Double Cross Page 12

  “‘In it’?” Sandy asked.

  “I think I know what Anthony was getting out of what was happening.” I sat down again. “What were you getting?”

  Sandy lowered her eyes and looked away all at the same time. Maybe the question was too intimate for her. It was kind of interesting that she could give Anthony a hand job in the waiting room but was embarrassed to talk about it now.

  “You don’t have to answer the question, but you also don’t have to be embarrassed,” I told her.

  “No,” she said, “it’s fine. I’ll talk. It’s just that you’ve given me something to think about. It seems so obvious when you say it, but . . . I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way.” She sat up a little straighter and actually smiled at me. Strange, I thought. Not very much like the Sandy I knew.

  My larger concern was about where things would go from here with the two of them. I had the feeling that Sandy and Anthony were all wrong for each other, but that didn’t mean I could stop something from happening.

  Eight ten in the morning, and already it was a bad day.

  Which got a little worse at nine.

  Anthony wasn’t in the waiting room. He’d bolted on me. And I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

  Chapter 62

  AT A LITTLE PAST NINE, Sandy Quinlan and Anthony Demao met at a coffee shop on Sixth. The rendezvous had been arranged earlier. They had known that Dr. Cross was going to catch them, because they had planned the whole thing.

  Anthony had a latte and a sweet roll as he waited for Sandy, who licked at the whipped-cream topping before she spoke. “He didn’t even offer me any of his,” she said, and frowned. “And he had two coffees.”

  “He was angry at you for violating his space. So tell me everything. What did he say? I want to hear the pathetic details.”

  Sandy smacked her lips and licked them clean before she spoke. “Well, as he always is, Dr. Cross was very empathetic, maybe even sympathetic. To me—not to you, you cad. And honest, I guess you’d call it. He finally admitted that he has a huge crush on me. Who wouldn’t? But here’s the real surprise. He wants to suck your cock!”

  They both laughed and sipped their steaming drinks, then laughed some more. Finally Anthony leaned in close to Sandy. “He’s not alone on that, is he? Hey, you think he has any idea what we’re up to? What this whole thing is about?”

  Sandy shook her head. “Not . . . a . . . clue. I’m quite sure of it.”

  “You are? And that’s because . . . ?”

  “We’re way too good at what we do. We’re just such brilliant actors, you and I. Of course, you already know that. And I know that. Plus, the script is fabulous.”

  Anthony smiled. “We are very good, aren’t we? We could fool just about anyone.”

  “Make them believe anything we wanted to. Watch this.”

  Sandy got up and sat on Anthony’s lap, facing him. The two of them began to make out, to kiss with their tongues deep in each other’s mouth. Their hands wandered all over, and then Sandy began to grind her pelvis against Anthony.

  “Get a room,” said a serious-looking middle-aged woman using a computer a couple of tables away. “Please. I don’t need this in the morning.”

  “I agree,” volunteered someone else. “Grow up and act your ages, for God’s sake.”

  Sandy whispered in Anthony’s ear, “See? They think we’re still lovers.”

  Then she stood and pulled Anthony up too. “Don’t any of you sweat it!” she said in a loud voice. “For God’s sake—he’s my brother!”

  They were still laughing when they got outside the coffee shop.

  “That was great, so much fun!” Sandy howled and did a little victory dance. Then she waved at the people inside, who were still watching through the windows.

  “It was a hoot!” Anthony agreed. Then he got more serious. “I got a message from Kyle Craig. He says he can’t wait to meet DCAK.”

  “Well,” said Sandy, “I can’t wait to meet the master of disaster.”

  They both laughed at that one, then shared another tongue kiss for their audience in the coffee shop.

  “We are so bad.” Sandy giggled.

  Chapter 63

  MAYBE WE WOULD FINALLY catch some kind of break tonight, because God knows we needed one. The Unhinged Tour people had been more than enthusiastic about making room for the profiler and psychologist Dr. Alex Cross on their schedule, just as Kitz had predicted they would. What I couldn’t have anticipated was the kind of reception I would get when we actually showed up.

