Double Cross

where I’d be speaking tonight at around seven thirty. We’d agreed that my name would be the biggest draw and also create the most buzz online, and I guess we had finally been right about something.
    Kitz and his people had been helping get the word out over the Web—baiting the hook, so to speak. Whether or not DCAK would bite now was the question. A lot of other geeks and freaks certainly had.
    The ballroom was a long rectangular space that could be partitioned into three smaller rooms with accordion-style walls. A stage and podium were set up at the far end. Several rows of chairs sat in the middle of the floor.
    Bree and Sampson were standing near the stage with a short, paunchy man in a normal-looking dark suit but with red-framed glasses that brought to mind Elton John. He had a long, thin braid hanging from his otherwise short salt-and-pepper hair and an Unhinged T-shirt pulled over his long-sleeved button-down shirt.
Full geek mode
, I was thinking.
    Bree smiled wickedly as she said, “Alex, this is Wally Walewski. He’s just giving us the full rundown about tonight. Wait’ll you hear.”
    “It’s really most excellent to meet you,” Wally Walewski said, his eyes never quite making it higher than my shoulder. “So, anyway, we’ve got your slides—check. And there’ll be a clicker—check. And a laser pointer on the podium—check. And some water? Anything else? Whatever, I’ll take care of it pronto. I’m on the case.”
    “What’s the capacity of the room?” asked Bree.
    “Two hundred and eighty is the limit by law, and we’ll
definitely
be sold out.”
    “Definitely,” Sampson said, just for me to hear.
    We waited until Wally Walewski and his braid were gone before we discussed anything further about our own prep.
Check
.
    “Where are our people now?” I asked Bree. What the Unhinged folks didn’t know was that we had an undercover team working the event. Baltimore PD had provided us with four local detectives who were passing as conference attendees. We had two of our own people from DC embedded in the hotel staff too.
    Bree glanced over the program. “Right now, the Baltimore boys are in either a fingerprinting seminar or, let’s see, a ‘serial-killer breakout session,’ whatever the hell that is. Later tonight, we’ll have them
here
. . . and
here
.”
    She pointed to either side of the audience area. “Vince and Chesney will float. And, Sampson, I think you and I should stay together. That okay?”
    “Sounds good to me. I don’t want to be alone here, anyway.”
    The rest of Baltimore PD was on standby, with at least one extra cruiser in the neighborhood of the hotel at all times. Hotel security had been briefed and wouldn’t be doing anything out of the ordinary, with any luck keeping out of our way if and when crunch time came.
    This was meant to be a quiet operation, a little desperate for sure, maybe nothing more than information gathering. But if the killer did show up, we’d be ready to grab him. Stranger things had happened. Hell, stranger things had happened to me.
    Besides, we already knew DCAK was surveilling us.

Chapter 65

    “THIS IS
MY
AUDIENCE,” I began, and got some easy laughs from the captive crowd of oddballs stretched across the auditorium. I went on to talk about the known homicides for DCAK but passed on only information we’d already released to the press. Then I did a little damage control on the copycat theories and showed some crime-scene photos that the audience seemed to appreciate. I also gave what the Unhinged people had billed as an “insider’s look” at our suspect profile. It was something I could do in my sleep by now and probably had. If nothing else, details from my talk would wind up on the Internet and possibly get to
somebody
who knew
something
about the killer.
    “This is a nearly psychotic man with a deep-seated need for larger-than-life approval,” I told the packed room.
    “The expression of this need eclipses everything else in his world to an extreme, sociopathic degree. When he gets up in the morning, if he sleeps at all, he has no free choice except to seek another audience, to plot and obsess on another murder, and this ritual of his may well escalate.”
    I leaned forward on the podium, checking out as many faces as I could in the crowd. It was stunning to me how rapt and attentive they were.
    “What this maniac doesn’t realize yet—what I think he can’t permit himself to admit—is that he’ll never