“Whatever issues these are that you need to work through, I can recommend some professionals. But in the meantime, if you haven’t noticed, we lost an officer here today. Show a little respect.”
I guess I’d given him the rise he was looking for. Siegel took a step back, but still kept that obnoxious grin on his face. It was as if he always had some kind of private joke going on.
“Fair enough,” he said, and motioned over his shoulder. “I’ll just be over here if you need me.”
“I won’t need you,” I said, and went right back to work.
BY NINE O’CLOCK, I’d had an emergency phone call with the Bureau Directorate and the Field Intelligence Group; a briefing with the mayor’s office; and a separate report-in with my own team from MPD, who were all on the scene by now.
The important question at this point was whether we were dealing with the Patriot snipers or someone else. Ballistics was the fastest way to prove a connection, if there was one, and Cailin Jerger from the FBI lab in Quantico was brought out by chopper for a consult.
It was an amazing sight, watching the black Bell helicopter come in for a landing right there on the deserted parkway.
I ran out to greet the chopper and walk Jerger back in.
She was in jeans and a hooded Quantico sweatshirt; they probably pulled her right out of her living room. You’d never guess to look at this small, unassuming woman that she
knew more about firearms examination than anyone in a three-state radius.
When I showed her where Tambour had gone down, and the spread on the four shots, she looked back at me with a knowing glance. I didn’t respond at all, not a word. I wanted Jerger to draw her own, unfettered conclusions.
At the evidence tent, the whole world was waiting for us. Outside, there was a crowd of cops and agents, including most of Tambour’s unit from NSID. Inside, we found Chief Perkins, Jim Heekin from the Directorate, Max Siegel, various assistant chiefs from MPD and assistant SACs from the Bureau, and a few reps from ATF. Jerger looked around at the sea of expectant faces and then dove right in as if she and I were the only ones there.
Each of the four slugs was bagged separately on a long folding table. Three of them were in relatively good shape; the fourth was badly mangled, for obvious reasons.
“Well, they’re definitely rifle shot,” Jerger said right away. “But these weren’t fired from an M110 like the previous incidents.”
She took a pair of tongs off the table and plucked one of the good slugs from its bag. Then she used a magnifier from her pocket to look at the base.
“Yeah, I thought so, .388,” she said. “And see this ‘L’ stamped here? That tells me it’s an original Lapua Magnum. They were developed specifically for long-range sniping.”
“Can you get any kind of weapon report off of these?” I asked her.
She shrugged one shoulder. “Depends. I’ll look for rifling
patterns back at the lab, but I have to tell you ahead of time — these puppies have some pretty tough jackets on them. Striations are going to be minimal.”
“How about first impressions?” I asked. “We’re really in a jam here.”
Jerger took a deep breath. I don’t think she liked speculating. Her job was all about precision.
“Well, outside of equipment failure, I don’t know what the motivation would be for coming off an M110 and using something else.”
She held up another evidence bag and looked at it. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. This is damn fine ammo, but in terms of long-range shooting, the 110’s a Rolls-Royce, and everything else is just… well, everything else.”
“So you think this was a different gunman?” Chief Perkins asked, probably leading her more than he should.
“I’m saying it would be kind of strange if it wasn’t, that’s all. I
don’t know
the shooter’s motivations. As for the weapon itself, I can tell you that some possibilities are more likely than others.”
“Such as?” I asked.
She rattled them right off. “M24, Remington 700, TRG-42, PGM 338. Those are some of the most common applications, militarily anyway.” Then she looked right at me, with a grim kind of smile on her face. “There’s also the Bor. Ever heard of it?”
“Should I have?” I said.
“Not necessarily,” she said, and continued to stare at me. “Just that it would be a really weird coincidence. The .338 variant on that one’s called an Alex Rifle.”
KYLE CRAIG WORE a ridiculous grin on his face — on Max Siegel’s face — all the way home to Second Street. He couldn’t help himself. In his entire career and all of its incarnations, he’d never had such a good time as tonight.
Big kudos went to Agent Jerger for picking up on the Alex Rifle reference, and so quickly!
Maybe the Bureau still had a few sharp knives in the drawer after all. These arcane little clues of his had become something of a hallmark, but to actually be there when one of them was discovered? A unique thrill, to say the least. A total blast.
But also just a prelude. This little drama down by the river was the “one” in a one-two punch that nobody was going to see coming — and no one would feel more than Alex when it landed.
Brace yourself, my friend. It’s on the way!
Kyle checked his watch as he closed the front door behind him. It was only twelve thirty, and the sun didn’t come up for hours. There was still plenty of time for what he had to get done.
FIRST THINGS FIRST, he unlocked the basement door and let himself down the narrow stairs to the cinder-block-walled workshop underneath the house. It wasn’t exactly his father’s old walnut-paneled den, with the twelve-foot fireplace and rolling ladders, but it did the trick and would work just as well. A big bulkhead door at the back had allowed him to bring down a new chest freezer the other day, and he went to it now.
Agent Patel was sleeping peacefully inside. She still looked basically like herself, but she’d grown quite stiff, which seemed fitting. The girl had been pretty much the same way when she was alive.
“Ready for a change of scenery, my dear?”
He lifted her out and laid her on a sheet of four-millimeter painter’s plastic to loosen up while he went about his other business. It reminded him of his not so dear but very much
departed mother, Miriam — the way she used to leave a frozen tray of pork chops or a flank steak on the counter in the morning so it would be ready to cook up for dinner that night. He couldn’t say the old girl never taught him anything useful.
