Cross Fire

live news shot of the house now. “That’s creepy,” said Sampson. “The press like to talk about invasion of privacy — except when they’re doing the invading.”
    Mrs. Dlouhy’s initial statement was that she’d heard a tinkle of glass, looked over at the broken window, and only then noticed her husband’s head slumped over with his eyes wide open in the recliner next to hers. I could still hear her crying in the kitchen with one of our counselors, and my heart went out to her some. What a nightmare.
    Mel Dlouhy was still sitting in his chair. The single bullet wound in his temple looked relatively clean, with a small blue-black halo around the entry. Sampson pointed to it with the tip of a pen.
    “Let’s say he gets shot here,” he said, and raised the pen about six inches to where Dlouhy’s head would have been positioned. “And it comes in” — he drew the pen in an arc until it was pointing at the broken glass — “over there.”
    “That’s a downward angle,” I said. The bullet had pierced one of the top panes in a six-over-one window that looked out to the backyard. Without any discussion, we both walked around to the dining room and outside through a pair of French doors.
    A brick patio in the back gave way to a long, narrow yard. Two floodlights on the side of the house lit about half the space, but it didn’t look like there were any outbuildings or trees big enough to support someone’s weight.
    Beyond that, the rear neighbor’s three-story Tudor was backlit by the streetlamp on Thirty-first. Two huge oaks dominated that yard, mostly obscured in the shadow of the house.
    “You said nobody was home over there?” Sampson asked. “That right?”
    “Out of town, in fact,” I said. “Someone knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe showing off. Shooter’s got a reputation to live up to after that first hit.”
    “Assuming this is he.”
    “It’s he,” I said.
    “Excuse me, Detective?” Sergeant Ed Fleischman was suddenly standing there. I looked down at his hands, to make sure he was gloved.
    “What are you doing back here, Sergeant? There’s plenty for you to do out front.”
    “Two things, sir. We’ve had a couple of neighbors reporting strange vehicles.”
    “Vehicles, plural?”
    Fleischman nodded. “For whatever it’s worth. One old Buick with New York plates parked up the street off and on for several days.” He checked the pad in his hand. “And a large, dark-colored SUV, maybe a Suburban, definitely beat up. It was out on the street for a few hours late last night.”
    This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where old cars looked at home, at least not outside of service hours. We’d have to follow up on both the vehicles right away.
    “What was the other thing?” I asked.
    “FBI’s here.”
    “Tell them to send ERT around to the neighbor’s yard,” I told the sergeant.
    “Not ‘them,’ sir. It’s an agent. He asked for you specifically.”
    Peering back inside, I could see a tall white guy in a generic Bureau suit. He was leaning over, with his blue-gloved hands on his knees, staring at the hole in Mel Dlouhy’s head.
    “Hey!” I called through the broken window. “Why do you need to be in there?”
    He either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to.
    “What’s his name?” I asked Fleischman.
    “Siegel, sir.”
    “Hey, Siegel!” I shouted this time, and then I started inside. “Don’t touch anything in there!”

Chapter 25

    WHEN ALEX CAME INTO THE ROOM, Kyle stood up and looked right into his eyes.
Dead man walking,
Kyle thought, and smiled as he extended a hand.
    “Max Siegel, Washington field office. How’re you doing? Not so good, I imagine.”
    Cross shook Kyle’s hand begrudgingly, but it was still an electric moment, like the tip-off of an NBA game.
Here we go, here we go, here we go, now!
    “What are you doing in here?” Cross wanted to know.
    “I’m just hitting the ground on this one,” Kyle told him.
    “No shit. I mean, what specifically do you need on this body?”
    It was magnificent — Cross had no idea who he was looking at! The face was flawless, of course. If there was any danger here, it was with Alex’s ears, not his eyes. This was where the weeks of audio surveillance on Max Siegel in Miami would really start to pay off.
    But first he did exactly what Cross wouldn’t expect. He turned his back on him and knelt down to look at the entry wound again.
    A blue-and-black residue covered the skin around the