“I’ve been looking all over for you, Alex.” Kyle was so very calm and cocksure. He had no conscience, no guilt whatsoever. His arrogance was stunning to me, even now. I wished he were here, so I could pound his face.
“Well, I guess you found me. Congratulations. I can’t hide from you. You’re so impressive. You are the Mastermind, Kyle.”
“You know, I am. You had me concerned, worried there, partner. I wanted to say good-bye in a proper and civil fashion. I’m leaving after this little adventure of ours is ended. It’s almost over. Whew. Isn’t that a relief?”
“Want to tell me where you are?” I asked him.
He paused for a half second, and I could feel a fast river of adrenaline rushing through me. My legs were unsteady. Suddenly I was afraid of what Kyle might have already done.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to tell you. Let me think about it. Hmmm. There’s blood everywhere, Alex. I will tell you that much. It’s stunning, a masterpiece of carnage. I’ve outdone myself this time. Outdone Gary Soneji, Shafer, Casanova. This is my best work. I think it is, and I should know. I’m very objective about these things, but of course you know that.”
My heart was pounding and I felt dizzy. I could feel the blood rushing from my brain. I steadied myself against the kitchen counter. “Where, Kyle? Tell me where you are. Where the hell are you?”
“Perhaps I’m at your aunt Tia’s outside Bal’more,” he said. Then he laughed like a madman. “Chapel Gate. Such a pretty little town.”
A moan escaped from my mouth and my knees buckled. I flashed an image of my family—Nana, Jannie, Damon, Alex. I needed to be there with them. How could he have gotten past the FBI teams? And Sampson? He couldn’t have. It wasn’t possible.
“You’re lying, Kyle.”
“Oh, am I, now? Why would I lie? Think about it. What would be the point?”
The worst is yet to come. I needed to call Tia’s. I should never have left them.
I heard a terrifying high-pitched scream above me in the kitchen. What in hell?
I looked up. Couldn’t believe my eyes. Kyle leaped out of the trapdoor to the attic. He was still screaming. He had an ice pick clasped in his right hand, cell phone in the left.
I tried to get an arm up to shield myself. I wasn’t fast enough. He’d taken me by surprise. I hadn’t thought to look up there.
He plunged the pick at an odd angle into my chest. A shock of pain traveled through me. I went down hard on the kitchen floor. Had he struck my heart? Was I going to die? Was this the way it ended?
With his free hand, Kyle punched me in the face. I felt bone crunch. The left side of my face seemed to have caved in.
Kyle raised his fist to strike again. He was madman strong and he wanted to punish me, didn’t he? I was such an important character in his fantasy. He was so sick, so insane. I couldn’t believe the things he’d done.
A voice inside screamed, Take him out; find a way!
A second hard punch glanced off the side of my forehead. I had moved just enough to make him miss. I was in a living nightmare. The stainless handle of the ice pick was sticking out of my chest.
I grabbed the hood and collar of Kyle’s windbreaker with one hand, his black hair with the other. I yanked him sideways, got him off me for a moment.
Somehow I managed to get up and pull Kyle with me. We were both grunting, gasping loudly for breath. I felt myself getting weaker. Blood was spreading on my shirt from the wound.
Still, I spun him around and pushed him headfirst right into Kate’s well-organized glass-fronted kitchen cabinet. It shattered on impact. Splinters of glass and wood flew everywhere.
I pulled his head back out of the cabinet, cutting Kyle’s face on nasty shards of the glass. I wanted to hurt him too. For Betsey Cavalierre, for Zachary Taylor and his wife, for all the others he had murdered along the way. So many dead at the hands of this heartless monster. The Mastermind. Kyle Craig.
He screamed, “My eyes! My eyes!” I’d hurt him—finally.
I crunched a looping roundhouse right into Kyle’s forehead. I moved in closer. I hit him again and again, then I held him up so I could hit him some more. I wouldn’t let him go down. I kept body-punching Kyle Craig, body-punishing him. I don’t know where I got the strength. I wanted to keep hitting Kyle, for everything he’d done: the murders, the cruel betrayals, stalking me all this time, the terrible hurt he’d inflicted on my family and on other families like mine.