Next, he tackled the walls. Dozens of new photos were taped up alongside the old, the result of several mind-numbing days of additional surveillance on Cross’s movements. Not the most stimulating part of the process so far, but it had certainly paid off.
Here were Alex Cross and John Sampson, working the scene of that wonderfully twisted new case in Franklin Square.
And there was Alex with his son Ali, and the mother, Christine, who seemed to have brought quite a bit of Sturm und Drang of her own to the table.
It all came down now — every picture, every map, every clipping he’d collected since coming to Washington. None of it was necessary anymore. He’d committed it all to memory. And besides — now was the time to get the details out of his head and really start to fly!
Once upon a time, Kyle knew, he would have wanted — no,
needed
— to have this thing mapped out down to the finest details. But that wasn’t true anymore. Now his options just hung there in the air, like so many pieces of fruit waiting to be picked.
Maybe
the final narrative went something like this: Alex wakes up on the bathroom floor, the knife still in his hand. He gets up, disoriented, and stumbles into the bedroom to find Bree gutted in their bed. When he runs to check on the children, it’s more of the same. The grandmother, too. Alex
can’t remember a thing, not even how he got home that night. Flash forward a year or two, and he’s learning all about the unique hell that is maximum-security lockup, festering in his own innocence while the walls close in around him a little more every day.
Or — maybe not.
Maybe he’d take Alex out definitively, once and for all. Good old-fashioned torture and murder, not to mention getting to actually watch Cross die, had considerable appeal, too.
In the meantime, there was no specific hurry to decide the final option. His only job for now was to breathe Max Siegel’s air, stay open to the possibilities, and focus on whatever was right in front of him.
And, at the present moment, that was Agent Patel.
When he went back to check on her, she was just starting to soften up around the edges. All well and good. By the time she started putting up any kind of smell, he’d be rid of her.
“Fun while it lasted, roomie,” he said, and leaned down to give her a chaste good-bye kiss on the lips. Then he rolled his departing guest into a standard white body bag and zipped her up for transport.
ANOTHER EARLY MORNING, and another phone call from Sampson. This time, I wasn’t even out of bed. “Listen, sugar, I know you had a hell of a night out on the parkway, but I thought you’d want to know. We just got another body in this numbers case.”
“Great timing,” I said, still flat on my back with Bree’s arm slung over my chest.
“I guess nobody’s getting my memos about that. Listen, I can cover this if you need to take a pass.”
“Where are you?” I asked him.
“The bus terminal behind Union Station. Seriously, though, you sound like the bad half of a hangover, Alex. Why don’t you stay put, and forget I called?”
“No,” I said. Every part of me wanted to stay attached to
that mattress, but you get only one first shot at a crime scene. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Bree grabbed at my arm as I sat up and swung my feet to the floor.
“God, Alex, this is, like, the definition of ‘early.’ What’s going on now?”
“Sorry to wake you,” I said, and leaned back far enough to kiss her good morning. “You know, I can’t wait to marry you, by the way.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that going to change any of this?”
“It won’t,” I said. “I just can’t wait.”
She smiled, and even in the semidark it was a beautiful thing to see. No woman I’ve ever known can look as good as she does in the morning. Or as sexy. I had to get up again fast before I started something I couldn’t finish.
“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, a little groggy but up on one elbow now.
“Thanks, no. I’ve got this. But if you could get the kids to school —”
“Done. Anything else?”
“A couple of quick, unspeakable acts before I leave?”
“Rain check,” she said. “Sampson’s waiting. Now go — before we both do something we won’t regret.”
I was gone a few minutes later, and had to wave off the security detail in the backyard when they saw me launch out the door. It had been only a few hours since I’d come dragging past them, moving in the opposite direction.
“Hey, guys. Regina’s just getting up,” I said. “Coffee’ll be out for you soon.”
“And biscuits?” asked one of them.
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” I said, and laughed.
This was getting out of hand, though. I knew about crazy hours as well as the next guy, but leaving the house before Nana Mama even gets her kitchen up and running for the day?
That
is the definition of “early.”
ALL OF THE EARLY-MORNING buses were lined up on the street outside Union Station when I got there.
Sampson had already shut down the rear terminal, and there were traffic cops in orange vests everywhere, pointing people to where they needed to go. One more colossal headache, but at least it wasn’t mine.
I pulled around back and walked up from street level to the cavernous main deck of the parking garage. Sampson was waiting for me with a large coffee in each hand.
“I’m hating this one, sugar. Hating it real bad,” he said, handing over my morning fuel.
We walked toward the back, where I could see a row of big brown Dumpsters against the wall on the H Street side. Only one of them was sitting open.
“Nude this time,” Sampson said. “And the numbers are all
down her back. You’ll see. Also, it looks like she was stabbed instead of beaten to death. All in all, a real nasty scene.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do this. See what we’ve got.” I slipped on my gloves and stepped up to survey the damage.
She was facedown on top of the refuse inside — mostly bags of garbage from the terminal. The numbers were etched into her skin in two parallel rows on either side of the spine. It wasn’t an equation, though. This was something else.
N38°55’46.1598"
W94°40’3.5256"
“Are those GPS coordinates?” I said.
“Be curious to see where they point, if they are,” Sampson said. “This guy’s evolving, Alex.”
“Anyone move the body?”
“ME still hasn’t gotten here. I don’t know what the holdup is, but I don’t think we should wait anymore.”
“I agree. What a way to start the day. Give me a hand here.”