The feeling in the den went from bad to a lot worse. The killer—or the terrorist, as I’d already begun to think of him—approached Tess Olsen. He pulled hard on the leash, and she struggled to her feet. The woman was sobbing uncontrollably. Possibly she knew what was going to happen now. Did that mean she knew the killer? How would she know him? Because of a book she was writing? What was her latest project?
Seconds later, the man had pulled her out on the terrace. He first peeled, then ripped the tape off her mouth. We couldn’t hear much from this distance—not until he grabbed Mrs. Olsen and hung her over the edge. Then her piercing screams reached the camera’s microphone, which was set up maybe twenty feet away.
All the while, the killer kept checking over his shoulder, looking toward the camera every few seconds.
“See that? How he moved back into the frame?” Bree said. “He wasn’t just putting on a show for the crowd on the street. This was meant for us as well—for whoever found the tape, anyway. Look at the bastard’s face.” Now he was smiling. Even from this distance, his eerie grin was clear and unmistakable.
The next few seconds seemed to stretch on forever, as I’m sure they did for Tess Olsen. He pulled her back inside and then set her down on the floor. Did she think there would be a reprieve? That she was to be spared? Her shoulders heaved once, then she began to cry again. A minute or so later, he brought her out on the terrace again.
“Here it comes,” Bree said gravely. “I don’t want to watch this.” But she did. We all did.
The killer was a powerful man, probably over six feet tall and well built. He shocked me by lifting Tess Olsen like a barbell, straight up over his head. He looked back at the camera one more time—Yes, you bastard, we’re watching—then winked and threw her off the balcony.
“My God,” Bree whispered. “Did he just wink at us?”
He didn’t leave the terrace, though. Or the picture frame. I could see by the angle of his head that he wasn’t looking straight down to where she fell. He was looking out at his audience, at the people down on the street. He was taking chances that he didn’t need to take.
In the scheme of things, that was good for us. Maybe that’s how we’d find him, catch this bastard. Because he was reckless—and liked to preen in front of an audience.
Then I analyzed my own thought: We, not they, were going to get this sonofabitch.
And then, the killer spoke to the camera, and this was the eeriest part of all. “You can try to capture me,” he said, “but you will fail . . . Dr. Cross.”
Sampson, Bree, and I turned to one another. John and I were speechless, and all Bree could manage was “Holy shit, Alex.”
Ready or not, I was back in the game.
Chapter 17
WELL, I WASN’T READY. Not yet, anyway. Four days after the Riverwalk murder, I was thinking about my patients. I was already conflicted, though. I was trying not to focus on Tess Olsen’s murder, and who the maniac killer might be, and how he could possibly know me, and what the hell he wanted from me.
I couldn’t help starting my day by checking the latest news on washingtonpost.com. Nothing further had happened during the night, thank God. No more murders, so at least he wasn’t on a spree.
The morning’s sessions would keep me on my toes, anyway. It was my biggest day of the week, the one I looked forward to but also dreaded in some ways. There was always the hope that I might do somebody some good, have a breakthrough. Or, possibly, I could fall right on my ass.
It started at seven with a recently widowed DC firefighter who was in conflict between a sense of duty to his job and kids, and a growing sense of meaninglessness about life that produced daily thoughts of suicide.
At eight I saw a Desert Storm vet who was still wrestling with demons he’d brought home from the war. He was a referral from my own therapist, Adele Finally, and I was hopeful that I could help him eventually. Still, this was the crisis stage of his treatment, so it was too early to tell if we were really communicating.
Next came a woman whose postpartum depression had left her with a lot of ambivalence toward her six-month-old daughter. We discussed her little girl and even talked about my feelings—just for a minute—about Damon possibly heading off to prep school. Same as in police work, I was usually unorthodox in the sessions. I was there to talk to people, and I talked freely, for the most part.
I had a half-hour break, during which I checked in with Bree, then glanced at the news on washingtonpost.com again. Still nothing new, no further attacks, no explanations for the death of Tess Olsen.
