Cross Fire Read online

  Most of the looky-loos on the street, if they weren’t press, were probably wandering up from Cleveland Avenue. The neighbors seemed to have stayed home. I could see silhouettes in the windows up and down the block as I drove in. I signed up with crime-scene attendance and immediately ordered a canvassing detail to start knocking on doors.

  Sampson met me at the scene, straight from a faculty thing at Georgetown, where his wife, Billie, taught nursing. “Can’t say I’m glad this happened,” he told me, “but, shit, how much wine and cheese can a man eat in one lifetime?”

  We started in the living room, where the Dlouhys had reportedly been watching an episode of The Closer. The TV was still on, ironically with a live news shot of the house now. “That’s creepy,” said Sampson. “The press like to talk about invasion of privacy — except when they’re doing the invading.”

  Mrs. Dlouhy’s initial statement was that she’d heard a tinkle of glass, looked over at the broken window, and only then noticed her husband’s head slumped over with his eyes wide open in the recliner next to hers. I could still hear her crying in the kitchen with one of our counselors, and my heart went out to her some. What a nightmare.

  Mel Dlouhy was still sitting in his chair. The single bullet wound in his temple looked relatively clean, with a small blue-black halo around the entry. Sampson pointed to it with the tip of a pen.

  “Let’s say he gets shot here,” he said, and raised the pen about six inches to where Dlouhy’s head would have been positioned. “And it comes in” — he drew the pen in an arc until it was pointing at the broken glass — “over there.”

  “That’s a downward angle,” I said. The bullet had pierced one of the top panes in a six-over-one window that looked out to the backyard. Without any discussion, we both walked around to the dining room and outside through a pair of French doors.

  A brick patio in the back gave way to a long, narrow yard. Two floodlights on the side of the house lit about half the space, but it didn’t look like there were any outbuildings or trees big enough to support someone’s weight.

  Beyond that, the rear neighbor’s three-story Tudor was backlit by the streetlamp on Thirty-first. Two huge oaks dominated that yard, mostly obscured in the shadow of the house.

  “You said nobody was home over there?” Sampson asked. “That right?”

  “Out of town, in fact,” I said. “Someone knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe showing off. Shooter’s got a reputation to live up to after that first hit.”

  “Assuming this is he.”

  “It’s he,” I said.

  “Excuse me, Detective?” Sergeant Ed Fleischman was suddenly standing there. I looked down at his hands, to make sure he was gloved.

  “What are you doing back here, Sergeant? There’s plenty for you to do out front.”

  “Two things, sir. We’ve had a couple of neighbors reporting strange vehicles.”

  “Vehicles, plural?”

  Fleischman nodded. “For whatever it’s worth. One old Buick with New York plates parked up the street off and on for several days.” He checked the pad in his hand. “And a large, dark-colored SUV, maybe a Suburban, definitely beat up. It was out on the street for a few hours late last night.”

  This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where old cars looked at home, at least not outside of service hours. We’d have to follow up on both the vehicles right away.

  “What was the other thing?” I asked.

  “FBI’s here.”

  “Tell them to send ERT around to the neighbor’s yard,” I told the sergeant.

  “Not ‘them,’ sir. It’s an agent. He asked for you specifically.”

  Peering back inside, I could see a tall white guy in a generic Bureau suit. He was leaning over, with his blue-gloved hands on his knees, staring at the hole in Mel Dlouhy’s head.

  “Hey!” I called through the broken window. “Why do you need to be in there?”

  He either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to.

  “What’s his name?” I asked Fleischman.

  “Siegel, sir.”

  “Hey, Siegel!” I shouted this time, and then I started inside. “Don’t touch anything in there!”

  Chapter 25

  WHEN ALEX CAME INTO THE ROOM, Kyle stood up and looked right into his eyes. Dead man walking, Kyle thought, and smiled as he extended a hand.

