Cross Fire (26 page)

“What do you mean?” Cross asked.

“The whole ‘foxes in the henhouse’ thing. The good guys and the bad guys, all mixed in together. The line between good and evil isn’t so clear anymore.”

“That’s true,” Cross said. “More for the Bureau than the PD, though.”

“I mean everywhere,” Kyle said. “The crooked congressman. The greedy son of a bitch CEO who just can’t get by on that first ten million. Hell, embedded terror cells. What’s the difference? They’re all out there, right under our noses, living next door. It’s as if the world used to be black and white, and now it’s all just gray, if you squint a little.”

Alex was staring now. Right into his eyes. Was he finally tuning in?

“Max, are you talking about Steven Hennessey here? Or yourself?”

“Huh-oh,” Kyle-Max answered, and shook a finger at him. “I didn’t even see you switch hats. Very slick, Dr. Cross.”

And Alex just laughed. It was amazing, really. Kyle had managed to make Cross hate Max Siegel, and now, with the turn of a few screws, Kyle was well on his way to making Alex into a true-blue fan of the smart but obnoxious agent.

Who knows — Siegel might have gotten all the way to an invitation for family dinner or some such thing, at the rate this was going. But then something happened that even Kyle hadn’t expected.

A bullet came through the windshield.

SIEGEL AND I were both out on the pavement and behind our doors at the same time. I heard another shot hit the grille, and then a sickening thud as one hit Siegel’s side of the car.

“Max?”

“I’m okay. Not hit.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

My Glock was out, but I didn’t even know where to point it. My other hand was dialing 911 while my eyes scanned the buildings around me.

“One of those two,” Max said, pointing at the Midlands and the place just north of it.

I looked up at Hennessey’s apartment again — still dark, with the windows closed. Rooftops were his thing anyway. Wasn’t that true?

“Hello? Are you there?” said someone on my phone. “This is Nine-One-One Emergency. Can you hear me?”

“This is Detective Cross, MPD. We have an active shooter at Twelve Twenty-one Twelfth Street Northwest. I need immediate assistance, all available units!”

Another shot exploded a planter and a second-floor window directly behind me, one after the other. I heard a scream come from inside an apartment.

“Police!” I shouted for anyone who could hear. “Stay down!” At least half a dozen people were still out on the sidewalk, scrambling for cover, and there was no way to keep more from coming along the walkway on the road.

“We’ve got to do something. We can’t just stay here. Someone’s going to get shot,” said Max.

I looked at him across the driver’s seat. “If he’s using a scope, and we move fast, he might not be able to keep up.”

“Not with both of us anyway,” he said grimly. “Take the Midlands. I’ll get the next one up.”

This was completely outside of protocol. We should have waited for backup, but with the potential for so much collateral damage, we weren’t willing to delay any further.

Without another word, Siegel came out of his crouch and sprinted across the street. I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.

I counted to three to put some space between us, then started running with my head down. Another window shattered somewhere behind me. I barely noticed. My only focus right now was on getting to the other side of that apartment building’s front door — and then getting inside after Hennessey.

ONCE INSIDE, I took the stairs. It was ten flights to the roof, but I’m in pretty good shape. Adrenaline did its job, too.

A few minutes later, I was coming out on top of the Midlands. It was a strange déjà vu — a lot like the other night at the museum.

I swept my Glock left and right — nothing. No one behind the door either.

I’d come out through a utility room, and the walls were blocking my view of the Twelfth Street side of the building. That’s where Hennessey would have been shooting from if he was here.

Sirens were wailing in the distance; with any luck, they were headed my way.

I pressed my back against the wall and moved slowly to the corner, weapon first.

The street side of the roof, though dimly lit, looked deserted
to me. There were a couple of folding lawn chairs and a steel barrel lying on its side.

No sign of Hennessey, though.

I came to the edge and looked out. Twelfth Street was quiet down below. Other than the Bureau car with its doors open and a patch of broken glass on the ground, there wasn’t any indication of what had just happened.

A few people were even walking by, oblivious to the damage.

Then, as I leaned out for a better look, my foot hit something that made a small, metallic clinking sound. I took out my Maglite and pointed it at the ground to see what it was.

Shell casings. Several of them.

My pulse spiked, and I turned around — right into the barrel of a Walther nine millimeter.

The man with his finger on the trigger, presumably Steven Hennessey, held the pistol up about an inch from my forehead.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Not a goddamn muscle. I won’t miss from this distance.”

HE’D DONE A pretty good job of changing his appearance — glasses, dark hair, clean-shaven. Enough to let him move around the city anyway.

And probably enough to walk away from here unrecognized, too, I realized. It was all starting to fall into place.

“Hennessey?”

“Depends who you ask,” he answered.

“You left that anonymous tip at the Bureau yourself, didn’t you?” I said. This whole thing was a setup, I felt sure, and we’d given him exactly what he wanted — a quiet surveillance detail by the people who knew the most about him. Whether he’d been trying to kill us in the car or draw us closer, I still didn’t know.

“And look what I caught,” he said. “Now, I want you to reach back slowly and drop that Glock right off the roof.”

I shook my head. “I’ll throw it over there. I can’t put this thing in the street.”

“Sure you can,” he said. The tip of his Walther was cool when he pressed it into my forehead. Presumably he’d been using something bigger a few minutes ago.

I reached back and let the Glock fall. When it smacked onto the concrete below, my stomach clenched.

He took a step back then, out of arm’s reach.

