The killer—who wasn’t a star himself, not yet, anyway—assumed his role as Dr. Xander Swift as he approached the Kennedy Center. It was never too early to get into a part, was it?
A row of six swinging doors opened from the street onto a tiled ticketing area. Then four interior doors led farther into the theater’s carpeted lobby. He noticed everything and wouldn’t forget a single detail.
Almost believing that he was Dr. Xander Swift now, getting more deeply into the role, the killer moved no more quickly or slowly than the crowd surrounding him. Thick, tinted glasses, a gray-flecked beard, and an unassuming tweed jacket helped to keep him undetected. Just another theater lover, he was thinking.
Still, he couldn’t help having the slightest doubt about the rehearsal. What if he blew it? What if somehow he was captured tonight? What if he made a mistake at the Kennedy Center?
His eyes loitered, taking in a metallic silver poster in a glass case as he passed.
MATTHEW JAY WALKER
IN
WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE
The hot-shit Hollywood actor, with his name in black type above the title, was known for shoddily made but highly successful films. Absurd live-action comic books that cheated the customers out of ten bucks. He was the sole reason for the nearly sold-out performance tonight. Women especially loved Matthew Jay Walker, even though he’d recently married a beautiful actress with whom he’d adopted children from third world countries, the latest Follywood trend. They were living in Washington now so that they could “influence the government on matters important to the children of the world.” Did some people really talk—and worse, think—like that? Yes indeed, they did.
Inside the auditorium, synthesizer music set the tone for the evening. Dr. Xander Swift easily found his seat, 11A, on the far left aisle.
He was definitely getting into the part—good stuff, and very well played—if he did say so himself. He was positioned only steps from one of the four illuminated fire exits, but almost immediately, the location was irrelevant to him. He knew instantly that he would not be using the ticket he’d already bought for the same seat on Saturday night.
This was the wrong vantage point! All wrong! Dr. Swift had needed to see it firsthand to realize what was now so clear to him.
The symbolic murder had to take place not here but up on the stage itself.
That would be best—for the audience. And the audience was everything, wasn’t it?
At five minutes past eight, the theater went dim, then black. The synthesizer music swelled, and a heavily brocaded curtain rose slowly.
A wash of red light hit the stage, enough to send a collateral haze over the audience, where seat 11A was now empty.
Dr. Xander Swift had seen all that he needed to see for tonight—so he had left the theater. The murder was on—for tomorrow. Tonight was only a rehearsal, a walk-through. He wanted to play to a full house, after all. That was a requirement.
All in his honor, of course.
Chapter 23
THE NEXT DAY’S Violent Crimes meeting had only one, very important agenda item, at least from my point of view. Bree asked me to sit in, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be there. The meeting was heavily attended, standing-room only, and the place was buzzing with hot rumors.
Captain Thor Richter held up the start for the arrival of the deputy mayor, who was twenty minutes late and who spoke not a word the whole time he was there. The fact that Larry Dalton attended, however, sent a clear message on this one: Everyone’s watching the case. This was just what the maniac killer seemed to want, but it couldn’t be helped. No way could we disinvite the deputy mayor.
Bree started off by telling the group everything she and I had recently established. Our late-night stint with Jeffery Antrim had yielded a few more Abu Ghraib images but nothing else of real substance. Still, it was a good start, I thought. I assumed the killer had left it as a message for us. Or me?
“So then we opened our lens a little wider, for derivative elements elsewhere,” Bree said, and brought up a PowerPoint slide.
“Here’s a transcription of the speech the killer gives in the first half of the videotape. And this”—she changed slides—“is a speech from a 2003 video made by someone calling himself the Sheik of America.”
“Is it the same guy?” somebody in the back asked.
“No,” Bree said. “Actually, it isn’t. But he’s obviously borrowing from more than one source. Abu Ghraib. Now this. Statistically, the two speeches are about sixty percent similar.”
“Hang on a minute. Why do you insist it’s not the same guy?” Richter wanted to know. He had a snide way of making his questions sound like accusations.
I saw a brief flash of annoyance on Bree’s face, probably invisible to everyone else. “Because the Sheik was arrested last year. He’s cooling his heels in a New York prison,” she said. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
Another detective raised his hand like a schoolkid. “Do we have a bead on nationality one way or the other at this point?”
Bree nodded in my direction. That was my cue. “A lot of you know Dr. Alex Cross. I’m going to ask him to run down the basic points of our profile as it stands now. The killer knows about Dr. Cross. In case you haven’t heard, he was mentioned by name on the tape.”
“How could I resist an invitation like that?” I said, and got a few laughs.
Then we went right into the heavy stuff.
Chapter 24
AS I STOOD AT THE FRONT, I actually recognized about half the people in the room. I’m not sure how many of the rest of them knew me by reputation, but probably most of them did. I’d worked the high-profile cases in DC for years, and now here I was again. Doing pro bono work? Helping out Detective Bree Stone? What was this, actually?
“One thing’s pretty clear,” I began. “He’s going to want to kill again, whether or not he actually does it. His signature aspect is terrorist, but there are also serial tendencies here. There’s already a recognizable pattern that I see.”