The morning’s final patient was a Georgetown law student whose mysophobia had become so intense, she’d begun incinerating her own underwear every night.
Quite a morning. Satisfying in a strange way. And relatively safe—at least for me.
Chapter 18
BREE CALLED THE OFFICE while I was eating an unbuttered hard roll before my one o’clock. “We did some close-up work on the tapes,” she said. “Tell me what you think of this, Alex. There’s a scar on the killer’s forehead. Shape of a half-moon. It’s fairly pronounced.”
I thought for a moment before answering. “Could mean head trauma at some time. This is a shot in the dark, but he could have damaged frontal lobes. People with frontal-lobe damage can display bad tempers and impulsiveness.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Bree said. “Nice having you on the team.”
I was on the team? Since when? Had I agreed to that? I didn’t think so.
After lunch, and the very nice homicide-case chat with Bree, I had my last client of the day, also my favorite, a woman in her midthirties named Sandy Quinlan.
Sandy was a recent transplant to DC from small-town life in northern Michigan, not far from Canada. She’d accepted an inner-city teaching job in Southeast, which had endeared her to me immediately.
Unfortunately, Sandy didn’t like herself very much. “I’ll bet you have a dozen clients like me. All these lonely, depressed single women in the big, bad city.”
“Actually, I don’t.” I told her the truth, a terrible habit with me. “You’re my only DSW in the BBC.”
Sandy got the joke and smiled, then went on. “Well, it’s just . . . pathetic. Nearly every woman I know is looking for the same dumb-ass thing.”
“Happiness?” I asked.
“I was going to say a man. Or a woman, I suppose. Somebody to love.”
I definitely saw a different person in Sandy than she saw in herself. She chose to appear as the classic loner stereotype, nice looks hidden behind black-rimmed glasses and dark, baggy clothes. As she’d grown comfortable with me, she’d proven to be personable, interesting, and funny when she wanted to be. And she cared deeply about the children she taught. She talked about them frequently and in the warmest terms. No ambivalence whatsoever.
“I have a real hard time seeing you as pathetic,” I finally said to her. “Sorry, it’s just an opinion. I could be all wrong about that.”
“Well, when your therapist is probably your best friend, call it what you want.” Before I could respond, she laughed self-consciously. “Don’t worry, I don’t mean that as psycho as it sounds. I just mean that . . .”
My human impulse was to reach out to her, but as a therapist, I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, anyway. There was something in her eyes, though—they were so needy—that I couldn’t help having a dual response. I wanted her to know that I cared about how she did. And I wanted to make sure that our relationship was clear. Maybe Sandy’s tone and that expectant glance of hers hadn’t meant anything. Then again, everything means something, or so I’ve read in a lot of very thick books used at schools like Georgetown and Johns Hopkins.
I’d have to be careful with Sandy. We got through the session okay, and once she left, I was done for the day. Or was I? Did I have a second job to go to now?
I was just coming down the stairs of my building when my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number. Now what?
I put the phone to my ear.
“I’m calling for Kyle Craig,” a male voice said. He was breaking up some but had my full attention. “He can’t come to the phone right now . . . because he’s in solitary confinement in Colorado. But he wanted you to know he’s thinking about you every day, and he has a surprise planned for you. A terrific surprise, right there in Washington, DC. Remember, Kyle is the man with the plan. Oh, and he also wants you to know that he hasn’t seen the sun in four years—and it’s made him stronger and better at what he does.”
The phone went dead in my hand.
Kyle Craig—Jesus, what next?
And what was that message supposed to mean? “He has a surprise planned for you.”
Chapter 19
I TRIED TO TELL MYSELF that I couldn’t spend a lot of time worrying about the homicidal maniacs I had already put away in jail. Not when some others were still walking free. Besides, nobody had ever come close to breaking out of ADX Florence. And this wasn’t the first time Craig had threatened me from his jail cell.