  “Max Siegel, Washington field office. How’re you doing? Not so good, I imagine.”

  Cross shook Kyle’s hand begrudgingly, but it was still an electric moment, like the tip-off of an NBA game. Here we go, here we go, here we go, now!

  “What are you doing in here?” Cross wanted to know.

  “I’m just hitting the ground on this one,” Kyle told him.

  “No shit. I mean, what specifically do you need on this body?”

  It was magnificent — Cross had no idea who he was looking at! The face was flawless, of course. If there was any danger here, it was with Alex’s ears, not his eyes. This was where the weeks of audio surveillance on Max Siegel in Miami would really start to pay off.

  But first he did exactly what Cross wouldn’t expect. He turned his back on him and knelt down to look at the entry wound again.

  A blue-and-black residue covered the skin around the opening. Some of the man’s hair had been sucked inside with the bullet as it broke through the skull. So efficient. So impersonal. He was beginning to like this killer.

  “Ballistics,” he said finally, and stood up again. “My money’s on 7.62 by 51 NATO match grade, but not jacketed. And some kind of military training on this shooter.”

  “You’ve read the file,” Alex said, not offering any compliment, just noticing. “Yeah, we could definitely use some ballistics support from the Bureau to confirm, but let’s get the ME in here before anything else. In the meantime, I need you to step out.”

  Cross couldn’t have been easier to read. Right now, he was hoping a little bluster would tamp down this aggressive new FBI agent, who was no doubt just another overreaching Bureau asshole with an inflated sense of entitlement — kind of like Alex himself had been when he was an agent.

  “Listen,” said Kyle, “I’m not going to stress about who gets credit for what on this one. I mean, the U.S. attorney’s going to step in and get all front and center no matter who brings it home, am I right?”

  “Siegel, I don’t have time for this right now. I —”

  “But make no mistake.” Kyle let the last of Siegel’s buddy-buddy smile fade away. “We’ve got two incidents and three homicides, all inside the District. That’s a federal crime. So you can work with us if you like, or you can get the fuck out of the way.”

  He showed Cross his sweet little encrypted Sigillu, fresh off the line. “One call, and I can make this whole crime scene my own private country club. It’s up to you, Detective. What do you want to do?”

  Chapter 26

  IT TOOK ABOUT ten seconds for me to figure out what Max Siegel was all about, and I wasn’t going to have any of it.

  “Listen, Siegel, I’m not going to pretend I can keep you off this case any more than you can do the same to me,” I told him. “But let me make one thing very clear here. This is an MPD crime scene. I’m ranking Homicide, and if you want to take that up with the chief, he’s right outside. Meanwhile, if I have to tell you how quickly a room like this can cool, then you shouldn’t be here to begin with.”

  No doubt, there would be a full task force after tonight, and I’d probably find myself working with this Bureau jerkoff as we moved forward. But right now was not the best time for pissing contests. By him — or by me.

  Sampson came in from the yard, looking at me as if to say, Who is this guy? I made the necessary introductions.

  “Agent Siegel and I were just comparing theories,” I said, trying to lighten things up a little and put us back on track. “He’s got a military take on this, too.”

  Right away, Siegel started talking again. “Holding forth” was more like it.


  “Military snipers go after high-value targets — officers, not enlisted men,” he said. “The way I see it, that’s what these victims are. Not the bank president but the congressman and the lobbyist who keep him juiced. And not the taxpayer who’s been ripping off Uncle Sam but the other way around.”

  “A killer for the common man,” Sampson said.

  “With the very best training in the world.” Siegel reached out until he was almost touching the black hole centered one inch above Mel Dlouhy’s left ear. “That kind of accuracy doesn’t lie.”

  I listened without saying too much. This guy wanted to lecture, not collaborate, but he was also pretty good at what he did. If there were things he could see here that I couldn’t, then I needed to bite my tongue long enough to find out what they were.

