that right.

Six MPD units were already at the scene when we got there, and they had closed off the main intersections to foot and vehicle traffic.

But what exactly was this scene? What had happened here?

No obvious clues. The neighborhood was a mix of residential and industrial. Two lines of newly refurbished row houses extended along both Nineteenth and Independence from the northwest corner. I remembered that I’d actually read about this project in the paper, all primary colors and funky angles. Just the extra touch of visual drama our killer would go for. The bastard was making a movie, wasn’t he? Shooting it all in his head.

The new St. Coletta School was across the street in one direction, and the Armory Building in the other. It was a huge area to cover-a giant haystack, with somebody’s body for a needle. Or, God willing, a living victim this time. Was that a possibility? Maybe DCAK wanted a change of pace.

More squad cars arrived, over a dozen of them, and then I stopped counting. I wondered when Kitz and his people would get here. We needed the FBI techies on this, all the help we could possibly get.

First thing, we made the residential buildings our priority, working in teams of two and knocking on every door up and down the street. Everything else had to wait, including any attempt at crowd control. The scene was already too crazy-camera crews matched us step for step, shooting from every angle.

We hadn’t been searching long when one of the uniformed officers called out, “Detectives. Something over here. Detectives!”

Bree and I ran to see what was up. The house in question was bright yellow, with large single-pane windows facing out onto Nineteenth Street. The front door was ajar and had been heavily gouged around the doorknob and faceplate. It looked like somebody had recently broken in.

“Good enough for me,” Bree said. “Sufficient evidence of a break-in. Let’s go.”

Chapter 84

WE WENT IN CAREFULLY, silently, along with one of the neighborhood officers, a scared kid named DiLallo. The other uniforms stayed outside to keep back any particularly reckless reporters, or even a daring looky-loo on the scene.

Inside, the house was perfectly still. The air was stale and thick with heat-no open windows, no air- conditioning. The decor was modern, like the exterior. I saw an Eames-lounger knockoff in the living room to my left, a red lacquered table, mesh chairs in the dining room beyond. Nothing to go on yet, but I sensed something had happened here.

Bree ticked her head to the left-she’d take the living room-and motioned for the patrol officer to go straight back, probably to the kitchen.

I took the stairs.

They were solid floating slabs of wood with an iron railing that made no sound as I climbed. The place was too quiet-Dead-body quiet, I couldn’t help thinking, and I dreaded what we might find here.

Were we the audience this time? Was that the big, new twist here? Had this all been staged for us?

A domed skylight overhead let in plenty of sunshine, and I could feel the sweat dripping down my back.

At the top, the stairs doubled around to an open hallway that overlooked the first floor. A door was closed on the left, with an open one, closer to me, showing off an empty bathroom. It looked empty from this angle, anyway.

Still no people, though, dead or alive.

I could hear more police arriving downstairs, quite the crowd on hand already. Nervous whispers and radio chatter. The high-pitched voice of Officer DiLallo-somebody called him Richard, as in Richard, calm down.

Bree reappeared in the hallway below me. She gave an all-clear sign, and I motioned for her to come up.

“You lonely?” she asked.

“For you… always.”

When she joined me upstairs, I pointed to the bedroom door. “Only one that’s closed,” I said.

I steeled myself for what we might find, then burst in through the door. I trained my Glock on the far corner, swept left, swept right.

I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. There was nothing in the room. Nothing there that shouldn’t be. A platform bed was neatly made in one corner. The open closet held women’s clothes.

What the hell were we missing? We were at Nineteenth and Independence, right?

Just then, we both heard the first faint chop of a helicopter, approaching fast. A moment later, it was hovering right over the house.

Other sounds filtered in from the street. One loud shout cut through. It reached us at the top of the stairs.

“It’s on the roof!”

I looked up, and that’s when I realized the domed skylight was also a hatch.

Chapter 85

“WE NEED A LADDER UP HERE!” Bree yelled to the cops below. “We need it in a hurry.”

I could see black scrape marks on the wall where there normally was a ladder of some kind for roof access. Not anymore, though. Somebody had taken it away.

The skylight was out of reach without it, even if I got on someone’s shoulders.

Bree and I hurried outside-there was no hiding the situation from the media now. Two other helicopters had joined the first one, circling the house like scavengers overhead. Neighbors, passersby, and more press than I could count were clogging the front walk and the street beyond. What a pain-in-the-ass mess this was turning out to be, and we hadn’t even gotten to the punch line yet.

“Clear this whole area,” I said to the nearest officer. “I’m not fooling around. DCAK has been here!”