He was out on his feet, so I finally let him drop to the kitchen floor. I stood over the unconscious body, exhausted, winded, afraid, and in pain. Now what? I felt as if I weren’t myself anymore. Who was I? What was I becoming? What had all the brutal murders I’d seen done to me?
I stepped away from the body crumpled on the floor. The spike of the ice pick was still embedded in my chest. It had to come out. I knew I couldn’t, shouldn’t, do it myself. I needed to get to a hospital. Maybe Dr. Kate McTiernan would take care of me.
I made a phone call. A very important call.
This was just the beginning, wasn’t it? Sure it was.
The Mastermind and I were alone at last. We had so much to talk about. I’d been waiting so long for this, and maybe, so had he.
Chapter 114
IT WAS a hollow feeling to stand over Kyle and realize that I had no idea who he really was. He was an obsessively cruel psychopath, he had been stalking me for years, he had killed so many times, including friends of mine. “You fucking bastard,” I whispered through my teeth.
The first case we had worked on together was a double kidnapping in Washington. I had written a book about it, and Kyle was a character in Along Came a Spider. Later, he cleared the way for me to help in the investigation of a kidnapper-killer who called himself Casanova and who worked in the Research Triangle around the University of North Carolina and Duke. That was when we had first met Kate McTiernan. Kyle kept me close to him after that. He was the one responsible for my getting named as the VICAP liaison between the FBI and the Washington Police Department. I didn’t know why at the time. Now I did.
He was conscious now. A mocking, falsely sympathetic look crossed his face. His eyes leveled me as he spoke. “I know, I know how it hurts. You thought we were close; you thought we were friends.”
I didn’t say anything, just looked into cold eyes. What did I see there? Nothing except for his hatred and disdain. He was incapable of feeling guilt, or especially compassion.
Then Kyle smirked, and I wanted to hit him again. He began to laugh. What was the joke? What did he know? What else had he done?
He started to clap his hands together. “Very good, Alex. You’re still studying me, aren’t you? You should bear in mind, I did beat you every time.”
“Except this time,” I reminded him. “This time you lost.”
“Oh, are you so sure?” he asked. “Are you positive that you have the upper hand, partner? How can you be certain? You can’t be.”
“I’m sure. Partner. I do have a few questions. Clear some things up for me. You know what I want to hear about.”
He continued to smirk. Of course he knew. “North Carolina. You suspected me for a while because I had attended Duke with the Gentleman Caller. Very good, Alex. I knew both him and Casanova. God, did I know them. I killed with them, hunted with them. But you let me off the hook, Detective Cross. Then there were the perfect bank robberies. The Mastermind at work. And, of course, I did kill the lovely Betsey Cavalierre. Great fun. That one’s on you, Alex.”
I stared into those pitiless eyes. My voice came out in a rasp. “Why did you have to hurt her?”
Kyle shrugged indifferently. “That’s how I win the game, by inflicting the most pain imaginable, then watching the torment and suffering. You should see the look in your eyes right now. It’s priceless, a thing of beauty.
“Not that I want any pity, Dr. Cross, but did you ever see me with my shirt off? I’ll answer that question. You haven’t. That’s because of the scars and welts t
here. My father, the great and respected general, the corporate chief executive officer, he beat me for years. He thought I was a very bad boy. And you know what? He was right. Father did know best. His son was a monster. Now, what does that say about him?”
Kyle smiled again. Or was it a grimace? He shut his eyes.
“Getting back to Agent Cavalierre, she was investigating my whereabouts during all the robberies and kidnappings committed by the Mastermind. Smart little chippie. Pretty too. And she really liked you, Alex. Thought you were so fine, her sweet brown sugar. I couldn’t have that. She was a danger to me and a rival for your attention.
“Are you following this, Cross? Am I going too fast for you? Everything is very logical, no? I put a knife deep inside her. I was going to do the same to your friend Jamilla. Maybe I still will.”
I raised my Glock and pointed it into his face. My hand was shaking. “No, Kyle, you won’t!”