  It was just what Nana Mama’s old refrigerator magnet had been telling me to do for as long as I could remember: You find yourself with a lemon — make lemonade.

  Chapter 27

  THE STREET OUTSIDE the Dlouhy house was filling up slowly and steadily — a thing of beauty. Denny and Mitch hung around the edge of the crowd, not coming too close but close enough to take it in. Given the shitty night they’d had at the shelter after the first hit, Denny figured Mitch could use a little positive exposure.

  Either Mel Dlouhy’s body was still inside or they’d snuck the fuck out the back. Cops in jackets and ties kept walking past the living room windows, and you could see that there were brilliant floodlights on behind the house.

  Mitch didn’t say much, but Denny could tell he was pumped. The scope of this whole thing was really starting to settle over the big guy. Nah, big kid was more like it.

  “Excuse me, Officer. Did they catch the guy?” Denny asked one of the cops around the perimeter — and now he was just showing off for Mitch.

  “You’ll have to check the paper or TV, sir,” the cop told him. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  Denny turned halfway around and spoke low. “You hear that? Sir. Must be a good neighborhood.” Mitch looked off to the side and scratched at his jaw to keep from cracking up too much.

  The cop was just about to get on the radio when Denny spoke up again. “Sorry, but I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare ciggie on you?” He held up a blue Bic lighter. People always like to see the homeless guy with his own match, and sure enough the porker reached into his cruiser for a pack of Camel Lights.

  “One’s fine,” Denny said, making sure Mitch was visible over his shoulder. “We can share.”

  The cop took two out of the pack. “What unit were you with?”

  Denny looked down at his faded camo jacket. “Third Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division, best unit overseas.”

  “Second best,” Mitch said. “I was New Jersey Army National Guard, out of Balad.”

  In fact, Mitch had never known a uniform, but Denny had drilled him enough that he could fake it a little. People loved vets. It always worked to their advantage.

  Denny took the ciggies from the piggy with a friendly nod and handed one over to Mitch. “Word on the street is that this guy might be one of us, the way he’s been shooting,” he said.

  The cop shrugged in the direction of the sloped front yard. “Word don’t trickle down that hill too quick. You should ask a reporter. I’m just on crowd control.”

  “All right, well…” Denny lit his own cigarette, blew smoke, and smiled. “We’ll get out of your hair now. God bless you, Officer, and thank you for what you’re doing.”

  Chapter 28

  THE FRIDAY AFTER the Dlouhy shooting was one of those breezy spring days, the kind where you can feel summer coming on the wind, even though it was still jacket weather.

  Kyle buttoned his blazer as he turned onto Mississippi Avenue and walked north, blending in with the local color, so to speak. His wig, makeup, and contacts were all perfectly effective, even if they were comically rudimentary. Ever since the surgery on his face, anything less was simply beneath him — if not also a necessary evil.

  Likewise, this run-down neighborhood was not a place he’d choose to spend a lovely spring afternoon. It was the kind of locale that kept white liberal guilt alive and well in America, just never enough that anyone actually did something about it.

  All of which was neither Kyle’s problem nor his concern right now.

  He ambled up the street slowly, making a point of arriving outside the Southeast Community Center just before four thirty. Word was that they were giving out Wizards tickets today, along with the latest “Just Say No” inculcation for the kiddies. Even some of the roughest boys had shown up, and a stream of them came running out through the double glass doors just as Kyle approached the squat redbrick building.

  One boy in particular caught his eye. He bypassed the front steps and jumped off a low wall, then stopped to drop the wrapper off a 3 Musketeers bar before continuing up the street.

  Kyle followed, close enough to register on the boy’s radar but far enough back that they’d be well out of earshot before anything happened.

  A block and a half later, the boy stopped short and turned around quickly. He was still chewing the candy bar, and he spoke around it.

  “Man, whatha fuck you comin’ up on me like that?”