Also, I wasn’t on the Job anymore. Of course, I was going out with the head detective on a very big, very nasty case.
The Riverwalk homicide was already a media sensation. Everybody seemed to be talking about it. Even my patients had brought it up. The more hysterical news outlets spun some absurd theory every couple of hours. They were selling fear 24-7, doing a brisk business, and I had to admit I dealt with that particular commodity myself. Except that I tried to relieve the fear, as best I could, anyway; I had always attempted to stop the panic and make it go away by taking killers off the streets.
All the MPD theories about the killer seemed to be going nowhere, or at least Bree thought so. The facial image from the video had no match in the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. The voiceprint had been contracted out to the same agency that worked with the Bureau on Osama bin Laden’s recordings after 9⁄11. So far, no luck there either, but it was too soon to expect much.
Also, the killer hadn’t identified himself with any jihad or cell. And no one had stepped up with information about him after seeing—on repeated news broadcasts—still pictures made by spectators of the murder.
Bree shared every shred of information with the Feds, but she also continued her own investigation. That meant sixteen-hour days for her.
On Thursday evening, I stopped by her office, hoping to coax her out for a bite to eat. The MPD’s Violent Crimes Unit is fairly inconspicuous, located behind an ordinary-looking strip mall in Southeast. There’s more than enough parking, though, which some cops joke is the real reason everybody wants to work there. It just could be.
I found Bree’s cube empty. The computer was still on, with a yellow sticky note on the monitor that said Call Alex in Bree’s handwriting. I hadn’t heard from her, though—not all day. So what was she up to now?
“You looking for Bree?” The detective from the next cubicle gestured with his half-eaten sub. “Try the conference room. Down that hallway to your left. She’s been camping out in there.”
When I entered the room, Bree was sitting with her feet up and a remote in one hand, scratching her head with the other. The killer’s video was playing on the television. Open files, pages of notes, and crime-scene photos were spread out everywhere. And still, just seeing her there turned me on more than I cared to admit.
“Hey, you. What time is it?” she called when she spotted me hovering across the room.
I closed the door before kissing her hello a couple of times. “Dinnertime, break time. You hungry?”
“Starved, actually. Just watch this with me a few more times? I’m going cross-eyed in here by myself.”
I was happy to help out and then not terribly surprised when “a few more times” became dozens of viewings, and dinner at Kinkead’s turned into take-out empanadas from around the corner.
The grisly murder tape from the Riverwalk never got any easier to watch. Neither did hearing my name spoken on it. I compensated by lasering in on the killer. Maybe there was some nuance of his speech or behavior, something nobody had noticed yet. I knew this exercise wasn’t about giant leaps right now; it was about making small connections. Like Tess Olsen being a crime writer. Or maybe even the Hallmark greeting cards I’d noticed in the apartment. The killer’s need for an audience.
So it surprised us both a few minutes later when we found something important, something that might be huge.
Chapter 20
IT STARTED OUT as a barely discernible flash, something almost subliminal in the static just before the second half of the tape began. Bree and I had been staring so much at what the killer wanted us to see, we hadn’t really looked anywhere else.
“Hold it a second,” I said.
I picked up the remote and rewound the tape a bit, then froze it.
“There,” I said to Bree. “See it?”
It was almost nothing. More like the suggestion of an image, almost too fast for the human eye or even the slow-motion feature on the VCR. A ghost is what it was. A clue. Left there on purpose?
“This tape’s been used before,” I said.
Bree was already putting on her shoes, which were size-ten black flats. “You know anyone at the Cyber Unit over at the Bureau?” she blurted out.
The police department relied heavily on the FBI for video-forensics assistance. I knew a few names over there, but it was now nine o’clock at night. That didn’t seem to matter to Bree, who was up out of her seat and pacing.
She finally picked up the phone herself. “Let me try Wendy Timmerman. She works late.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Wendy Timmerman works late? Someone’s been paying attention.”