“Can you clarify that, Alex?” someone asked. I looked over at Bree, but she raised her chin at me in a go-ahead signal.
“His opening bid, so to speak, was an individual homicide. It’s possible he’s warming up to something bigger, but I don’t think so. He just might stick to one victim at a time.”
“Why?”
“Good question, and I think I might even have the answer to that one. My guess is that he doesn’t want to be eclipsed by his own work. This is about him, not the victims. Despite what he says on the tape, he’s a narcissist at heart. He badly wants to be a star. Maybe that’s why he ‘invited’ me onto the case. He may have even left some greeting cards at the crime scene—a couple of unsigned Hallmark cards. We’re still checking into that one and what it might mean if he did. And we’re checking on the books Mrs. Olsen had written.”
“What about his motive?” Richter asked. “Are we still thinking this could be political?”
“Yes and no. Right now, our working theory is that he’s Iraqi-born, or descended, with some kind of law-enforcement or military background, or both. The FBI thinks he’s lived in the U.S. for at least a few years, if not his entire life. Above-average intelligence, highly disciplined, and yes, probably anti-American. But we also think the political agenda could be more a means of expression than an end in itself.”
“Expression of what?” Richter pressed, even though he had to know we didn’t have a lot of answers yet.
“A need to kill, maybe. He seems to like what he’s doing. But, more important, he likes being in the spotlight.”
Just like you do, Thor.
And maybe just like me.
Chapter 25
SEVERAL PEOPLE SCRIBBLED or typed out notes in the deepening and troubling silence that followed. I didn’t want to dominate the meeting, so I handed it right back to Bree for the rest of the Q&A. Richter grilled her hard, but she never backed down from her domineering boss. Sampson
was right about Bree—she was going places in the MPD, or she was going to get tossed by some jealous superior.
Afterward, we were gathering up our materials in the empty briefing room when she stopped and looked at me. “You’re pretty good at this,” she said. “Maybe even better than your hot-shit reputation.”
I shrugged her off with a smile, but deep down I enjoyed the compliment. “I’ve done a lot of these meetings. Besides, you carried it, and you know it.”
“Not the meeting, Alex. This. This work. You’re the best I’ve seen. By a lot. If you want to know the truth, I think we’re pretty good together. How scary is that?”
I stopped organizing the files in my hands and stared at her. “Then, Bree, why do I feel like we’re headed in the wrong direction on this thing?”
She looked stunned by what I’d said. “Excuse me?”
It had been bugging me since just before the meeting ended. Everything had been moving so fast. This was really the first opportunity to hold our stuff up to scrutiny. And now I felt as if we were missing something important. I was almost sure of it. I hated the timing, but I couldn’t help the feeling I had. My famous goddamn feelings! My gut was calling out to me to review all the bidding so far, everything that we thought we believed.
“Maybe this all makes sense because it’s what he wants us to think,” I said. “That’s just a hunch I have, but it bothers the hell out of me.”
I’d been burned like this before, not too long ago. We’d spent a lot of time on the Mary, Mary case in LA, running down an obvious but misleading persona instead of the actual killer. More people had died while we figured that out.
Bree started pulling papers from the briefcase she’d just packed. “Okay, fine. Let’s break it apart again. What do we need to know to nail this thing down the right way?”
The obvious answer to her question was that another murder would provide a hell of a lot more information for us.
Chapter 26
IT WAS TIME for the second story to unfold.
Nine hundred fifty-five brave souls were filing toward and into their plush seats at the Kennedy Center that night. The Grand Foyer was lit by eighteen one-ton crystal chandeliers that resembled . . . what? Giant stalactites? The foyer was huge, more than six hundred feet in length. At its center was an eight-foot bronze bust of the great Kennedy himself, never more august and serious in his life.
A crew of thirty-seven worked behind the scenes here. Impressive. Expensive too.
A cast of no fewer than seventeen trod the boards.
And one lone figure waited, quietly, underneath the stage.
Dr. Xander Swift.
At three o’clock that afternoon, he’d come in through the stage door. A large toolbox in hand and a few rehearsed phrases about the boiler were all it took. Inside the toolbox were his props.
Pistol.
Ice pick, just in case.
Butane torch.
Supply of ethanol.
Now it was more than five hours later and almost time for the main act. Above his head, the play was in progress. The house was full, theater lovers one and all, drama and suspense fans.
Matthew Jay Walker was well into a scene in which he talked somewhat robotically with another character on a monitor. Walker was excessively handsome, of course, a little shorter than expected, and quite the spoiled brat, if truth be known. His agent had made demands for fresh exotic fruit, a supply of Evian water, a personal makeup artist. Now it was time for Walker to meet his costar.
“Hello, Matthew Jay! Greetings,” said Dr. Swift. “I’m here . . . behind you.”
The actor looked around, surprised—no, shocked—when the trapdoor in the stage floor, normally used only in the second act, flew open.
“What th—”
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so sorry for the interruption,” said Dr. Xander Swift in a loud, clear, commanding voice that could be heard way up in the cheap seats. “But please, may I have your attention, your full attention, your undivided attention? This is a matter of life and death.”