“To tell you the truth, I just wanted you dead and out of the way. But now that you’re here, I’m giving you thirty seconds to tell me what you’ve got on me,” he said. “And I’m not talking about what’s already in the papers.”

“No, I don’t imagine you are,” I said. “You want to know how deep you need to go before you can disappear again.”

“Twenty seconds,” he said. “I might even let you live. Talk to me.”

“You’re Steven Hennessey, aka Frances Moulton, aka Denny Humboldt,” I said. “You were with U.S. Army Special Forces until two thousand two, most recently in Afghanistan. There’s a grave in Kentucky with your name on it, and I’m assuming you’ve been running freelance off the radar since then.”

“What about the Bureau?” he said. “Where else are they looking for me?”

“Everywhere,” I said.

He adjusted his grip and locked his elbows. “I know who you are, too, Cross. You live on Fifth Street. No reason I can’t make a stop there tonight, too. Understand?”

I felt a rush of anger. “I’m not messing with you. We’ve
been grasping at straws. Why do you think we don’t have a whole team here?”

“Not yet you don’t,” he said. The sirens were definitely getting closer, though. “What else? You’re still alive. Keep talking.”

“You killed your partner, Mitch.”

“Not what I’m asking about. Give me something I can use,” he said. “Last chance, or you won’t be the only Cross to die tonight.”

“For God’s sake, if I had something, I’d tell you!”

The first police cruiser came screaming up the block down below.

“Looks like your time’s up,” he said.

A gun fired — and I flinched before I realized it wasn’t Hennessey’s. His eyes opened wide. A line of blood rolled onto his upper lip, and he collapsed straight down in front of me, as if someone had just dropped his strings.

“Alex?”

I looked to the right. Max Siegel was standing on the roof of the next building, lit from behind by a small shaft of light from the stairwell. His Beretta was still up and pointed my way, but he lowered it when I turned to him.

“You okay?” he called.

I stepped on Hennessey’s wrist and took the Walther out of his hand. There was no pulse at the neck, and his eyes were like blank saucers. He was gone. Max Siegel had taken him out and saved my life.

By the time I stood up again, the street was filling fast. Besides the sirens, I could hear doors slamming and the
squawk of police radios. The block was locked down, but I still needed to go and find my Glock.

Siegel appeared to stare after me as I headed for the door. I owed him a thank-you, to say the least, but the street noise would’ve swallowed my words, so I just flashed a thumbs-up for now.

All good.

IT RAINED THE NEXT MORNING. We had planned to do our big press briefing outside but ended up moving it to the Daly Building lineup room instead. A hundred reporters, maybe more, had shown up for this thing, and we put a live audio feed in the lobby for the spillover and also for any latecomers.

Max and I sat at a table at the front with Chief Perkins and Jim Heekin from the Directorate. The sound of camera shutters was everywhere, most of them pointed at Max and me. We were most definitely the odd couple.

This was one of my famous moments. I’d had a few before. There would be a couple of weeks of constant interview requests, maybe a book offer or two, and definitely some number of reporters waiting outside my house when I got home that night.

The briefing started with a statement from the mayor, who took about ten minutes to explain why all of this meant
we should vote for him in the next election. Then the chief gave a rundown of the basics of the case before we opened up the floor to questions.

“Detective Cross,” a Fox reporter asked right out of the gate, “can you walk us through the events of what happened on that roof last night? A real blow-by-blow? Only
you
can tell that story.”

This was the “sexy” part of the case — the stuff that sells papers and ad space as well. I gave an answer that was short enough to keep things moving along but detailed enough to keep them from spending the next hour hounding me about
how it feels
to come
face-to-face
with a
cold-blooded killer.

“So, would you say that Agent Siegel saved your life?” someone followed up.

Siegel leaned into his mike. “That’s right,” he said. “Nobody takes this guy out but me.” They gave him a good laugh for that one.

“Seriously, though,” he went on, “we may have had our bumps in the road, but this investigation is a perfect example of how federal and local authorities can work together in the face of a major threat. I’m proud of what Detective Cross and I accomplished here, and I hope the city’s proud of us, too.”

Apparently even Siegel’s good side had a huge ego. But I was in no mood to be picky or small. If he wanted the face time, he could have it.

I held back for the next several questions, until inevitably someone asked, “What about motive? Can you tell us definitively at this point that Talley and Hennessey were operating on their own? And for what reason?”

“We’re looking into all possibilities,” I said right away.
“What I can tell you is that the two gunmen responsible for the Patriot sniper killings are now deceased. The city should go back to normal. As to any open aspects of the investigation, we have no comment at this time.”

Siegel looked at me but kept his mouth shut, and we moved right along with our dog and pony show.

The full truth, which we would never share with the press, was that we had plenty of reasons to believe Talley and Hennessey had been following someone else’s game plan. Maybe we’d find out whose, and maybe we wouldn’t. If I’d had to guess that morning, I would have said this case was as closed as it was going to get.

It happens. A lot of police work is about skimming the bottom layers off things without ever getting to the top. In fact, that’s exactly what the people at the top count on. The ones who work for them — the guns for hire, the thugs, the street criminals — those are the ones who absorb most of the risk, and all too often they’re the only ones who take the fall.

Something about “foxes in the henhouse” comes to mind.

AFTER TWO MORE DAYS of boring and exhausting paperwork, I took a long weekend and spent some time playing what the kids like to call Ketchup. Mostly it’s just me turning off my cell and hanging out with them as much as possible, although Bree and I did sneak away for a few blessed hours on Sunday afternoon.