Cross Fire

eye.
    Connecticut Avenue down below was a forest of mobile broadcast towers, and I knew from experience that the blogosphere was about to officially catch on fire with this thing.
    “Can you see me?” I said into my radio.
    I had Sampson on the wireless, from inside the hotel room. He was standing right where Skip Downey had gone down.
    “Wave your arm or something,” he said. “There you are. But, yeah — that’s pretty good cover.”
    Someone behind me cleared his throat.
    I wheeled around and saw Max Siegel standing there.
Great. Just who I didn’t want to see.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
    “No problem,” I said. Unless you counted the fact that he was up here at all.
    “What have we got?” He came over to get the same view I had, and looked out across Connecticut. “How far a shot is that? Fifty yards?”
    “Less,” I said.
    “So they’re obviously not trying to top themselves. At least, not in terms of distance.”
    I noticed he said “they” and wondered if he’d been on that FIG conference call — or if he’d come up with it on his own.
    “The MO’s the same otherwise,” I said. “The shots came from a standing position. Caliber seems like a match. And then there’s the target profile, of course.”
    “Bad guy out of the headlines,” he said.
    “That’s it,” I said. “Plenty of people got screwed over by this Downey guy. The whole thing has vigilante justice written all over it.”
    “You want to know what I think?” Siegel asked — of course, it wasn’t really a question. “I think you’re oversimplifying. These guys aren’t hunting, not in the traditional sense. And there’s nothing personal in the work at all. It’s completely detached.”
    “Not completely,” I said. “That print they left at the first scene had to have been deliberate.”
    “Even if it was,” Siegel said, “that doesn’t mean the whole thing was their idea.”
    Already I was getting tired of the jawing. “Where are you going with this?”
    “Isn’t it kind of obvious?” he said. “These guys are guns for hire. They’re working for someone. Maybe there’s an agenda — but it belongs to whoever’s footing the bill. That’s who wants all these bad boys dead.”
    He had laid out his opinion as fact, not to be questioned — as usual. But, still, the theory wasn’t completely off the wall. I owed it to myself to consider it, and I definitely would. Score one for Max Siegel.
    “I’m a little surprised,” I told him honestly. “I’m used to the Bureau sticking to harder evidence and staying away from supposition.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m full of surprises,” he said, and put an unwelcome hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got to widen your mind, Detective, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
    I minded very much, but I was determined to do the one thing Siegel seemed incapable of — taking the high road.

Chapter 35

    I LEFT THE MAYFLOWER crime scene soon after that, glad for an excuse to get away from Siegel.
    Our second victim that night, Rebecca Littleton, was at George Washington University Hospital with a single gunshot wound to the shoulder. Word from the emergency room was that it had been a penetrating trauma, as opposed to a perforating one. That meant the bullet still had to come out. If I hurried, I could catch her before surgery.
    When I got there, they had Littleton on a gurney in one of the blue-curtained ER cubicles. The truss over her shoulder was stained dark with Betadine, and whatever the IV meds were doing for her physical pain, they sure weren’t helping her mental state — she still looked ghost white and scared as hell.
    “Rebecca? I’m Detective Cross from Metro Police,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
    “Am I, like, being charged with anything?” I don’t think she was much more than eighteen or nineteen. Barely legal. Her voice was tiny, and it quavered when she spoke.
    “No,” I assured her. “Nothing like that. I just need to ask you some questions. I’ll try to make this easy, and fast.”
    The truth was, even if someone wanted to pursue the solicitation angle, there were no witnesses to it — with the possible exception of the man who had shot her.
    “Did you see anything tonight that might give you an idea of who did this? Anyone outside the window? Or even just something out of place in the hotel room?”
    “I don’t think so, but… I don’t remember very much. Mr. Downey started to close the