Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross Kill

“What’s this all about?” Virginia Winslow asked, studying me now.

“There was a cop shooting in DC,” I said. “A man who fit Gary’s description was the shooter.”

I expected Soneji’s widow to respond with total skepticism. But instead she looked frightened and appalled again.

“Gary’s dead,” she said. “ You killed him, didn’t you?”

“He killed himself,” I said. “Detonated the bomb he was carrying.”

Her attention flitted to the boards. “That’s not what the internet is saying.”

“What’s the internet saying?”

“That Gary’s alive,” she said. “Our son, Dylan, said he’s seen it online. Gary’s dead, isn’t he? Please tell me that.”

The way she clenched the rifle told me she needed to hear it, so I said, “As far as I know, Gary Soneji’s dead and has been dead for more than ten years. But someone who looked an awful lot like him shot my partner yesterday.”

“What?” she said. “No.”

“It’s not him,” I said. “I’m almost certain.”

“Almost?” she said before a phone started ringing back in the house.

“I... I have to get that,” she said. “Work.”

“What kind of work?”

“I’m a machinist and gunsmith,” she said. “My father taught me the trade.”

She shut the door before I could comment. The bolts were thrown one by one.

I almost left, but then, remembering that voice I’d heard on my way in, I went around the farmhouse, seeing a small, neglected barn around which dozens of pigeons were flying.

I heard someone talking in the barn, and walked over.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

Pigeons started and whirled out the barn door.

There was a grimy window. I went to it, and peeked inside, seeing through the dirt sixteen-year-old Dylan Winslow standing there by a large pigeon coop, gazing off into space.

Dylan looked nothing like his father. He had his mother’s naturally dark hair, sharp nose, and the same dull brown eyes. He was borderline obese, with hardly a chin, more a draping of his cheeks that joined a wattle above his Adam’s apple.

“You need to learn your place,” he said to no one. “You need to learn to be quiet. Emotional control. It’s the key to a happy life.”

Then he turned and walked by the pigeon coop, running a hoop of keys across the metal mesh.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

The sound rattled the pigeons and they battered themselves against their cages.

“Be quiet now,” Dylan said firmly. “You got to learn some control.”

Then he pivoted and started toward me, raking the cages again.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

A disturbing little smile showed on the teen’s face, and there was even more upsetting delight in his eyes. I have a PhD in criminal psychology and have studied serial killers in depth. Many of them grew up torturing animals for sport.

Had Dylan’s father?

I stepped inside the barn. Gary Soneji’s son had his back to me again, walking away while raking the front of the cages.

Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.

I took another two steps and noticed a large piece of cardboard nailed to one of the barn’s support posts.

There was a well-used paper target taped to the cardboard and six darts sticking out of it. The target featured a bull’s-eye superimposed over a man’s face. It had been used so many times that at first I didn’t know who the man was.

Then I did.

“Who the hell are you?” Dylan said, and then gaped when I faced him.

“From the looks of it,” I said, “I’m your dartboard.”

Dylan Winslow pursed his lips in long-simmering anger, said, “If Mama would let me, I’d use one of her shotguns on it instead of darts.”

What do you say to the disturbed son of the disturbed criminal you shot in the face and watched burn?

“I can understand your feelings,” I said.

“No, you can’t,” he said, sneering. “This an official visit, Detective Alex Cross?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said. “A man fitting your dead father’s description shot my partner in the head last night.”

Dylan’s sneer disappeared, replaced by widening eyes and that disturbing, delighted grin I’d seen earlier. “It’s true, then, what they’re saying.”

“What are they saying?”

“That you didn’t get my dad,” Dylan said. “That he escaped the tunnels, badly wounded, but alive, and is still alive. Is that what you’re telling me, too?”

There seemed so much hope in his face that, whether he was in need of psychological help or not, I didn’t want to destroy it.

“If it wasn’t your father who shot my partner, it was his twin.”

Dylan started to laugh. He laughed so hard there were tears in his eyes.

Thumping his chest, he said, “I knew it! I felt it right here.”

When he stopped, I said, “What do you think is going to happen? That he’s going to suddenly appear to rescue you?”

Dylan acted as if I’d read his thoughts, but then shot back, “He will. You watch. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s like they say — Dad was always smarter than you. More patient and cunning than you.”

Rather than defend myself, I said, “You’re right. Your father was smarter than me, and more patient, and more cunning.”

“He still is. They say so on the internet.”

“What site?” I asked.

Dylan gave me that disturbing smile again before saying, “One you can’t get at in a million years, Cross.” He laughed. “Never in a million years.”

“Really?” I said. “How about I march back up to your mother and tell her I’m coming back with a search warrant for every computer in your house?”

Dylan’s grin stretched wider. “Go ahead. We don’t have one.”

“How about every computer in your school, in the local library, in every place your mother says you get online?”

I thought that would rock him, but it didn’t.

“Knock yourself out,” he said. “But unless I have a lawyer present, I am done answering your questions, and I have pigeons to feed.”

Or torture, I almost said.

But I bit back the urge, and turned to leave, calling over my shoulder, “Nice to meet you, Dylan. Wonderful getting to know the son of an old enemy.”

It was past six when I finally reached the ICU at GW Medical Center. The nurse at the station said Sampson’s vitals had been irregular most of the day, and there’d been little if any reduction in brain swelling.

“You sick in any way?” the nurse asked.

“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”

“Protocol. The shunt draining the wound is an open track straight to the inside of your friend’s healing skull. Any kind of infection could be catastrophic.”

“I feel fine,” I said, and put on the gown, mask, and gloves.

When I pushed open the door, Billie stirred awake in her reclining chair.

“Alex? That you?”

“The man behind the mask.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, getting up to hug me. “I’ve been wearing one the past forty hours and I’m getting rubbed raw.”

“His vitals?”

Billie scanned the monitors attached to her husband and said, “Not bad at the moment, but his blood pressure took a short, scary dive about four hours ago. I was thinking stroke until he just kind of came up out of it.”

“They say talking to people in comas helps,” I said.

“Stimulates the brain,” she said, nodding. “But that’s usually with a non-induced coma, when there aren’t drugs involved.”

“All the same,” I said, and went to Sampson’s side.

“I’ll be a few minutes,” Billie said.