  The event was booked into a worn, barely serviceable Best Western in the southeast police district of Baltimore, just off I-95 and, appropriately enough, across the street from a cemetery. We parked in the back, close to the hotel’s conference-center entrance, then headed inside together.

  “Safety in numbers,” Bree said with a hollow laugh.

  The reception area was crowded with a noisy, carnival-like mix of people. The majority of them look fairly ordinary, maybe a little redneck, I thought. The others, in dark clothes and skin art, were like the show that the rest had come to see.

  Vendors at tables along the wall hawked everything from mug-shot coffee cups to authentic crime-scene artifacts to CDs by groups such as Death Angel and What’s for Lunch?

  Bree, Sampson, and I had just gotten in the front door when somebody tapped me on the shoulder. My hand slid down close to my Glock.

  The guy behind me, all sideburns and tattoos, grinned and elbowed his girlfriend when I turned around. “See? I told you it was him.” The two of them were attached by a heavy chain strung between the black leather collars around their necks.

  “Alex Cross, right?” He reached out and shook my hand, and I could already feel Bree and Sampson gearing up to give me a hard time. “There’s a picture of you on the poster—”

  “Poster?” I said.

  “But I’ve read your book twice, man. I already knew what you looked like.”

  “Except older,” the girlfriend added. “But you still look like your picture.”

  I heard Sampson snort out the laugh he’d been trying to hold in.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “Both of you.” I tried to turn away, but the man who’d tapped me on the back held on to my arm.

  “Alex!” he called to someone across the room. “You know who this is?” Then he turned to me again. “His name’s Alex too. Is that crazy or what?”

  “Crazy,” I said.

  The other Alex, wearing a T-shirt with John Wayne Gacy in full clown makeup, came closer for a look. Then a small crowd began to gather around us, or, rather, around me. This was getting pretty ridiculous in a hurry. I certainly wasn’t enjoying my new celebrity status.

  “You’re the profiler guy, aren’t you? Sweet. Let me ask you a serious question—”

  “We’ll go and check in,” Bree said up close to my ear. “Leave you to your fans.”

  “What’s, like, the gnarliest crime scene you’ve ever worked?” the other Alex asked me.

  “No, wait—” I reached out to grab Bree’s elbow, but a black-fingernailed hand landed on my wrist and held there. It belonged to a frail-looking young woman whose hand seemed to have been dipped in pale-yellow wax.

  “Alex Cross, right? You’re him, right? Can I get a picture with you? It would mean the world to my mom.”

  Chapter 64

  I FINALLY CAUGHT UP with Bree and Sampson in a cozy spot called Main Ballroom #1. That’s where I’d be speaking tonight at around seven thirty. We’d agreed that my name would be the biggest draw and also create the most buzz online, and I guess we had finally been right about something.

  Kitz and his people had been helping get the word out over the Web—baiting the hook, so to speak. Whether or not DCAK would bite now was the question. A lot of other geeks and freaks certainly had.

  The ballroom was a long rectangular space that could be partitioned into three smaller rooms with accordion-style walls. A stage and podium were se
t up at the far end. Several rows of chairs sat in the middle of the floor.

  Bree and Sampson were standing near the stage with a short, paunchy man in a normal-looking dark suit but with red-framed glasses that brought to mind Elton John. He had a long, thin braid hanging from his otherwise short salt-and-pepper hair and an Unhinged T-shirt pulled over his long-sleeved button-down shirt. Full geek mode, I was thinking.

  Bree smiled wickedly as she said, “Alex, this is Wally Walewski. He’s just giving us the full rundown about tonight. Wait’ll you hear.”

  “It’s really most excellent to meet you,” Wally Walewski said, his eyes never quite making it higher than my shoulder. “So, anyway, we’ve got your slides—check. And there’ll be a clicker—check. And a laser pointer on the podium—check. And some water? Anything else? Whatever, I’ll take care of it pronto. I’m on the case.”

