The skylight was out of reach without it, even if I got on someone’s shoulders.
Bree and I hurried outside—there was no hiding the situation from the media now. Two other helicopters had joined the first one, circling the house like scavengers overhead. Neighbors, passersby, and more press than I could count were clogging the front walk and the street beyond. What a pain-in-the-ass mess this was turning out to be, and we hadn’t even gotten to the punch line yet.
“Clear this whole area,” I said to the nearest officer. “I’m not fooling around. DCAK has been here!”
Bree and I split up then, and I pushed my way through to get to the first news van I could find with a broadcast tower. It turned out to be Channel Four, parked in front of the armory across the street.
A reporter was already giving her rapid-fire spiel to the camera as I approached on the run. I interrupted her midsentence.
“Do any of those choppers belong to you?” I shouted, and pointed an arm up at the sky.
She was attractive, ash-blond, twentysomething, and immediately indignant. “And who are you?” she asked. Whoever I was, her cameraman swung around to get me in the shot.
I didn’t wait for the answer that I needed from the reporter. I stepped right past her and slid open the panel door on the Channel Four van.
“MPD!” I showed my badge to the wide-eyed tech sipping a “vente” Starbucks at his console. “I need to see exactly what your chopper is seeing.”
Midsip, and without a word, he pointed at one of the screens. A piece of electric-blue tape underneath it said LIVE FEED.
Here was the audience, I realized suddenly.
I’d been wondering how DCAK’s next plan would come into play. Now I knew. Anyone watching television would see this. That sonofabitch had planned everything just so.
I looked at my watch—just past six o’clock, the evening-news hour. That’s why the killer had waited to send out the second e-mail, wasn’t it?
The helicopter shot wasn’t close enough to capture every detail, but there definitely was a body up there. I was fairly sure it was a male, but not 100 percent. Dark pants, light shirt, and what seemed to be blood coming from the neck. The face looked strange, though, distorted in some way that I couldn’t make any sense out of yet.
A collapsible ladder lay on the roof nearby. “Tell your man up there to pan around,” I said. “Please do it right now.”
“You don’t take orders from him.” The young reporter had her helmet of blond hair stuck inside the van now too. It was getting crowded in there.
“You do unless you want to get arrested,” I told the tech. “I will lock you up. Both of you.”
He nodded and spoke into his headset. “Bruce, pan around the rooftop, will ya? Get in closer if you can. This is a police request. Roger that.”
Other than the body, the roof looked deserted, at least from the camera angles. “Okay, that’s good,” I said.
“Back on the body,” the reporter barked from behind me. “This is live.”
“Alex!” Bree was shouting from the sidewalk. “We’ve got a ladder. Let’s go on up there.”
I took one more glance at the screen, and as I did, I saw the victim’s arm move. It was very slight but discernible. I was out of the van in a hurry, nearly knocking Miss Channel Four right off her high heels.
“Bree! This one’s still alive!”
Chapter 86
I WAS THE FIRST ONE up on the roof. Bree was next, with two very nervous EMTs right behind her. After a quick visual scan to make sure the area was clear, the EMTs scampered over to help the victim, who, we hoped, was still alive.
There was a wooden deck next to the hatch. A flat, open area of tar paper stretched beyond that, which was where the body lay. The roof was steaming in the sun. Heat vapors rose up around the body too, and I could see that the pool of blood leaking from his neck had grown considerably.
“Doesn’t look very good,” Bree groaned.
“No, it doesn’t.”
The most jarring thing of all was the mask over the victim’s face. That’s why he had looked so strange in the shot from the helicopter. It was another Richard Nixon caricature—like the one used at the George Washington Memorial Parkway murder scene.
“Why do I think this isn’t the copycat?” I shouted in Bree’s ear over the roar of helicopters swarming above us. “Or that there ever was one?”