In the morning, I drank too much black coffee and thought about our last case together: the Tiger, Daniel and Charles, Peter Westin, the Alexander brothers. What did it mean in Kyle’s fantasy? The macabre story he was plotting out involved both of us. He had asked me into the investigation, then used it to control me. Was that where it ended for him, and me?
I kept trying to piece together the puzzle from a psychologist’s point of view. The rest might flow from that. Might. With Kyle, there was no knowing for sure. If he saw a clear pattern, he might reverse it; if he understood his own pathology, and maybe he did, he would use that in his favor too.Around noon, I called Kyle’s older brother, Martin, a radiologist living outside Charlotte - where we had once believed that Daniel and Charles had begun their murder spree. Did Kyle have a previous connection with them? Was that a possibility?
Martin Craig tried to help, but he finally admitted that he and his brother hadn’t spoken during the past ten years. ‘We saw one another at my brother Blake’s funeral,’Martin said/That was the last time. I don’t like my brother. Detective Cross. He doesn’t like me. I don’t know if he likes anybody.’
‘Was your father especially rough on Kyle?’ I asked Martin.
‘Kyle always said so, but to tell the truth, I never saw much of it.  Neither did my mother. Kyle liked to make up stories. He was always the big hero, or the pathetic victim. My mother used to say that Kyle had an ego second only to God’s.’
 ‘What did you think about that? Your mother&............