  “What’s the capacity of the room?” asked Bree.

  “Two hundred and eighty is the limit by law, and we’ll definitely be sold out.”

  “Definitely,” Sampson said, just for me to hear.

  We waited until Wally Walewski and his braid were gone before we discussed anything further about our own prep. Check.

  “Where are our people now?” I asked Bree. What the Unhinged folks didn’t know was that we had an undercover team working the event. Baltimore PD had provided us with four local detectives who were passing as conference attendees. We had two of our own people from DC embedded in the hotel staff too.

  Bree glanced over the program. “Right now, the Baltimore boys are in either a fingerprinting seminar or, let’s see, a ‘serial-killer breakout session,’ whatever the hell that is. Later tonight, we’ll have them here . . . and here.”

  She pointed to either side of the audience area. “Vince and Chesney will float. And, Sampson, I think you and I should stay together. That okay?”

  “Sounds good to me. I don’t want to be alone here, anyway.”

  The rest of Baltimore PD was on standby, with at least one extra cruiser in the neighborhood of the hotel at all times. Hotel security had been briefed and wouldn’t be doing anything out of the ordinary, with any luck keeping out of our way if and when crunch time came.

  This was meant to be a quiet operation, a little desperate for sure, maybe nothing more than information gathering. But if the killer did show up, we’d be ready to grab him. Stranger things had happened. Hell, stranger things had happened to me.

  Besides, we already knew DCAK was surveilling us.

  Chapter 65

  “THIS IS MY AUDIENCE,” I began, and got some easy laughs from the captive crowd of oddballs stretched across the auditorium. I went on to talk about the known homicides for DCAK but passed on only information we’d already released to the press. Then I did a little damage control on the copycat theories and showed some crime-scene photos that the audience seemed to appreciate. I also gave what the Unhinged people had billed as an “insider’s look” at our suspect profile. It was something I could do in my sleep by now and probably had. If nothing else, details from my talk would wind up on the Internet and possibly get to somebody who knew something about the killer.

  “This is a nearly psychotic man with a deep-seated need for larger-than-life approval,” I told the packed room.

  “The expression of this need eclipses everything else in his world to an extreme, sociopathic degree. When he gets up in the morning, if he sleeps at all, he has no free choice except to seek another audience, to plot and obsess on another murder, and this ritual of his may well escalate.”

  I leaned forward on the podium, checking out as many faces as I could in the crowd. It was stunning to me how rapt and attentive they were.

  “What this maniac doesn’t realize yet—what I think he can’t permit himself to admit—is that he’ll never get what he’s looking for. And that’s what will catch up with him. If we don’t bring him down first, he’ll do it to himself. He’s moving toward self-destruction, toward facilitating his own capture, and he can’t help himself.”

  Everything I said was basically true—just a little slanted. If the killer happened to be in the audience, I wanted to make him as uncomfortable as I possibly could. Actually, I wanted to make him sweat like a pig on a spit.

  I spotted a few in the crowd who had a physical resemblance to DCAK, based on what we knew: tall, powerfully built, male. But no one had given me any reason to make a move, or to signal Bree and Sampson. I was concerned that our little plan was a bust, though not all that surprised. I’d just about run out of things to say at the podium—and no one had tried to take my audience away, to upstage me at the “crime convention.”

  Are you watching me, you bastard?

  Probably not.

  You’re too smart, aren’t you? You’re much smarter than we are.

  Chapter 66

  AFTER THE SPEECH, a brief Q&A, and some unexpectedly warm applause, I was installed by Wally Walewski behind a wobbly card table in the reception area. Check.

  Anyone who wanted to could meet me here, get a book signed, that kind of thing. For the first twenty minutes, I shook hands, made pleasant small talk, and signed everything from books to the palm of one woman’s hand. Almost everybody was nice. Polite too. As far as I could tell, not a serial killer in the bunch.

  The only request I refused was a T-shirt that said DCAK on the front and Keep on living, fuckers across the back.

