James Patterson - Cross

Then he turned to go. Dante Ricci had gotten the message, and very, very soon, so would Junior Maggione.

Then he heard a voice coming from outside the house. A female.

"You killed him! You bastard! You killed my Dante!"

Sullivan turned back and saw Dante's wife standing there with a gun in her hand. The woman was petite, a pretty bleached blonde, no more than five feet tall.

The wife fired blindly into the dark. She didn't know how to shoot, couldn't even hold a gun right. But she had some hot Maggione blood in her.

"Get back in the house, Cecilia!" Sullivan shouted. "Or I'll blow your head off!"

"You killed him! You scumbag! You dirty son of a bitch!" She stepped off the porch, moving into the yard.

The woman was crying, blubbering, but coming to get him, the dumb bunny. "I'm going to kill you, you fucker." Her next shot exploded a concrete birdbath, only a yard or so to Sullivan's right.

Her crying had turned to a high-pitched wail. It sounded more like an injured animal than anything human.

Then something inside her snapped, and she charged across the driveway. She fired off one more shot before Sullivan put two into her chest. She dropped like she'd run into a wall, then lay there quivering pathetically. He cut her up too.

Once he got inside his car, he felt better, satisfied with himself. He even welcomed the long drive back. Riding along the turnpike, he opened the windows and cranked up the music, singing Bono's words at the top of his lungs as if they were his own.

THE NEXT DAY would get filed under What the Hell Was I Thinking? I showed up at the Sixth District station house, where Jason Stemple was based, and I started asking around about him. I wasn't sure what I would do if I found him, but I was nervous enough for Kim Stafford that I had to try something, or thought I did.

I didn't carry creds or a badge anymore, but lots of DC cops knew who I was, who I am. Apparently not the desk sergeant, though.

He kept me waiting on the civilian side of the glass longer than I would have liked. That was okay, I guess, no big deal. I stood around, glancing over the Annual Crime Reduction Awards on the wall until he finally informed me that he had checked me out with his captain; then he buzzed me through.

Another uniformed officer was there waiting for me.

"Pulaski, take Mister" – the sergeant glanced down at the sign-in sheet- "Cross back to the locker room please. He's looking for Stemple. I thought he'd be out by now."

I followed him down a busy hallway, picking up strands of cop talk along the way. Pulaski pushed open a heavy swinging door into the locker room. The smell was familiar, sweat and various antiseptics.

"Stemple! You got a visitor."

A young guy, late twenties, about my height but heavier, looked over. He was alone at a row of beat-up army-green lockers, and he was just pulling on a Washington Nationals road jersey. Another half-dozen or so off-duty cops were standing around, grousing and laughing about the state of the court system, which definitely was a joke these days.

I walked over to where Stemple was putting his watch on and still basically ignoring me.

"Could I talk to you for a minute?" I asked. I was trying to be polite, but it took an effort with this guy who liked to beat up on his girlfriend.

"About?" Stemple barely looked my way.

I lowered my voice. "I want to talk to you… about Kim Stafford."

All at once, the less-than-friendly welcome downgraded to pure animosity. Stemple rocked back on his heels and looked me up and down like I was a street person who'd just broken into his house.

"What are you doing in here anyway? You a cop?"

"I used to be a cop, but now I'm a therapist. I work with Kim."

Stemple's eyes beaded and burned. He was getting the picture now, and he didn't like what he saw. Neither did I, because I was looking at a powerfully built male who beat up on women and sometimes burned them with lit objects.

"Yeah, well, I just pulled a double, and I'm out of here. You stay away from Kim, if you know what's good for you. You hear me?"

Now that we'd met, I had a professional opinion of Stemple: He was a piece of shit. As he walked away, I said, "You're beating her up, Stemple. You burned her with a cigar."

The locker room got still, but I noticed that no one hurried to get in my face on Stemple's behalf. The others just watched. A couple of them nodded, as though maybe they knew about Stemple and Kim already.

He slowly turned back to me and puffed himself up. "What are you trying to start with me, asshole? Who the hell are you? She screwing you?"

"It's nothing like that. I told you, I just came here to talk. If you know what's good for you, you should listen."

That's when Stemple threw the first punch. I stepped back, and he missed, but not by much. He was definitely hot-tempered, and strong.

It was all I needed, though, maybe all I wanted. I feinted to the left, then countered with an uppercut into his gut. Some of the air rushed out of him.

But then his powerful arms latched around my middle. Stemple drove me hard against a row of lockers. The metal boomed with the impact. Pain radiated through my upper and lower back. I hoped nothing was broken already

As soon as I could get my footing again, I bulldozed him back, and he stumbled, losing his grip. He swung again. This time, he connected hard with my jaw.

I returned the favor – a solid right to the chin – followed with a looping left hook that landed just over his eyebrow. One for me, one for Kim Stafford. Then I hit him with a right to the cheekbone.

Stemple spun halfway around; then he surprised me and went down to the locker room floor. His right eye was already starting to close.

My arms pulsed. I was ready for more of this punk, this coward. The fight never should have started, but it had, and I was disappointed when he didn't get up again.

"Is that how it is with Kim? She pisses you off, you take a swing?"

He groaned but didn't say anything to me.

I said, "Listen, Stemple. You want me to keep what I know to myself, not go any higher with this? Make sure it doesn't happen again. Ever. Keep your hands off her. And your cigars. Are we clear?"

He stayed where he was, and that told me what I needed to know. I was halfway to the door when one of the other cops caught my eye. "Good for you," he said.

IF NANA HAD BEEN WORKING the Georgetown case, in her own inimitable style, she'd have said it was "simmering" about now. Sampson and I had tossed a bunch of interesting ingredients into the mix, and we'd turned the heat up high. Now it was time for some results.

I looked at the big man across a table full of crime reports spread out between us. "I've never seen so much information lead to so little," I said grumpily.

"Now you know what I've been dealing with on this," he said, and squeezed and unsqueezed a rubber stress ball in his fist. I was surprised the thing hadn't burst into a million pieces by now.

"This guy is careful, seems smart enough, and he's cruel. Got a powerful angle too – using his souvenirs to threaten these women. Making it personal. In case you hadn't figured that out already," I said. I was just talking it through out loud. Sometimes that helps.

My thing lately, my habit, was pacing. I'd probably covered about six miles of carpet in the past fourteen hours, all in the same Second District station conference room where we were holed up. My feet hurt some, but that's how I kept my brain going. That and sour-apple Altoids.

We'd started that morning by cross-referencing the last four years of Uniform Crime Reports, looking for potentially related cases – reaching for anything that could start to tie this thing together. Given what we now knew about our perp, we had looked at female missing persons, rape cases, and especially murder where mutilation was involved. First for Georgetown and then for the whole DC metro area.