Chapter 115
EVERYTHING HAD been leading up to this moment—the last few years, all of Kyle’s tricks. My hand was still trembling as I moved the gun forward until it touched Kyle’s forehead. To be honest, I didn’t know what I would do next.
“I was hoping it might come to this. One of us in control of the situation. This is where it gets interesting to me,” he said. “What do you do now?”
Kyle pressed his skull into the gun barrel. “Go ahead, Alex. If you kill me like this, then I win. I like that, actually. Suddenly, you’re the murderer.”
I let him talk—the Mastermind, the total control freak.
“Let me tell you a harsh truth,” he said. “Can you take a little truth? How much truth can you stand?”
“Go ahead, enlighten me. I think I can take it, Kyle. I want to hear everything.”
“Oh, and you shall. What I do . . . it’s what all men want to do. I live out their secret fantasies, their nasty little daydreams. I completely control my environment. I don’t live by rules created by my so-called peers. I live a full fantasy life. Everything I do is motivated by self-interest. It’s what everybody wants; trust me on that. So stop being so self-righteous. It irritates the shit out of me.”
I shook my head. “I have some news for you. It isn’t what I want, Kyle. It’s a self-centered adolescent’s fantasy.”
“Oh, spare me the provincial pop psychology. And yes, it is what you want to do. The chase, the thrill. It’s your life too. Don’t you see that? Jesus Christ, man. You love the hunt. You love it! You love this!”
We studied each other in the small kitchen for several minutes. The hatred between us was so obvious now. Then Kyle began to laugh again—he roared. He was laughing at my expense.
“You still don’t get it, do you? You’re a fool. You’re so inferior. You have nothing, not a shred of solid evidence on me. I’ll be out on the street in a few days. I’ll be free to do whatever I like. Imagine the possibilities. Anything I can dream up. Isn’t that a consoling thought, Alex? Old buddy, old pal.
“I wanted you to know who and what I am. It’s no fun unless somebody knows. I wanted this to happen. Desperately. More than anything. I set it up. And once I’m out, you’ll know that I’m somewhere . . . waiting and watching. You see, I won this time too. I wanted you to catch me, you asshole. What do you think of that?”
I stared into Kyle’s eyes, and it was like that game kids play—who’s going to look away first? Who’s going to blink?
Finally, I winked at him. “Gotcha,” I said.
“What I think,” I continued, “is that you just made your first big mistake. You didn’t think of everything. You missed an important detail, Mastermind. Know what it is? C’mon, you’re a smart guy. Figure it out.”
I stepped away from Kyle. Now I was the one who smiled, maybe even smirked. I stared into his eyes and let him think about it. I could see he had no idea. “Watch closely.”
I took my cell phone from my pocket. I held it up for Kyle to see. I showed him that it was turned on.
“I called my home phone before we started to talk. The phone has been turned on speaker. Everything you just told me is on my voice mail. I have your confession, Kyle. Everything, every word. You lose, you sick, pitiful son of a bitch. You lose, Mastermind.”
Kyle suddenly sprang up from the floor at me—and then I got to knock him out again. I hit him with the best punch of my life, at least it felt that way. His body lifted up off the floor and he lost a couple of front teeth.
That was how he looked in the news photograph after his capture: the great Mastermind, missing two front teeth.
Chapter 116
I FINALLY got to rest up, to stop being a cop for a while. Kyle Craig was in a maximum-security cell at Lorton prison. The district attorney was confident there was more than enough evidence to convict. Kyle’s expensive New York lawyer was screaming that he had committed no crimes, that he’d been framed. Isn’t that amazing? The murder trial would be one of the biggest that Washington and the rest of the country had ever seen.
The thing was, I didn’t want to think about Kyle, or his trial, or some other psychopathic killer anymore. I hadn’t been to work in weeks, and it felt good. I felt real good. My ice pick wound was healing pretty well. The scar would be a souvenir. I was spending as much time as I could at home. I’d painted most of the house. I had been to two of Damon’s concerts in a row. I was on a roll.
