Double Cross

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.

Chapter 90

IN MANY WAYS, I felt like I was leading a double life-probably because I was. After Sandy Quinlan’s appointment that morning, I had Anthony Demao on deck, figuring I’d squeeze him in for as many sessions as possible following his meltdown. I still didn’t know how things stood between the two of them since the scene that I’d witnessed in my waiting room.

So I was relieved when they ignored each other on her way out that morning. Sandy looked uncomfortable; Anthony just seemed uninterested. I was glad, because this wasn’t a hookup either of them needed. It just felt wrong.

As soon as Sandy was gone, Anthony’s demeanor began to change. He was clearly agitated and seemed shakier than usual. Despite the heat, he’d worn long trousers and a camo jacket, the latter held tightly closed as he walked inside my office and plopped on the couch.

Then he stood again and began to pace around the room. Anthony was walking rapidly, hands jammed into his pockets, mumbling to himself.

“What’s going on?” I finally had to ask. “You seem agitated.”

“You think so, Doc? I had another dream, couple nights in a row. Dream about Basra. The fucking desert, the war, the whole nine yards of bad shit, okay?”

“Anthony, come and sit down. Please.” He had tried to tell me about Basra before but hadn’t said enough for me to understand where he was going with it. I gathered something terrible had happened to him in the war; I just didn’t know what it was.

When Anthony finally slumped down onto the couch, I spotted a lump under his jacket. I knew what it was, and I sat up straight, my blood pumping.

“Are you carrying?” I asked.

He put his hand over the bulge. “It isn’t loaded,” he snapped. “Not a problem.”

“Please give it to me,” I said. “You can’t have a gun in here.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I said it’s not loaded. Don’t you believe me? Anyway, I have a license to carry.”

“Not in here, you don’t.” I stood up now. “That’s it. You have to go.”

“No, no. Here, you take it.” Suddenly Anthony reached under his jacket and pulled out a Colt 9. “Take the damn gun!”

“Slowly,” I said. “Two fingers on the handle. Put it on the coffee table. Keep your other hand where it is.”

Anthony stared at me in a new way, as if he’d just figured something out. “What are you, a cop?”

“Just do what I asked you to do, okay?”

He laid the Colt on the coffee table. Once I had checked that it was empty, I locked the gun in my desk. Took a breath, let it out slowly.

“Now, do you want to talk about your dream?” I asked him. “ Basra? What happened to you there?”

He nodded. Then he began to talk-and to pace the room again. But at least he wasn’t armed.

“It started out the same… the dream. We got hit, and I made it to a trench. Like I always do. But this time I wasn’t alone.”

“Are you talking about Matt?” I asked. We had gotten that far in the dream before.

“He was there with me, yeah. Just the two of us. We got separated from our unit.”

Matt was a buddy of his I’d heard about. They had worked on the same munitions truck, but I didn’t know too much more than that.

“He was ruined, man. Both his legs like hamburger, shredded to shit. I had to drag him by his arms. It was all I could do.” He stared at me for help.

“Anthony, are you talking about your dream or what really happened that night?”

Now his voice went down to a whisper. “That’s the thing, Doc. I think I’m talking about both. Matt was screaming like he was some kind of wild, hurt animal. And when I heard the screaming, in the dream, it was like I knew I’d heard it before.”

“Were you able to help him?” I asked.

“Not really, no. I couldn’t help, couldn’t do anything at all. A medic couldn’t have helped Matt, the condition he was in.”

“Okay. So what happened next?”

“Matt starts saying, ‘I’m not go

I could see that Anthony was into it now, the dream, the horror of what had happened that night in the war. I let him keep going.

“He takes out his own gun. He can barely even hold it. He’s crying ’cause he can’t do it, and I’m crying ’cause I don’t want him to. And mortars are going off everywhere. The sky is lit up like the Fourth of July.”

Anthony shook his head, stopped talking. His eyes were welling up with tears. I thought I understood: there were no words he could use to describe this.

“Anthony?” I asked. “Did you help Matt kill himself?”

A tear rolled all the way down his cheek.

“I put my hand over Matthew’s, and I shut my eyes… then we fired. Together.” Anthony stared at me. “You believe me, don’t you, Dr. Cross?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and there was anger in his eyes. “You’re the doctor. You should know the difference between bad dreams and reality. You do, don’t you?”