James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

“Let’s say I’m an admirer of your work,” the man told him. “I saw what you did in Farragut Square last night, and I don’t mind telling you, it was a thrill. Definitely worth the effort for me to get all the way over there.”

Wajda’s stomach lurched. He felt as though he might vomit. Or even faint.

“Oh Jezu–”

“Not to worry. Your secret’s safe with me.” The man pulled another chair over and sat down across from him. “But tell me something, Stanislaw. What’s with the prime numbers? The police reports say it’s something about Riemann’s hypothesis. Is that accurate?”

So he knew. This strange fellow knew what he’d done. Stanislaw could feel tears warming the corners of his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “Riemann’s. Yes.”

“But what about it, specifically? Enlighten me, Professor. I’m dying to know.”

It had been a long time since Stanislaw had seen curiosity in a young person’s eyes. Years and years. A lifetime ago…

“The Riemann zeta function zero, as you know, lies on the critical line with real part between zero and one, if the zeta function is equal to zero–”

“No,” the man said. “Listen to me carefully. Why do you kill for it? What does it mean to you?”

“Everything,” he said. “To understand it is to grasp infinity, do you see? To conceive of a framework so vast as to transcend ideas of size or even limitation–”

The man slapped him hard across the face. “I don’t want one of your stupid college lectures, Professor. I want to know why you kill those boys in the way that you do. Now, can you answer that for me or not? You’re intelligent – it should be simple.”

He could, Stanislaw realized suddenly. Yes. Yes. The outcome had been taken from his hands. There was no longer room for anything but the truth.

“Those boys are better off dead,” he said. “There is nothing here for them but misery and suffering. Don’t you understand? Don’t you see?”

“I do see.”

“They have fallen out of God’s reach, but I can still help them. I can give them that which is infinite,” he said. “I can give them back to God. Do you understand?”

“I think I do,” the man said, and stood up. “This is very disappointing. We might have – “ He paused and smiled. “Well, never mind about what might have been. Thank you, Professor. It’s been an education.”

“No,” Stanislaw said. “Thank you.”

He saw the ice pick then, and followed it with his eyes as the man raised it up and to the side until it disappeared into silhouette against a bare bulb in the ceiling. Then Stanislaw lifted his own chin high, opening himself as widely as possible so that no matter what happened, the man would be sure not to miss.

I’M SO USED to my own phone going off at all hours that I was reaching for the nightstand before I realized it was Bree’s cell ringing, not mine. The clock by the bed said 4:21. Oh, good God Almighty, what now?

“This is Stone.” I heard her in the dark. “Who’s this?”

Right away, she sat up. When she turned on the light beside the bed, the phone was pressed against her chest, and she whispered so low that she practically mouthed the next words to me.

“It’s Kyle Craig.”

Now I was up, too. When I took the phone, I could hear Kyle still talking on the other end of the line.

“Bree, sweetheart? Are you there?”

If he’d been in front of me, I honestly believe I could have killed him without thinking twice. But I kept my head as best I could. I grabbed control of my emotions.

“Kyle, it’s Alex. Don’t ever call this number again,” I said, and hung up.

Bree’s jaw literally dropped. “What was that?” she said. “Why did you do that?”

“My line in the sand. It doesn’t do me any good to let him keep setting the rules.”

“Do you think he’ll call back?”

“Well, if he doesn’t, we’ll both get a little more sleep,” I said.

Something had changed in me. I wasn’t going to keep playing this game forever. I couldn’t.

And, in any case, my own cell phone rang a few seconds later.

“What?” I answered.

“Bree never answered my question,” Kyle said. “About how the wedding plans were coming along. I figured that was more her department than yours.”

“No,” I said. “You wanted to make yourself seem more threatening.”

He laughed almost congenially. “Did it work?”

“I’m hanging up, Kyle.”

“Wait!” he said. “There is something else. It’s important, or I wouldn’t be calling so early.”

I didn’t ask what it was. In fact, I was about to hang up anyway when he went on.

“I got you an engagement present,” he said. “Of sorts. Since I’m allowing you to get married and all. A little something to free up your schedule, so you can focus on that pretty little bride to be.”

Now my heart sank. I had to know. “Kyle? What have you done?”

“Well, if I told you, that would spoil the surprise, wouldn’t it?” he said. “Twenty-ninth and K, northeast corner. And you might want to hurry.”

BY SUNRISE, we had a full tactical team in place at the corner of Twenty-ninth and K. There was very little I’d put past Kyle, and while it could be a mistake to show up when and where he specified, I couldn’t just ignore the phone call. So we took precautions, as much as we possibly could.

The location was at the edge of Rock Creek Park, with the Whitehurst Freeway running overhead. We put officers with MP5s on the overpass, and a barrier of armored SWAT vans hugging the corner to block as many sight lines as possible.

Our nerve center was a coffee shop on K, where the SWAT unit commander, Tom Ogilvy, could stay in radio contact with his team. Sampson and I listened in on headsets.

EMS was on standby, with patrol units barring the street a block away in each direction. All personnel were outfitted with Kevlar and helmets.

And maybe it was all for nothing. Was Kyle actually watching? Was he armed? Ready with something up his sleeve? Or maybe none of the above. I think that’s exactly what he wanted me to wrestle with now.

In any case, it didn’t take long for the entry team to find something. Less than five minutes after they’d snaked into the park from Twenty-ninth, their lead man radioed over.

“We’ve got a body here,” he said. “White male, middle-aged. Looks like it could be a homeless guy.”

“Proceed with caution,” Ogilvy radioed back. We’d already briefed everyone about the possibilities here. “I want a full visual check around that body before anyone touches it. B Team, I need you on high alert.”

Three more minutes of silence ticked by until the “all clear” came back – such as it was. When I reached for the coffee shop door, Sampson grabbed my arm.

“Let me do this one, Alex. If Kyle’s here, it could be you he’s waiting for.”

“No way,” I told him. “Besides, if Kyle ever comes for me, it’s going to be face-to-face, not from a distance.”

“Oh, because you know everything there is to know about that maniac?” he said.

“I know that much,” I said, and headed outside.

Even before we got close to the body in the park, I recognized Stanislaw Wajda’s filthy barn coat. He’d been left on his side, shoved under a clump of bushes, just like his own victims before him.

There was no carving this time. The only visible injury was a single puncture wound to the throat, similar to the one we’d seen on Anjali Patel.

The skin on his neck was a solid stain of dried blood, and it continued down under his shirt. That meant he’d most likely been sitting up when he was stabbed. Probably when he died, too.