Chapter 25
THE BUTCHER WAS still hanging around the police barricades in Washington, and he knew he shouldn’t be there. He was supposed to be home in Maryland hours ago. But this was worth it. The craziness of it all. He wandered through the crowd of looky-loos, and he was feeling like a kid let loose at a state fair, or at least what he thought a kid at a state fair would feel like.
Hell, they even had ice cream and hot dog vendors at the scene. People’s eyes glistened with excitement; they wanted to see some real-life action. Well, hell, so did he, so did he.
He definitely was a crime-scene junkie, and he thought it stemmed from the days spent with his old man in Brooklyn. When he was little, his father used to take him on fire and police calls that he intercepted on his two-way. It was about the only good thing he ever did with the old man, and he figured it was because his father thought he’d look like less of a freak if he dragged a kid along beside him.
But his father was a freak. He liked to see dead bodies, any kind ? on a slab of pavement, inside a crashed car, being hauled out of a smoldering building. His crazy old man was the original Butcher of Sligo ? and much, much worse. Of course, he was the Butcher now, one of the most feared and sought-after assassins in the world. He was the Man, wasn’t he? He could do whatever he wanted to, and that’s what he was up to now.
Michael Sullivan was pulled out of his reverie by the sound of somebody talking into a mike at the hostage scene. He looked up, and it was the detective again ? Alex Cross. It almost seemed like fate to him, like ghosts calling to the Butcher from the past.