Free Kill Alex Cross by James Patterson Page A

kept sending my way in a steady trickle. Most days, I worked with Sampson, but now and then I was on my own. The Dragon Slayer.
    I kept myself updated on the fly, usually with a phone pressed against my ear — since my Bluetooth was on the fritz and who had time to go to Best Buy these days?
    “So what’s the lab saying? They must have something?” I asked. I had my old buddy Jerry Winthrop on the line. He’d been my inside source on the water scare. The rest I got like everybody else — from CNN and the Internet. So far two people had died and the city was close to a panic state. Sampson was off checking other water sources today.
    “Looks like the second district line was tainted with high-grade potassium cyanide,” he said.
    “Isn’t that —”
    “Yeah, it is. Same thing that killed the two suicides out at Dulles. What a coincidence.”
    “And no one’s taken responsibility?” I asked.
    “Beats the shizz out of me,” Jerry said. “FBI’s not exactly knocking down our door with useful information.”
    That was typical. The “open” line of communication between MPD and the Bureau tended to be a one-way street. Jerry told me the official story to the press was that we’d had a chemical overspill and that the problem had been contained. Of course, that depended on what we meant by “problem.”
    After I got off the phone, I stopped at a 7-Eleven for some much-needed caffeine. Inside, there was a hastily scrawled no coffee sign taped to one of the pots. I grabbed a Coke instead — and couldn’t help noticing the empty coolers where all the bottled water had sold out.
    When I went to pay, the cashier, who had multiple piercings, chinned down at the badge on my belt. “So what’s going on out there, man? How screwed are we?” she asked.
    “I wouldn’t close the store just yet,” I said with what I hoped was a disarming smile. “Problem’s been contained.”
    The whole idea was to keep the peace — maximum public confidence, minimum panic. But I think that clerk’s real question was the same one we all had. What next?
    About ninety seconds later, I found out.

I WAS JUST pulling away from the curb when I picked up a call from Sampson. “Psych ward, hold please?” I answered with a bad joke.
    “Alex, you heard the latest?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I was just talking to Jerry Winthrop.”
    “He say anything about when they’re going to start the autopsies?” John asked next.
    The word autopsies stopped me cold. “What are you talking about? What autopsies?”
    “Two more bodies found. At the Harmony Suites on Twenty-second. I’m on my way there now. Appear to be Saudis. What are you talking about?”
    “Not that. Keep going. Who was found, exactly?”
    “It’s another couple. Middle Eastern. Two empty glasses on the floor. Nobody’s saying suicide yet, but I’ll bet money there’s going to be cyanide in the coroner’s report.”
    I pulled back up against the curb. I needed to try and absorb everything for a half second. Coincidences like these are usually a leg up in an investigation, but the more this thing folded in on itself, the scarier it got, the more bizarre and unpredictable. And definitely unprecedented.
    “It’s getting too weird around here, Alex,” Sampson said. “I keep thinking what they always say about the next big attack, you know? Not if but when?”
    “I know,” I said. “I know.” It was starting to feel a whole lot like when . “I’ll meet you at the bodies.”

IT WAS HOT and humid for one thirty in the morning, too hot for a jacket, but Hala needed something to cover the Sig holstered under her arm. She pulled at the front of the coat, to let in some air, for what it was worth. What she really wanted was to shoot somebody — anybody. She hadn’t known she had this much anger against the Americans, but clearly she did. It wasn’t just the wars they had waged in the Middle East, or the puppet leaders they had supported. It was the insults she had