Chapter 27
AT FIRST, the only noticeable stir in the audience was that of riffling pages as dozens of people looked to their programs to see who this was up on the stage.
Matthew Jay Walker turned his back to the audience and spoke in a whisper. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Who the hell are you? Get off the stage! Now!”
Suddenly, Dr. Xander Swift held forth a pistol until it nearly touched the actor’s face. He let his hand shake, as if he were nervous—which he was not. “Shhh,” he said in a stage whisper. “You don’t have any lines here.”
He continued to push the gun at the actor until Walker went down on his knees. “Please,” Walker said on mike, “I’ll do whatever you want. Just calm down.”
“Call nine one one,” someone yelled out in the front row. The audience was finally beginning to get it.
The killer addressed them. “I am Dr. Xander Swift, from Immunization and Control. I must inform you that this man has been tagged for extinction,” he explained. “Frankly, I’m as shocked and saddened as you are.”
“He’s crazy! He’s not an actor!” cried Matthew Jay Walker suddenly.
“I’m not crazy. There’s a very sensible plan,” replied Dr. Swift.
Holding his gun on the actor with one hand, Swift began to swab Walker with ethanol gel from an industrial foil pouch in one of his pockets. He plastered the gel down the actor’s chest, through his wavy blond hair, under his chin. The smell was so intense that Walker gagged and choked. “What are you doing? Please, stop!” he cried out.
Now the audience was on its feet. Shouts came from the wings. “Stop him! Somebody get up there. Where is security?”
The doctor’s voice boomed from the stage again. “Anyone who comes up here will be shot dead. Thank you for your attention and your patience. Now please, watch closely! This will be indelible in your mind’s eye. Never to be forgotten by any of you, so help me God!”
A butane torch sparked in his hand. Then ethanol exploded into flame all over Matthew Jay Walker’s body. The actor’s face seemed to melt away, and he screamed in terrible pain. He began to whirl around in circles, trying to beat out the fire that was crisping his skin.
“You’re watching the rapid disintegration of flesh,” Dr. Swift explained. “Happens all the time in war zones. Iraq, Palestine, distant places like that. Fairly routine, this. Nothing out of the ordinary, I assure you.”
Then he ran swiftly across the stage, away from the screaming actor, who was now rolling on the floor. He used his torch to ignite the black masking drapes that hung there. They caught immediately, with a dramatic whoosh.
“Hold your applause! Please, hold your applause,” he called to the audience, his audience now. “Thank you so much! Thank you! You’re fabulous!”
He did a half bow, then disappeared from sight off the stage. Next, he nearly flew down a steep flight of stairs to a fire exit and out into an alleyway in back. A high-pitched door alarm screamed behind him.
Dr. Swift moved aside an empty crate in the alley and picked up an expandable nylon duffel he’d left there earlier that day. He deposited his gun, torch, and coat inside. Then the thick glasses, the contact lenses, the beard, the prominent forehead. Finally the shock of salt-and-pepper hair he’d worn for the role.
Once again, he was himself, and he exited the alley onto the street, where he turned away just as the first fire truck was arriving.
It was done, his mission accomplished, his part played very close to perfection. Now Dr. Xander Swift could disappear from the earth forever, just as the Iraqi had after he murdered the crime writer in front of all those appreciative fans.
My God, I’m good, he thought, and his chest swelled with genuine pride. After all these years, I’m making it big.
A few blocks away from the Kennedy Center, a woman was waiting for him in a blue sports car.
“You were wonderful.” She beamed and kissed th
e killer on the cheek. “I’m so proud of us.”
Chapter 28
“ALEX, COME AND LOOK at this. It’s unbelievable. Actually, it’s insane. Look at this, will you?”
Bree was holding up something in a clear plastic evidence bag when I found her and Sampson on the stage of the main theater at the Kennedy Center. One whole side of the play’s set was charred black. Another dark patch on the floor showed where the actor Matthew Jay Walker had died in front of an audience of nearly a thousand.
I had assumed even before I got there that this was the same crazy perp as at the Riverwalk. Why else would Bree have called me?
“Show him the card,” Sampson said. “Found it underneath the trapdoor where he came in. Looks like this freak watched too much TV in the ’90s.”
Bree handed over the evidence bag, and I took it reluctantly.
Inside was a handmade postcard. One side was black, with a large, bright-green letter X, in what looked like a degraded close-up of an old typewriter font. On the other side, in letters clipped from magazines, ransom-note style, were the words The Truth Is Out There.
“The X-Files.” Bree said what I was already thinking. “Tagline from the TV show. ‘The Truth Is Out There.’ We don’t know if this murder was based on a particular episode, but it might have been.”
“The same killer,” I said. “Has to be him.”
“Supposedly this guy was white. Older too, in his fifties or sixties,” said Sampson.
I swept my arm around the stage. “You’ve got a dozen expert witnesses to talk to here. If anyone can recognize makeup, it’s going to be actors. Two murders based on specific source material, though. Both with some kind of calling card left behind for us to find.”
“Different methods,” Bree said. “Could be coincidence. I’m not saying it is, but could be. Maybe there’s more than one perp? Possibility?”