Violets Are Blue (Alex Cross 7)

5. Kate McTiernan

I sat in my empty house on Fifth Street and wondered what the hell he would do next. It was driving me crazy; I felt like I was running in circles.

Kyle was capable of anything.

Chapter 104

HE FINALLY called again.

“I killed them and I don’t feel a thing. Nothing at all. You will, though, Alex. In a way, you’re to blame. Nobody but you. I didn’t even want to kill them, but I had to do it. That’s the way the horror story has to go. It’s out of control now. I’ll admit that.”

The horrifying confession came at quarter past five in the morning. I had been asleep about three hours when the phone rang. Panic raced through my body. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.

“Who did you kill?” I asked Kyle. “Who? Tell me who it was. Tell me.”

“What difference does it make? They’re dead, slaughtered. It’s someone you care about. There’s nothing you can do now—except catch me. I suppose I could help you. Isn’t that what you want to hear? Would that make this more interesting for you? Would it make it fair?” He started to laugh uncontrollably. Christ, I had never known him to lose control.

I let him go on. Inflated his ego. That’s what he wanted and needed, wasn’t it?

Who had Kyle killed? Oh God, who was dead? It was more than one person—slaughtered.

“We always worked as a team. In a way, it would be my crowning moment—to catch myself. I’ve thought about it, actually. Fantasized. What better challenge could there be? I can’t think of one. Me against myself.” He started to laugh again.

I had to force myself not to ask again who he had murdered. It would just make Kyle angry. He might hang up. Still, my mind was grinding. I was incredibly afraid. Christine? Kate? Jamilla?

Someone at the FBI? Who? Oh God, who was it? Have some mercy, have pity. Show me that you’re human, you bastard.

“I’m not a highly trained psychologist like yourself, but here’s one amateur’s theory, anyway,” Kyle said. “I think this whole rage thing might be about sibling rivalry. Could it be? You know, Alex, I had a younger brother. He came along at the height of my Oedipus complex, when I was a mere lad of two. He displaced me with my mother and father. Check into it, Alex. Consult with Quantico. Could be important.”

He was so calm, and he was ridiculing me—as a detective and as a psychologist.

My hands were starting to shake. I’d had enough. “Who did you kill this time?” I yelled into the phone. “Who is it?”

Kyle broke my heart. He told me about the murders he’d just committed in great detail. I was certain that he was telling the truth.

Then he hung up, even as I cursed him to hell.

Minutes later I was in my car, bleary eyed, numb, rushing across Washington to the terrible murder scene.

Chapter 105

NO, NO, no!

I hadn’t expected this. It was like a knife thrust into my heart, then twisted until I screamed. Kyle had hurt me badly—and he wanted me to know something: There was worse to come. This was just the beginning.

I stood silent and transfixed in the bedroom of Zach and Liz Taylor. My eyes were blurred by tears. Two of my dearest friends were dead. I had come to their house dozens of times before—for parties, dinner, late-night talks. Zach and Liz had visited on Fifth Street many times. Zach was the godfather to little Alex.

My only consolation was that they had died quickly. Probably Kyle was nervous about getting caught. He knew he had to get in and out of their apartment in the Adams-Morgan section of Washington quickly.

Whatever his reason, he had killed the Taylors with single gunshots to the head. He hadn’t bothered to mutilate the bodies. I thought that the message was clear. This wasn’t about them.

It was about the two of us.

Zach and Liz Taylor hadn’t mattered one way or the other to him. Maybe that was the worst thing of all. How easily he could kill. How much he wanted to hurt me.

This was just the start of it.

It would get worse.