  “How’s it going over there?” I finally heard through my acoustic tube earpiece.

  I looked down the line, where Bree was standing with dozens of fans who were still waiting patiently, chatting with one another. “Quiet so far,” I said. “Strange but nice enough people. Unfortunately.”

  Bree turned her back away from the line and spoke low. “That sucks. Okay, then . . . Sampson, I’m going to take another quick swing through the crowd. I’ll check back in with you when we’re at the front door. Hopefully, somebody here isn’t all that nice.”

  I heard John’s reply in my ear. “Sounds good to me. Alex, you riding home with us? Or hoping to get lucky with one of your fans?” I just smiled at the next person in line.

  “I’ll be back soon,” Bree said, and disappeared into the crowd. “You be good, now.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  A few minutes later, as I was signing a book, I felt a presence behind me.

  When I looked up, though, no one was there. But I was sure someone had been.

  “She left you a note.”

  The woman across the table from me pointed to a piece of paper at my elbow. I unfolded it and saw a printout from a Web page.

  Black background, bold white letters. I read the message.

  Guess again, smart guy. I’m not psychotic! And I’m not dumb!

  See you back in DC, where it’s all happening.

  In fact, you’re missing the show.

  Chapter 67

  WHAT SHOW AM I MISSING? I wondered. I jumped up from the table, my pulse already racing.

  “Who left this?” I asked the people in line. “Did anybody see who put this note down here?”

  The woman whose book I’d just signed pointed back into the crowd. “She went thatta way, Sheriff!”

  “What did she look like?” I asked. “You sure it was a woman?”

  “Um . . . straight dark hair. Black shirt. Jeans. I think? Like everybody else here. Looked female.”

  “And glasses!” someone else said. “She had a blue back-pack!”

  “Alex”—Bree came back in my ear—“what’s going on over there? Did something just happen? What the hell happened?”

  “Bree, we’re looking for a woman. Definitely a female. Black shirt, jeans, glasses, a blue backpack. I need you and Sampson to cover the exits. Let Baltimore PD know what’s going on. She left me a note from DCAK.”

  “We’re on it!”

  A ripple of excitement spread inside the crowd as I began to push my way through a tightening knot of people. Not everyone wanted to let m
e pass, either. Several of them closed in on me, trying to find out what was happening, where I was going, asking me questions I didn’t have time to answer at the moment.

  I waved them off as best I could. “This isn’t a game now! Anyone see a woman in a black shirt and glasses go this way?”

  A kid smelling of marijuana giggled out a response. “Man, that’s half the people here.”

  The crowd shifted again, and I thought that I saw her—at the far end of the lobby. I moved the kid and a few others out of my way. “Let me through here!”

  “Bree!” I was running now. “I can see her. She’s tall. White. Carrying the blue backpack.”

  “And female?”

  “I think so. Could be a disguise.”

  When I reached the next corner, the suspect was already more than halfway down a long corridor, running toward the exit at the far end.

  “Police! Stop! Stop right there!” I shouted at her, and I had my gun out too.

  Whoever she was, she didn’t even look around as she slammed through the door. It swung back hard, then burst into an opaque web of broken glass.

  “East parking lot!” I told Bree and Sampson. “She’s outside! She’s running! It’s a woman!”

  Chapter 68

  A STRONG WOMAN TOO! She’d completely shattered the door on the way out. What kind of woman was that? A very angry one? A crazy lady? A collaborator with DCAK or another copycat?

  Pellets of glass showered around me as I pushed through the exit door. Where the hell was she now? I didn’t see her anywhere outside. No one running.

  A few streetlamps overhead left plenty of shadow around the narrow parking lot. The row of cars directly opposite me showed no sign of life, though.

  On my left, the pavement ended abruptly and gave way to an empty stretch of lawn.

  Then I heard a sports-car engine fire up. The revving noise came from somewhere off to my right. I stared hard into the semidarkness.

  Headlights blinked on, then two shining eyes came right at me. Fast!