Cat and Mouse

closed, swollen to twice its size. Deep purple and scarlet bruises were around the eye. There were contusions and lacerations.
    Gary Soneji wad dead — he’d gone down in Grand Central Station. He couldn’t have done this horrible thing at Alex’s house.
    And yet, he had promised that he would!
    Nothing made sense to Sampson yet. He wished he were dreaming this nightmare, but knew he wasn’t
    A detective named Rakeem Powell grabbed him by the shoulder, grabbed him hard and shook him. “Damon’s all right, John. Somebody came in here, beat the living hell out of the kids. Looks like he just used fists. Hard punches. Didn’t mean to kill them, though, or maybe the cowardly fuck couldn’t finish the job. Who the hell knows at this point. Damon’s all right.
John?
Are you all right?”
    Sampson pushed Rakeem away, threw him off impatiently. “What about Alex? Nana?”
    “Nana was beaten bad. Bus driver found her on the street, took her to St. Tony’s. She’s conscious, but she’s an old woman. Skin rips when they’re old. Alex got shot in his bedroom, John. They’re up there with him.”
    “Who’s in there?” Sampson groaned. He was close to tears, and he never cried. He couldn’t help himself now, couldn’t hide his feelings.
    “Christ, who isn’t?” Rakeem said and shook his head. “EMS, us, FBI. Kyle Craig is here.”
    Sampson broke away from Rakeem Powell and lunged toward the bedroom.
Everybody wasn’t dead inside the house — but Alex had been shot. Somebody came here to get him! Who could it have been?
    Sampson tried to go into Alex’s bedroom, but he was held back by men he didn’t know — probably FBI from the look of them.
    Kyle Craig was in the room. He knew that much. The FBI was here already. “Tell Kyle I’m here,” he told the men at the door. “Tell Kyle Craig it’s Sampson.”
    One of the FBI agents ducked inside. Kyle came out immediately, pushed his way into the hall to Sampson.
    “Kyle, what the hell?” Sampson tried to talk. “
Kyle
, what happened?”
    “He’s been shot twice. Shot and beaten,” Kyle said. “I need to talk to you, John. Listen to me, just
listen
to me, will you.”

Chapter 71

    S AMPSON TRIED to hold back his fears, his true feelings, tried to control the chaos in his mind. Detectives and police personnel were clustered at the bedroom door in the narrow hallway. A couple of them were crying. Others were trying not to.
    None of this could be happening!
    Sampson turned away from the bedroom. He was afraid he was going to lose it, something he never did. Kyle hadn’t stopped talking, but he couldn’t really follow what Kyle was saying. He couldn’t concentrate on the FBI man’s words.
    He inhaled deeply trying to fight off the reverberations of shock. It
was
shock, wasn’t it? Then not tears started to stream down his cheeks. He didn’t care if Kyle saw. The pain in his heart cut so deep, cut right to the bone. His nerve endings were already rubbed raw. Never anything like this before.
    “Listen to me, John,” Kyle said, but Sampson wasn’t listening.
    Sampson’s body slumped heavily against the wall. He asked Kyle how he’d gotten here so fast. Kyle had an answer, always an answer for everything. Still — nothing was really making sense to Sampson, not a word of it.
    He was looking at something over the FBI man’s shoulder. Sampson couldn’t believe it. Through the window, he could see an FBI helicopter. It was landing in the vacant lot just across Fifth Street. Things were getting stranger and stranger.
    A figure lurched out of the helicopter, crouched under the rotor blades, then started toward the Cross house. It almost seemed as if he were levitating above the blowing grass in the yard.
    The man was tall and slender, with dark sunglasses, the kind with small round lenses. His long blond hair was bound in a ponytail. He didn’t look like FBI.
    There was definitely something different about him, something radical for the Bureau. He almost looked angry as he pushed the looky-loss away. He also looked as if he were in charge, at least in charge of himself.
    Now… what was this?
Sampson thought.
What’s going on here?
    “Who the hell is that?” he asked Kyle Craig. “Who is that, Kyle? Who is that goddamn ponytailed asshole?”

Chapter 72

    M Y NAME is Thomas Pierce, but the press usually call me “Doc.” I was once a medical student at Harvard. I graduated, but never worked a day in a hospital. Never practiced