Cross Fire

minutes later, he was pulling out of the parking garage and driving on Mass Avenue at around sixty. The sooner he got up there, the sooner he could head off Metro Police, who were no doubt fouling up his crime scene at that very moment.
    And more important —
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines
— this was the moment he’d been waiting for. With any luck, it was time for Alex Cross and Max Siegel to meet.

Chapter 23

    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.”

Chapter 24

    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