Double Cross (Alex Cross 13)

Jesse James! Would anybody get that one?

Anybody in their right mind?

Chapter 80

NANA SWEARS that good, positive things happen in twos and threes, though I can’t remember that actually happening to me. Lately, even one positive thing in a row was hard to come by.

In the morning, I spoke with Tess Olsen’s editor at a New York publishing house, then to the author’s personal assistant in Maryland, and I was able to get a copy of the proposal for the book that Olsen had planned to write about Kyle Craig. A few lines from the thirty-page outline and pitch were particularly interesting to me.

Olsen had written:

It is important that I gain Kyle Craig’s trust and confidence so that he believes I will write a flattering book detailing his cunning and his brilliance.

Based on our meetings at ADX Florence, I am fairly certain I can do this. Kyle Craig likes me. I can tell that already. I know the criminal mind as well as anyone out there, don’t I?

In my opinion, Kyle Craig believes that he will get out of ADX Florence someday. He is making plans for the future.

He even went so far as to tell me that he is innocent. Is that possible?

Clearly, Kyle had fooled

someone else . . . and then what? Had he arranged her murder? Or had the killer, or killers, in Washington murdered Tess Olsen as some kind of homage to Craig? Was that a possibility?

Either way, there had to be a connection, and it was one of the few real leads we had toward the capture of DCAK. Or Kyle Craig, for that matter.

The second positive thing happened while I was going over everything about the case again. Suddenly I figured out a piece of the puzzle, and it tied into my earlier findings about Tess Olsen.

The Hallmark card—I finally got it! It hit me that Hallmark’s headquarters were in Kansas City—KC.

KC—Kyle Craig.

A couple of other clues quickly became clear.

A figurine of The Scout had been left at the apartment of a murdered woman in Iowa City. Kyle Craig was a suspect in the homicide. The Scout was a famous statue located in Kansas City.

A bottle of Arthur Bryant’s barbecue sauce had been left out in his mother’s kitchen. Arthur Bryant’s was a famous restaurant in KC.

We were finally making some breakthroughs, even if they were clues the killers wanted us to find.

Why was that? Were we proving ourselves worthy? Was I proving myself worthy of this manhunt?

Was I?

Chapter 81

WE FOUND OUT about DCAK’s next move less than three days later. After I saw my slate of morning patients—including the vet Anthony Demao, who was back and who had had a minor meltdown during our session to prove it—I connected with Bree at the Daly Building. My own desk at the Daly was counterproductively stuffed with DCAK case materials, most of them attached to dead leads, unfortunately. Our plan that day was to weed through and archive everything that needed to come off the radar so we could refocus our efforts where they might do some good.

It never happened.

The phone on my desk rang around two thirty. I picked up and heard a voice that I recognized.

“Detective Cross? It’s Jeanne Phillips at the Post. I’m wondering if you’ve seen the latest e-mail yet and if you’d care to comment on it?”

“Don’t know what e-mail you mean, Jeanne,” I said. Jeanne had funneled some pretty good information my way in the past, which was the reason I was willing to stay on the line with her.

“Trust me on this, you want to know. How about if I hold on while you check your in-box?”

Suddenly, I realized that whatever this was, I didn’t want to be on the phone with a reporter from the Washington Post when I saw it.