The Big Bad Wolf

meet me. “Heard you were coming. We’re fine here.”
    “This intrusion isn’t my idea,” I told him. “I just left the force in D.C. I don’t want to get in anybody’s way.”
    “So don’t,” Fescoe said. He was a slender, wiry man who looked as if he might have played some ball at one time. He moved like it.
    I rubbed my hand over my chin. “Any idea
why
he asked for me? I don’t know him that well.”
    Fescoe’s eyes drifted toward the house. “Says he’s being set up by Internal Affairs. Doesn’t trust anybody connected to the Baltimore PD. He knew you’d gone over to the FBI recently.”
    “Would you tell him I’m here? But also tell him I’m being briefed now. I want to hear how he sounds before I talk to him.”
    Fescoe nodded, then he called the house. It rang several times before it was picked up.
    “Agent Cross has just arrived, Dennis. He’s being briefed now,” said Fescoe.
    “Like hell he is. Get him on the hook. Don’t make me shoot in here. I’m getting close to creating a real problem. Get him
now!
”
    Fescoe handed me the phone and I spoke into it. “Dennis, this is Alex Cross. I’m here. I did want to be briefed first.”
    “This really Alex Cross?” Coulter asked, sounding surprised.
    “Yeah, it’s me. I don’t know too many of the details. Except you say you’re being set up by Internal Affairs.”
    “I don’t just say it, I
am
being set up. I can tell you why too.
I’ll
brief you. That way you’ll hear it straight.”
    “All right,” I told him. “I’m on your side so far. I know you, Dennis. I don’t know Baltimore Internal Affairs.”
    Coulter cut me off. “I want you to
listen to me.
Don’t talk. Just hear me out.”
    “All right,” I said. “I’m listening.”
    I sat down on the ground behind a Baltimore PD cruiser, and I got ready to listen to the armed man who was supposedly holding a dozen of his family members hostage.
Jesus,
I was back on the Job again.
    “They want to kill me,” Dennis Coulter began. “The Baltimore PD has me in its crosshairs.”

Chapter 7
    POP!
    I jumped. Someone had pulled open a can of soda and tapped me on the shoulder with it.
    I looked up to see none other than Ned Mahoney, head of the Hostage Rescue Team at Quantico, handing me a Diet Coke, caffeine-free. I had taken a couple of classes from him during orientation. He knew his stuff—in the classroom, anyway.
    “Welcome to my private hell,” I said. “What am I doing here, by the way?”
    Mahoney winked and dropped down beside me.
    “You’re a rising star, or maybe a risen star. You know the drill. Get him talking. Keep him talking,” said Mahoney. “We hear you’re real good at this.”
    “So what are
you
doing here?” I asked.
    “What do you think? Watching, studying your technique. You’re the director’s boy, right? He thinks you’re gifted.”
    I took a sip of soda, then pressed the cold can to my forehead. Hell of an introduction to the FBI for the FNG.
    “Dennis, who wants to kill you?” I spoke into the cell phone again. “Tell me all you can about what’s going on here. I also need to ask about your family. Is everybody all right in there?”
    Coulter bristled. “Hey! Let’s not waste time on a lot of bullshit negotiation crap. I’m about to be executed.
That’s
what this is. Make no mistake. Look around you, man. It’s an execution.”
    I couldn’t see Coulter, but I remembered him. No more than five-eight, goatee, hip, always cracking a wiseass joke, very tough. All in all, a small-man complex. He began to tell his story, his side of things, and unfortunately I had no idea what to make of what he was spilling out. According to Coulter, detectives in the Baltimore PD had been involved in large drug payoffs. Even he didn’t know how many, but the number was high. He’d blown the whistle. The next thing he knew, his house was surrounded by cops.
    Then Coulter dropped the bomb. “I was getting kickbacks too. Somebody turned me in to Internal Affairs. One of my partners.”
    “Why would a partner do that?”
    He laughed. “Because I got greedy. I went for a bigger piece of the pie. Thought I had my partners by the short hairs. They didn’t see it that way.”
    “How did you have them by the short hairs?”
    “I told my partners that I had copies of records—
who
had been paid
what.
A couple years’ worth of records.”
    Now we were getting somewhere. “Do you?” I asked.
    Coulter hesitated. Why was that? Either he