Wendy was ostensibly an office manager for the department, but she was also something of a secret weapon for anyone who wanted to bend the rules a little without breaking the law. She knew everyone, and everyone, it seemed, owed her one kind of favor or another.
Plus, she had no life. She practically lived at her desk.
Sure enough, Wendy talked for a couple of minutes to Bree, then called back with a name and number.
“Jeffery Antrim,” Bree said, hanging up. “Lives over in Adams Morgan. Supposed to be a genius at this stuff. I guess he moonlights out of his apartment, but Wendy said bring him a six-pack, and we’ll be admitted to his lair in a flash. Hey—remind me to send Wendy some flowers.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “She’ll call you when she wants a favor. It’ll be more than some flowers.”
Chapter 21
AS WENDY TIMMERMAN had suggested we should, we stopped at a convenience store on our way over to the Adams Morgan neighborhood. We sneaked a couple of tantalizing kisses in the store, then in the car, but now we were on our way again, back to business, damn it. Jeffery Antrim, who seemed closer to Damon’s age than my own, was friendly enough and let us right in when I showed him the beer. I had my doubts about the “boy genius” label until I saw his home setup. The small apartment—laboratory, “lair,” whatever—barely had room for furniture. I wondered if any of the expensive equipment, piled everywhere, had been pilfered from the Bureau.
We sat on mismatched kitchen chairs for a few hours, drinking the second six-pack we’d brought, while Jeffery worked in the other room. Sooner than I expected, he called us in to look at what he had found.
“Here’s the scoopy-doopy-doo. There wasn’t much more than shadow images on the underlying track. So I captured everything I could. Then digitized it. I’m assuming you won’t mind a composite of deinterlaced frames?”
“I guess it depends,” Bree said.
“On what?”
“On what the hell you just said, Jeffery. You speak English? Or maybe Spanish? My Spanish is serviceable.”
Jeffery smiled at Bree. “Well, here you go. Take a look for yourselves. I can always break it back down if you want.” He tapped out a few more commands. “It’s printing now, but you can see it here. Take a good look at this.”
We leaned close to watch one of the small monit
ors in a tower of gadgetry stacked on his desk.
The image was indeed shadowy, more dark than light, but still discernible. In fact, it was immediately familiar to both of us.
“Holy shit,” Bree said under her breath. “Suddenly, it all becomes clear as mud.”
“Isn’t that Abu Ghraib?” Jeffery asked from where he was stationed behind us. “It is . . . right?”
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq was some years old now but was still a sore spot in a lot of Washington circles, and elsewhere, of course. Apparently with the Riverwalk killer as well.
The image was either a still photo or a news-video capture. It didn’t really matter which at this point. Whatever details were unclear, I could pretty much fill in from memory. A female American soldier stood in a wide cell-lined corridor. On the floor at her feet was a hooded, naked Iraqi prisoner.
The man was on all fours, just as Tess Olsen had been.
Around his neck was a dog collar attached to a leash, which the soldier held.
Bree’s eyes stayed locked on to the image, and she slowly shook her head back and forth. “So, Jeffery, you keep any coffee in that tiny kitchen or should I go pick some up?”
Chapter 22
THE KILLER’S SECOND STORY was one of his favorite genres, science fiction.
Oh yes, this was delicious. The plan was working just right so far.
The killer wasn’t playing the Iraqi soldier anymore, but this was a better story and a much juicier role for him: Dr. Xander Swift. What actor wouldn’t kill for the part, so to speak, and to do this particular scene? In the theater, of all places. Delicioso!
The sidewalk in front of the august Kennedy Center was quickly filling with people that night. The crowd was mostly young, urban eclectic, confident, slightly obnoxious. Just about what you’d expect at a science-fiction stage adaptation of a short story, already once turned into a Hollywood movie. The difference was that the play had a big star actor in it. Thus the sizable crowd, though it wasn’t quite a sellout.