James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

“Bronson, when you said it’s nothing you can talk about, does that mean there’s something going on?”

“You deaf? I said, Nothin’. I can. Talk about!”

His leg jerked out, and he punctuated his words with kicks at the little table between us.

Bronson was the type of boy people write psych papers about all the time – the debatably untreatable kind. As far as I’d been able to tell, he had no empathy for other people whatsoever. It’s a basic building block of what could become antisocial personality disorder – Kyle had it, too, in fact – and it made acting out his violent impulses very easy to do. Put another way, it made it very hard for him not to act on them.

But I also knew Bronson’s little secret. Inside that street-ready shell of his and behind the mental-health issues was a scared little kid who didn’t understand why he felt the way he did most of the time. Pop-Pop had been bouncing around the system since he was a baby, and I thought he deserved a better shake than life had ever given him. That was why I came to see him twice a week.

I tried again. “Bronson, you know these talks of ours are private, right?”

“ ’Less I’m a danger to myself,” he recited. “Or someone else.” The second point seemed to make him smile. I think he liked the power this conversation gave him.

“Are you a danger to someone else?” I asked. My main concern was gangs. He hadn’t shown any tats or noticeable injuries – no burns, bruises, or anything else that looked like an initiation to me. But I also knew that his new foster home was near Valley Avenue, where the Ninth Street and Yuma crews ran, pretty much right on top of each other.

“There’s nothin’ happenin’,” he said with conviction. “Just talkin’.”

“And which crew are you ‘just talking’ with these days? Ninth Street? Yuma?”

He was starting to lose patience now and trying to stare me down. I let the silence hang, to see if he might answer. Instead, he jumped up and pushed the table aside to get in my face. The change in him was almost instantaneous.

“Don’t be grittin’ on me in here, man. Get your fuckin’ eyes off me!”

Then he took a swing.

It was as if he didn’t even know how small he was. I had to block him and sit him back down by the shoulders. Even then, he tried for me again.

I pushed him onto the couch a second time. “No way, Bronson. Don’t even think about that with me.” I absolutely hated getting physical with him, given his history, but he’d crossed the line. In fact, it didn’t seem to matter to Bronson where the line was. That’s what scared me the most.

This boy was headed over a cliff, and I wasn’t sure I could do anything to stop him.

“COME ON, BRONSON,” I said, and stood up. “Let’s blow this joint.”

“Where we goin’?” he wanted to know. “Juvie Hall? I didn’t hit you, man.”

“No, we’re not going to Juvie,” I said. “Not even close. Let’s go.”

I looked at my watch. We still had about thirty minutes left in the session. Bronson followed me into the hall, probably more out of curiosity than anything else. Usually when we left the room together, I escorted him out to his social worker.

When we got outside and I clicked open the doors to my car, he stopped short again.

“You a perv, Cross? You takin’ me somewhere private or something?”

“Yeah, I’m a perv, Pop-Pop,” I said. “Just get in the car.”

He shrugged and got in. I noticed him running his hand over the leather seat, and his eyes checking out the stereo, but he kept any compliments, or any digs, to himself.

“So what’s the big secret, then?” he said as I pulled out into traffic. “Where the hell we goin’?”

“No secret,” I said. “There’s a Starbucks not far from here. I’m going to buy you one of those Frappuccinos.”

Bronson turned to look out his window, but I caught a little flash of a grin before he did. It wasn’t much, but at least for a few minutes that day, he just might have thought we were on the same side.

“Venti,” he said.

“Yeah, Venti.”

THE IMBECILES WERE still in charge of the Bureau, or so it seemed. As far as Kyle Craig could tell, no one had even blinked when the freshly debriefed and newly reactivated Agent Siegel got himself assigned to the sniper case in DC. Siegel’s earlier stint in Medellin, Colombia, during their “murder capital of the world” days, was a matter of record, and an impressive calling card at that. They were lucky to have him on this one.

Luckier than they knew – two agents for the price of one! He sat at his new desk in the field office, staring down at the photo ID he’d been issued that very morning. Max Siegel’s mug stared back. He still got a rise just looking at it – still half expected to see the old Kyle whenever he passed by a mirror.

“Must be strange.”

Kyle looked up to see one of the other agents standing over the cubicle wall. It was Agent What’shisname, the one everyone called Scooter, of all absurd things – Scooter, with the eager eyes and constant snacking on sugared carbs.

Kyle slid the ID back into his pocket. “Strange?”

“Returning to fieldwork, I mean. After all that time.”

“Miami was fieldwork,” Kyle said, salting his speech with a dash of Siegel’s New Yawk attitude and patois.

“I hear you. Didn’t mean to imply anything,” What’shisname said. Kyle just stared and let the awkwardness hang like a sheet of glass between them. “All right, well… you need anything before I head out?”

“From you?” Kyle said.

“Well, yeah.”

“No thanks, Scooter. I’m all set.”

Max Siegel was going to be antisocial. Kyle had decided that before he’d arrived. Let the other agents coo over baby pictures and share microwave popcorn in the break room. The wider the berth they gave him around here, the more he could get done, and the more secure his masquerade.

That’s why he liked after hours so much. He’d already spent most of the previous night right there at the office, sucking up everything there was to know about the Eighteenth Street shooting. Tonight, he focused on crime-scene photos and anything to do with the shooter’s methods. His profile was shaping up nicely.

Certain words kept coming to mind as he worked. “Clean.” “Detached.” “Professional.” There had been no specific calling card from this killer, and none of the “come and get me” gamesmanship you so often saw with these things. It was almost sterile – homicide from 262 yards, which was an absolute yawn from Kyle’s perspective, even if the shock and awe of it, to borrow a phrase from the newspapers, were rather elegantly rendered.

He worked for several hours, even lost track of time, until a ringing phone somewhere broke the silence in the office. Kyle didn’t think too much about it, but then his own line went off a minute later.

“Agent Siegel,” he answered, with a smile in his voice, though not on his face.

“This is Jamieson, over in Communications. We just got a homicide report from MPD. Looks like there’s been another sniper attack. Up in the Woodley Park area this time.”

Kyle didn’t hesitate. He stood up and shrugged on his jacket. “Where am I going?” he said. “Exactly where?”

A few minutes later, he was pulling out of the parking garage and driving on Mass Avenue at around sixty. The sooner he got up there, the sooner he could head off Metro Police, who were no doubt fouling up his crime scene at that very moment.

And more important – Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines – this was the moment he’d been waiting for. With any luck, it was time for Alex Cross and Max Siegel to meet.