Double Cross

him.

Everything else about him stayed as it was: long blond hair in a ponytail, light growth of beard to match the bleached eyebrows, brown contacts, steel-rimmed glasses, and a White Sox cap turned backward on his head.

The name for today was Neil Stephens, he had decided. He was supposed to be an AP photographer based out of Chicago. The camera was a brand-new Leica. He’d blend right in here. No problems about that. Plus, he’d get to watch the whole thing come to a climax. See all the players close-up, check out their reactions under pressure. No one could have done this better, not even Kyle Craig on his best day.

When he came around from the A Street side of the development, the block on Nineteenth looked like a Barnum and Bailey Circus-in a good way. He stood on the bumper of a parked car and took several wide-angle shots-police cruisers up and down the block, ambulances, a SWAT truck in the armory parking lot, a dozen or more TV and radio stations on the scene. Hundreds of locals, it looked like. They were loitering up and down the street, trying to figure out what the hell was going down.

Did anybody know yet? Had they figured it out? DCAK was about to put their mopey little neighborhood on the map. Soon they would all start thanking God it hadn’t happened to them.

Yes, little minds would be blown sky-high tonight. He was one of the best ever now, wasn’t he? Right up there with Kyle Craig.

By the time the helicopters arrived, the police on the ground had gotten their act together enough to wrangle the masses out of harm’s way. Alex Cross was on the scene-and Bree Stone too. Actually, she was getting a little too big for her britches, he was thinking. Maybe it was time to do something about that.

That could be his next story.

Chapter 88

NEIL STEPHENS, AP, jostled shoulder to shoulder with the other press, all of them competing for “money shots” across the street from the yellow house where the FBI man’s body had been found. Of course, he already had his million-dollar shot-a nice close-up on Brian Kitzmiller’s face. Eyes wide open, neck bleeding out like a stuck pig’s.

“Some crazy scene, huh?” Another lensman turned to speak to him. A brown-skinned fireplug of a guy. “Whole story’s unbelievable, right? You been covering it from the beginning?”

You could say that, DCAK thought to himself.

“Just got to town,” he said, making sure to flatten his vowels for a kind of nasal Chicago accent. Jest gaht to town. He loved details like that. That’s where the grace was, and the devil too. “Doing a piece on the detectives and CSI. That’s my angle here. Folks love their CSI. This little turn of events is just a, uh -”

“Lucky coincidence?”

The killer returned the guy’s cynical smile. “That’s right, I guess. Lucky me.”

“Here they come!” someone shouted, and Neil Stephens of the AP raised his camera along with everybody else.

The door across the street opened. Detectives Cross and Stone came out first, ahead of the body. They both looked like they’d been eating the same shit sandwich-and it looked good in telephoto.

Click! Nice little two-shot of the opposition. Beaten to a pulp but not quite defeated. Still standing, anyway.

Cross looked especially pissed off. His hands and shirt were covered in Kitzmiller’s blood.

Click!

Another classic shot.

The two of them joined the other cop-John Sampson, Cross’s friend-who was waiting on the sidewalk. Stone said something in the big lug’s ear-click!-and Sampson shook his head. He apparently couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Probably the news that it was Brian Kitzmiller up on the roof.

Click, click, click!

This shit was golden.

The little guy next to him kept talking while he worked, a real live chatterbox. “They say Cross over there is one of our best. Seems like he’s getting his ass kicked a little on this one.”

“Looks that way, huh?” Neil Stephens said, and kept snapping away, getting each of the three detectives’ faces close-up, as tight as he could go. Nothing too arty, but good stuff. Keeping it real.

Then he pulled back some and got all three of them in one master shot.

Click, click, click!

Then he stopped shooting and just watched their faces through the viewfinder for several heartbeats. Is that how he’d take them out in the end? All three in one shot heard round the world? Or maybe do it nice and slow-one at a time.

Stone.

Sampson.

Cross.

He hadn’t decided yet. There was no rush-better to enjoy the journey and get there when he got there. However it went down, the ending would be the same: dead, dead, and dead. And he would be a legend-right up there with the best.

“So you say you just got to town?” The little guy was still blabbing his ass off. “Guess that means you haven’t talked to any of them yet, huh?”

“Not yet,” Neil Stephens said. Naht yet. “But I’m definitely looking forward to it.”

Chapter 89

THERE IS A SAD LITTLE DEATH of hope and optimism that happens every time something tragic and unforeseen like this goes down. It was as if Kitz’s murder opened up a little more room for hatred in my heart. Was that true? All I could hope for now was that we would get the killer-or killers-and stop all this somehow.

So I did the one positive thing I could do: I kept working the case, harder than ever before. For starters, Bree, Sampson, and I stayed at the house on Nineteenth Street late into the night. We sucked every last drop of evidence out of the crime scene, but truthfully there wasn’t much to go on. The place was clean. It turned out that the homeowners were away for the month. None of the neighbors had seen anything unusual. No one had spotted DCAK before or after he murdered Brian Kitzmiller.

I got home around three thirty the next morning and grabbed a few hours of sleep, then pushed myself to get up and start all over again. There were patients to see first thing, but I used my early-morning run to the office to go over everything in my head one more time. Then again. And again.

What was I missing? He was evolving-that much was clear. Just about every successful serial killer does; it’s only a matter of how. Certainly his methods were improving, and growing more complex. Everything about yesterday was a little bigger-the news coverage, the derring-do, and the amount of live-television time he’d gotten.

It was about control, wasn’t it? That’s what was changing most dramatically here. It crystallized for me as I sprinted across the National Mall, my lungs starting to burn. With each murder, DCAK got a little more control, a little more of an edge on us. Which meant-ironically-that time wasn’t on our side.

I was still thinking of the killer as he, but that might not be true. A man and a woman were probably working together, leaving a trail of clues for us to follow.