“Different methods,” Bree said. “Could be coincidence. I’m not saying it is, but could be. Maybe there’s more than one perp? Possibility?”

“We’ve got a unifying signature, Bree. Public executions in front of an audience. Maybe we ought to call him the Audience Killer. That’s the heart of it for him.”

“Audience Killer? Is that in the DSM-IV?” Sampson’s smile was grim. He coped through humor. A lot of homicide cops did, myself included.

Bree ran a hand over the top of her head. “I’m with you all the way, but…”

“But what?”

“Richter. Thor the Bore isn’t going to let me rule out any possibilities without further cause.”

“What about the ones that make perfect sense to rule out?” I asked.

This was the kind of bureaucratic logjam I associated with my time at the FBI, not Metro. Things sure had changed since I’d been away. Or maybe it was just me who had changed.

I sighed out loud, looked around the stage. “What else do we have?”

Chapter 29

I TOOK MY WORK HOME that terrible night, and this wasn’t even my case. Yet.

It was two in the morning, and I already had the makings of a revised profile spread out on the kitchen table in front of me. I couldn’t get the Audience Killer, as we now thought of him, out of my head. Or Kyle Craig, for that matter. What the hell did he want with me? Why was he making contact now?

When the light under Nana’s door came on, I flipped the pages over so she wouldn’t see them. As if a bunch of upside-down paper wouldn’t look suspicious to her, or could fool the old night owl in the slightest.

“You hungry?” was the first thing she said. It had been a long time since she’d asked what I was doing up in the middle of the night.

A few minutes later, she had a couple of grilled apple-and-cheddar sandwiches going on the stove-half for her and one and a half for me. I cracked a beer and poured a small amount into a juice glass for her.

“What’s on those pages there that you don’t want me to see?” she asked, her back still to me. “Could it be your last will and testament?”

“That supposed to be funny?”

“Not at all, sonnyboy, not funny in the least. Just sad, very sad.”

She put down our plates and sat across from me at the kitchen table. Just like it’d been for years.

“I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say,” I told her.

“And that’s stopped you when?”

“I’ve been in private practice for a while. It’s been good for me-the change. I like it most days.”

Nana bowed her head and clucked a couple of times. “Oh, Alex. I’m not going to like this one bit. Maybe I should go back to my room and sleep.”

“But,” I said, then corrected myself. “And something’s missing for me.”

“Mm-hm. I’ll bet. Getting shot at, and missed. Getting shot at, and hit.”

I didn’t know what she could have done to make this easier, but she sure wasn’t trying.

“I left law enforcement for some good reasons.”

“Yes, you did, Alex. They’re all sleeping upstairs.”

“Nana, I’ve never been someone who works for a paycheck. My work, for better or worse, is part of me. And part of me is missing lately. That’s just the way it is.”

“I can’t say I haven’t noticed. But I’ll tell you something else. There’s a lot of other things missing around here these days. Things like phone calls in the middle of the night. Things like wondering when you’ll be home again-if you’ll be home again.”

We went back and forth like that for a while. The thing that surprised me was that the longer it went on, the stronger I felt about what I needed to do.

Finally I pushed back from the table and wiped my hands on a paper napkin.

“You know what, Nana? I love you dearly. I’ve tried keeping the peace. I’ve tried doing things your way, and whether or not it shows, it’s not working. I’m going to live my life the way I have to.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, what does that even mean?” she asked as she threw her hands into the air.

I stood up. My heart was racing. “Whatever it means, I’ll let you know when it’s done. I’m sorry, but that’s as much as I can give you right now. Good night.” I gathered the papers, turned, and walked away from her.

Her laughter stopped me. It was just a soft chortle at first-the kind of feather that can knock you over, though. I turned back again, and something in my expression sent her into a full cackling belly laugh.

“What?” I finally had to ask.

Nana gained control of herself, mostly, and slapped both hands down on the kitchen table. “Well, look who’s back from the dead! Alex Cross.”

Chapter 30

IT WAS BUSINESS AS USUAL the next day, or maybe I should say business as unusual. Sampson and I were canvassing the neighborhood around the Kennedy Center that afternoon when Bree called.

“You will not be sorry if you drop whatever you’re doing and come back over here.” She hung up without a hello or good-bye.

“What happened?” Sampson must have seen the confusion on my face.

“Something. That’s all I know. Let’s go.”

We found Bree parked at a computer terminal when we got to the office.

“Please tell me we didn’t come back here to play solitaire,” Sampson said.

“Guess who’s got a blog?” Bree said. “I actually got a call from a reporter on this. She didn’t even know it was the first time I was hearing about it.”

She sat back to make room as we crowded in.

The home page she showed us was both simple and impressive. It had an all-black background with white writing. In the upper-left corner, there was an animated graphic of a television set with what looked like live static on the screen. White block letters that read MY REALITY faded up, then out, then back again, like credits on a TV show. Underneath that, there were menu options for “Channel One,” “Channel Two,” down through “Channel Eight.”

Weblog entries took up the bulk of the page, with the most recent one on top. It was marked for twelve thirty a.m., only fourteen hours prior. The title on it was simply Thanks.

“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.”-A. Sachs

Thanks for all the comments. I really like hearing from people who appreciate what I do. I read the negative ones too-just don’t like them as much (grin). So to most of you, I say keep it coming. To the rest, I say get a life.

Some of you have asked why I’m doing this. I am doing it for myself. Let me repeat that. I am doing it for myself. Anyone who says they know what I’ll do next is full of shit ’cause even I don’t know what I’ll do next. Don’t be fooled by the police! They have no clue what to do with me because they have never seen anything like me before. The only thing they have control of is their sound bites. Be skeptical.

I can tell you this much: there is more. If that fact pleases you, I can tell you this much again: you won’t be disappointed.

Keep on living, fuckers.

Bree scrolled further down the page. “The entries go back a ways, but they’re not all this directed. Sometimes he talks about his day. What he had for lunch. It’s a little bit of everything.”

“Does he talk about the murders?” I asked.

“Only indirectly. The entries from those days are all, like, ‘Had a good time tonight’ and ‘Did you see the news?’ ”

“What about these?” Sampson touched the screen where the menu of channel numbers was.

“Oh, you’ll like this.” Bree clicked on Channel One. The little television screen in the corner switched from static over to a grainy still image. I recognized it as one of the phone-camera captures from Matthew Jay Walker’s murder, taken by someone in the audience and already shown on several news broadcasts.