  He was child-young, but there was nothing resembling fear in those brown doe eyes of his. The sneer on his face was a carbon copy of every other wannabe gangster who trawled these miserable streets for a living.

  The boy lifted the hem on his too-long white undershirt and showed a black leather-wrapped hilt of a knife that probably went halfway down his skinny leg. “You got somethin’ to say, punk?” he asked.

  Kyle smiled approvingly. “It’s Bronson, right? Or do you prefer Pop-Pop?”

  “Who wants to know?” His instincts were good — and he was just stupid enough. Bronson pulled the knife out a little farther, to show off some steel.

  Kyle angled himself away from the street and opened his own jacket. Inside was a compact Beretta pistol, holstered at his side. He took it out and held it by the barrel, with the grip toward the boy.

  Little Bronson’s pupils dilated — not with fear but with sudden interest.

  “I’ve got a nice job for you, little man, if you’re up to it. You want to earn five hundred dollars?”

  Book Two

  FOXES IN THE HENHOUSE

  Chapter 29

  BALLISTICS WERE IN.

  This was the report everyone had been waiting for, and I scheduled it to coincide with that day’s Field Intelligence Group conference call. On the line, we had the whole team from MPD, as well as people from FBI, ATF, Capitol Police — just about everyone was dialed into this case by now.

  Reporting in, we had Cailin Jerger, from the Forensic Analysis Branch at the FBI lab in Quantico, and Alison Steedman, who was with their Firearms-Toolmarks Unit.

  After a few quick introductions, I handed the call over to them.

  “Based on fragments in all three victims’ skulls, I can tell you conclusively that the same weapon was used every time,” Jerger told the group. I’d gotten most of this in the morning, but it was news to almost everyone else on the call. “A 7.62 caliber can trace back to dozens of weapons, but given the nature and distance of these shots, we believe we’re looking at a high-grade sniper system. That brings it down to seven possibilities.”

  “And it gets better from there,” Agent Steedman joined in. “Four of those seven are bolt-action rifles. By all accounts, the first two victims, Vinton and Pilkey, went down within two seconds of each other. That’s too fast for bolt-action, which leaves three semiautomatic possibilities — the M21, the M25, and the newer M110, which is state of the art. We can’t rule any of those out, but these shots were all taken at night into variable lighting conditions, and the M110 comes with a thermal optical site, standard.”

  “All of which is to say that your shooter is likely to be very well equipped,” Jerger said.

  “How hard is it to put your hands on an M110?” I r
ecognized Jim Heekin’s voice from the Directorate of Intelligence.

  “They’re made in only one place,” Steedman told us. “Knight’s Armament Company in Titusville, Florida.”

  I’d already been tracking this, so I spoke up here.

  “So far, all of Knight’s stock is accounted for,” I said. “But once these systems hit the field, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, they can and do go missing. Souvenirs from the war, that kind of thing. So they’re pretty much impossible to trace.”

  “Detective Cross, this is Captain Oliverez at Capitol Police. Didn’t your report say the fingerprints you found on Eighteenth Street were nonmilitary?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But we’re not ready to rule out a military connection, in terms of how the weapon might have been procured and how it’s been used. In fact, that brings up another point.” I’d been sitting on this one for half a day, but really it made no sense not to share it with the group now.

  “Let me stress something here,” I said. “I want to keep this out of the press until we have some kind of proof either way. I know it’s like herding cats — there’s a lot of us on this call — but I’m counting on your discretion across the board here.”

  “Whatever happens in Vegas…,” someone joked, and there were a few soft laughs.

  “The point is this,” I said. “All of these systems we’re talking about are crew-served weapons. The military model is one shooter and one spotter in the field.” I could hear people on the line mumbling to one another in their various conference rooms. “So you can see where I’m going here. It could be shades of two thousand two all over again. We’re probably not looking for a single shooter anymore. Most likely, we’re looking for a two-man team.”

  Chapter 30