James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

I WAS AT home when I got the call about the latest sniper murder near Woodley Park.

“Detective Cross? It’s Sergeant Ed Fleischman from Two D. We’ve got a nasty homicide up here, very possible sniper fire.”

“Who’s the deceased?” I asked.

“Mel Dlouhy, sir. That’s why I called you. He fits right into the mold on your case.”

Dlouhy was currently out on bail but still at the center of what looked to be one of the biggest insider tax scandals in U.S. history. The allegations were that he’d used his position in the District’s IRS office to funnel tens of millions in taxpayer dollars to himself, his family, and his friends, usually through nonprofit children’s charities that didn’t actually exist.

Another sniper incident, and another bad guy right out of the headlines – we had a pattern.

The case had just jumped to a new level, too. I was determined we’d get this right from the very start. If it had to be a circus, I could at least try to make sure it was my circus.

“Where are you?” I asked the sergeant.

“Thirty-second, just off of Cleveland Avenue, sir. You know the area?”

“I do.”

Second District was the only one in the city with zero homicides in the last calendar year. So much for that statistic. I could already feel the neighborhood panic going up.

“Did the fire board get there?”

“Yes, sir. The victim’s confirmed dead.”

“And the house is clear?” I asked.

“We ran a protective sweep, and Mrs. Dlouhy’s with us now. I can ask for consent to search if you want.”

“No. If anyone’s inside, I want them out. Call DC Mobile Crime. They can start photographing, but nobody touches anything until I get there,” I told Sergeant Fleischman. “Do you have any idea where the shots came from yet?”

“Either the backyard, or the neighbor’s place behind that. Nobody’s home over there,” Fleischman told me.

“Okay. Set up a command post on the street – not in the yard, Sergeant. I want officers at the front and back doors, and another at the neighbor’s house. Anyone wants to get into either place, they go through you first – and then the answer is no. Not until I’m on-site. This is an MPD crime scene, and I’m ranking Homicide. You’re going to see FBI, ATF, maybe the chief, too. He lives a lot closer than I do. Tell him to call me in the car if he wants.”

“Anything else, Detective?” Fleischman sounded just a little overwhelmed. Not that I blamed him. Most 2D officers aren’t used to this kind of thing.

“Yeah, talk to your first responders. I don’t want any jaw jacking with the press or the neighbors – no one. As far as your guys are concerned, they haven’t seen a thing, they don’t know a thing. Just keep the whole place locked down tight until I’m there.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

“No, Sergeant. You’ll just do it. Trust me – we have to keep this thing locked down tight.”

UNFORTUNATELY THE PRESS was going berserk when I got there. Dozens of cameras were jockeying for an angle on Mel and Nina Dlouhy’s white stone house, either out front at the barriers that Sergeant Ed Fleischman had established, or over on Thirty-first, where a separate detail had been dispatched just to keep people from coming in through the back, which they certainly would do.

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!”

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.