Double Cross (Alex Cross 13)

The brilliant creation, Yousef Qasim, was no more. Poof—gone but not forgotten. The male had played Yousef brilliantly, and the audience had been held spellbound from the moment he stepped out on the terrace, his stage. Apparently, many of these onlookers were still in awe of the bravura performance, still talking about it in hushed whispers.

What a fitting encore this was. Hours and hours after the show, all these looky-loos remained outside the luxury apartment building. New admirers arrived every few minutes. The press was all over it—CNN, the other majors, newspapers, radio, video artists, bloggers.

The man nudged the woman with his elbow. “You see what I see?”

She craned her neck, looking left, then right. “Where? There’s so much to look at. Help me out, here.”

“Four o’clock. Now do you see? That’s Detective Bree Stone getting out of the car. And the other one—that’s Alex Cross. I’m certain it is. Cross has come, and it’s only our first show. We’re a hit!”

Chapter 11

FOR THE FIRST HALF HOUR, I tried to convince myself that I was content just sitting in the car, staying on the sidelines. The Mercedes, half station wagon, half SUV, was as comfortable as the easy chair in my living room. A copy of The History of Love by Nicole Krauss sat on my lap while I flipped through various stations on satellite radio, then listened to the local news. I had been savoring the Krauss, because it reminded me of how it was when I first fell in love with fiction. I had another good one at home, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, that I was equally enthralled with.

Plenty of time for reading now that I was out of the game. But was I out of the game?

Listening with one ear, I picked up on a few obvious inaccuracies in the news coverage, the worst being a report that the killer at the Riverwalk was some sort of terrorist. It was too early to jump to that kind of conclusion. Every news outlet in town was on this story, though, the nationals too, all scrambling for a unique angle. That usually led to mistakes, but the media didn’t seem to care as long as they could attribute a theory to some kind of “expert,” or even another news outlet.

Not that the killer would care about accuracy. It seemed obvious to me that what he wanted more than anything was simply attention.

I wondered if any Metro Police personnel had been assigned to follow the news coverage itself. If it were my case, that would be one of the first things I took care of. Emphasis on the if. Because this wasn’t my case. I didn’t have cases anymore. I didn’t miss them either, at least that’s what I told myself as I watched the action from my car.

There was something about being at the busy homicide scene that kicked in my instincts, though. I’d been formulating theories and running different scenarios in my head from the moment I got there—I couldn’t help myself.

The killer had obviously wanted an audience; he’d been consistently described as looking “Middle Eastern,” which added up to . . . what? Was it possible that this was a new kind of terrorism—the door-to-door variety? How did a bestselling crime writer fit in? There had to be some tie-in. Was the killer acting out a brutally sadistic scene he had imagined many times before? Was it something the author had written about? What kind of psychopath wanted to throw victims off twelve-story buildings?

Eventually, my curiosity moved me to my feet. I got out of the car and gazed toward the top floor. I couldn’t see Bree or anyone else up there.

Just a quick look around, I told myself. For old times’ sake. No harm in that.

Chapter 12

WHO WAS I TRYING TO KID, anyway? The Dragon Slayer was on the prowl again, and it felt natural, like I had never been away. Not even for the months I had been.

Most of the television-news cameras were set up around the MPD street-level command center. As I walked nearby, I recognized the captain of Violent Crimes, Thor Richter. Richter was standing behind a bouquet of microphones that had been stuck in the middle of all the chaos, and he was handling the interviews himself.

That probably meant Bree was still upstairs. Fine by her, I was sure. She didn’t like police politics, or Richter in particular, and neither did I. He was too much by-the-book, a ruthless prick and shameless ass-kisser. Plus, who the hell was named Thor? I was being unkind, I knew, but I just didn’t like the captain.

The lobby of the apartment building was relatively quiet, and I was recognized by a couple of uniforms who didn’t seem to know that I wasn’t on the Job anymore and hadn’t been for a while. As I rode the elevator to twelve, I didn’t really expect to get much farther than the primary perimeter. Somebody would be checking badges there.

Somebody was—an old friend, it turned out, Tony Dowell, who used to work in Southeast. I hadn’t seen Tony, or heard from him, in years.

“Look who it is. Alex Cross.”

“Hey there, Tony. I thought they retired cops as old as you. Bree Stone around anywhere?”

Tony reached for his radio but then changed his mind. “Straight down the hall,” he said, and pointed. Then he handed me a pair of latex gloves. “You’ll need these.”

Chapter 13

I FELT A LITTLE SHIVER of anticipation, then kind of an unpleasant chill. Was it that easy to step back into the line of fire, or whatever this was? At the front door to apartment 12F, a small Asian man I recognized as an MPD techie was dusting for prints. That told me it would be relatively calm inside. Chemical elements aren’t introduced until the evidence-collection teams are finished.

I found Bree standing all by herself in the middle of the living room, looking pensive and far away.

A line of dark streaks, probably the victim’s blood, ran across the ivory carpet. A sliding glass door was open to the terrace, and a light breeze rustled the curtains.

Otherwise, the living room looked pretty much undisturbed. There were built-in bookshelves on every wall, and they were filled with hardbacks, mostly fiction, several of them by the victim herself, including foreign editions. Why a crime writer? I wondered. There had to be a reason, at least in the killer’s mind. Was that train of thought correct? Maybe, maybe not, but I was definitely analyzing the scene.

“How’s it going?” I finally spoke.