Bree and I split up then, and I pushed my way through to get to the first news van I could find with a broadcast tower. It turned out to be Channel Four, parked in front of the armory across the street.
A reporter was already giving her rapid-fire spiel to the camera as I approached on the run. I interrupted her midsentence.
“Do any of those choppers belong to you?” I shouted, and pointed an arm up at the sky.
She was attractive, ash-blond, twentysomething, and immediately indignant. “And who are you?” she asked. Whoever I was, her cameraman swung around to get me in the shot.
I didn’t wait for the answer that I needed from the reporter. I stepped right past her and slid open the panel door on the Channel Four van.
“MPD!” I showed my badge to the wide-eyed tech sipping a “vente” Starbucks at his console. “I need to see exactly what your chopper is seeing.”
Midsip, and without a word, he pointed at one of the screens. A piece of electric-blue tape underneath it said LIVE FEED.
I’d been wondering how DCAK’s next plan would come into play. Now I knew.
I looked at my watch-just past six o’clock, the evening-news hour.
The helicopter shot wasn’t close enough to capture every detail, but there definitely was a body up there. I was fairly sure it was a male, but not 100 percent. Dark pants, light shirt, and what seemed to be blood coming from the neck. The face looked strange, though, distorted in some way that I couldn’t make any sense out of yet.
A collapsible ladder lay on the roof nearby. “Tell your man up there to pan around,” I said. “Please do it right now.”
“You don’t take orders from him.” The young reporter had her helmet of blond hair stuck inside the van now too. It was getting crowded in there.
“You do unless you want to get arrested,” I told the tech. “I
He nodded and spoke into his headset. “Bruce, pan around the rooftop, will ya? Get in closer if you can. This is a police request. Roger that.”
Other than the body, the roof looked deserted, at least from the camera angles. “Okay, that’s good,” I said.
“Alex!” Bree was shouting from the sidewalk. “We’ve got a ladder. Let’s go on up there.”
I took one more glance at the screen, and as I did, I saw the victim’s arm move. It was very slight but discernible. I was out of the van in a hurry, nearly knocking Miss Channel Four right off her high heels.
“Bree! This one’s still alive!”
Chapter 86
I WAS THE FIRST ONE up on the roof. Bree was next, with two very nervous EMTs right behind her. After a quick visual scan to make sure the area was clear, the EMTs scampered over to help the victim, who, we hoped, was still alive.
There was a wooden deck next to the hatch. A flat, open area of tar paper stretched beyond that, which was where the body lay. The roof was steaming in the sun. Heat vapors rose up around the body too, and I could see that the pool of blood leaking from his neck had grown considerably.
“Doesn’t look very good,” Bree groaned.
“No, it doesn’t.”
The most jarring thing of all was the mask over the victim’s face. That’s why he had looked so strange in the shot from the helicopter. It was another Richard Nixon caricature-like the one used at the George Washington Memorial Parkway murder scene.
“Why do I think this isn’t the copycat?” I shouted in Bree’s ear over the roar of helicopters swarming above us. “Or that there ever was one?”
She nodded. “I suspect you’re right.” We were thinking the same thing again. The so-called copycat murders were DCAK’s own homage to himself. And this was the moment when we were all meant to know it-with the television cameras rolling overhead. The whole world was supposed to be watching as the bastard put one over on us again.
“Is he alive?” I shouted to the nearest EMT. I hadn’t seen any movement from the victim since we’d come up on the roof.
“BP’s nonpalpable. Pulse one twenty,” he called to us. Meanwhile, his partner was radioing down for a gurney.
“Get that mask off him!” Bree said.
Easier said than done. Apparently the latex had melted onto the hot roof at the back of his head. Finally the EMTs had to cut the mask up the front.
Then, as the latex pulled away, a familiar face emerged.
Bree gasped, and I took her arm, partly for the support that I needed myself.
The FBI man who’d given us so much computer intel was ghostly pale and covered with swollen beads of sweat. His eyes were closed.
I dropped to my knees next to Brian Kitzmiller. The pads at his neck couldn’t keep up with the bleeding. It was a sad, horrendous mess.
“Kitz!” I took his hand and applied slight pressure. “It’s Alex. Help is on the way.”
His fingers fluttered in mine, barely a squeeze, but he was still with us.
His eyes finally opened, and he seemed confused at first.
When he saw it was me, though, he tried to say something. His puffy and blistered lips moved, but if he made a sound, I couldn’t hear it.
“Hang in there,” I told him. “We’ve got you now. You’re going to be okay. Hold on, Kitz.”
He tried to talk again, but nothing that I could understand came out of his mouth.
With what looked to be great effort, he blinked twice. Then his eyes rolled back in his head. The EMTs kept at it, but by the time the gurney got there, it was all over.
Kitz was gone. And he had died on camera, just the way DCAK planned it.
I turned to Bree. My mind was working overtime. “Kitz blinked twice.
Chapter 87
BEFORE THE POLICE and TV news choppers got there, DCAK had worked his way across two sections of roof. Then he scuttled down a wobbly painting scaffold to a community parking area in the back, where he would be safe.
He was traveling heavy today, with a laptop and camera in a black satchel slung over his shoulder-but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He was jacked up, and he was definitely into this new role… and the
He slipped off the latex gloves, then plucked a silver lighter out of his pocket. Seconds later, the gloves were a lump of melted rubber on the cement.