I was working on a jump shot with Jannie, reading Goodnight Moon and Fox in Socks to little Alex, taking cooking lessons from the best chef in all of Washington, or so Nana bragged. I was also making some time for myself. I’d even had a couple of nice talks with Christine Johnson. I told her I was sending the cutest pictures of Alex. Jamilla Hughes was coming east for a seminar and would visit next week. Everything was going well with her life, and I didn’t want to spoil it.
It was around eleven o’clock, and I was playing the piano on the sunporch. The house on Fifth Street was quiet, everybody sleeping except for me.
The phone didn’t ring, and what a sweet, simple pleasure that was.
No one came to the door with bad news that I didn’t want to hear right now or maybe ever again.
No one was watching me from outside, in the shadows, or if they were, at least they weren’t being a nuisance about it.
I concentrated on getting into some songs by D’Angelo, and I was doing a pretty good job of it: “The Line,” “Send It On,” “Devil’s Pie.”
Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow was a big day too.
I was going to resign from the D.C. police force in the morning.
And something else, something good for a change: I thought that maybe I was falling in love.
But that’s another story, for another time.
Alex Cross returns in the most harrowing case of his career—one that risks the life of his closest friend and partner, John Sampson.
For an excerpt from the next Alex Cross novel,
turn the page.
THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY for Cumberland County, North Carolina, Thomas Kinder, pushed the old wood chair away from the prosecutor’s table. It made a loud scraping sound in the nearly silent courtroom. He rose and slowly approached the jury. Nine women and three men, six of them white, six African-American, waited with anticipation to hear his every word. They clearly liked Kinder. He knew that, even expected it. He also knew that he had already won the murder case, even without the summation he was about to give.
But he was going to give this speech anyway. Kinder felt the need to punish Sergeant Ellis Cooper. The soldier had committed the most heinous and cowardly murders in the history of Cumberland County, North Carolina. The so-called Blue Lady Murders. The people in this county expected Tom Kinder to punish Cooper, who happened to be a black man, and he wouldn’t disappoint them. There had never been a murder trial anything like this one in the area. The case should have been tried in Raleigh, but because Sergeant Cooper had been stationed at Fort Bragg, and his lawyers were Army and Cumberland, became the compromise site for the trial.
The regular courtroom was too small and a suitable place had eventually been found at the VFW hall. The building was vintage 1930s, built of pine with a sloping, green-painted tar paper roof. The auditorium was normally used for business luncheons and entertainments, but on this day it was filled with nearly three hundred spectators. The room had a musty smell of sweat, pine, and beer. Exposed wood beams spanned the ceiling. The windows were high. The old wood floor was scarred and creaked loudly as Tom Kinder walked back and forth in front of the jury box before he began to speak. After several minutes, his deep voice startled the jurors.
“I have been doing this for a while, seventeen years to be exact. In all that time, I have never encountered murders such as those committed in December last, by the defendant, Sergeant Cooper, who is an evil monster. What began as a jealous rage aimed at one victim, Tanya Jackson, spilled over into the shameless massacre of three women. All were wives, all were mothers. Together these women had eleven children, and of course, three grieving husbands, and countless other family members, neighbors, and dear friends.
“The fateful night was a Friday, ‘ladies’ night’ for Tanya Jackson, Barbara Green and Maureen Bruno. While their husbands enjoyed their usual card night at the Army base, the wives got together for personal talk, some laughter, and the treasured companionship of one another. Tanya, Barbara, and Maureen were great friends, you understand. This Friday night get-together took place at the home of the Jacksons, where Tanya and Abraham were raising their three children.
“Around ten o’clock, after consuming at least half a dozen shots of alcohol at the base, Sergeant Cooper went to the Jackson house. As you have heard in sworn testimony, he was seen outside the front door by two neighbors. He was yelling for Mrs. Jackson to come out.
“Then Sergeant Cooper barged inside the house. Using an RTAK survival knife, a lightweight weapon favored by United States Army Special Forces, this monster first attacked the woman who had spurned his advances. “He killed Tanya Jackson instantly with a single knife thrust expertly delivered to her throat.