Double Cross

“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.

It was Kitz!

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 pla

I turned to Bree. My mind was working overtime. “Kitz blinked twice. Two killers?”

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 story.

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. Let the cops try to print that and trace the puddle back to 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-ski

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.”