Merry Christmas, Alex Cross Read online

  I thought I knew most cops in DC, but this one with the sea of freckles and bits of wavy red hair sneaking out from under his ski hat was new to me.

  “I am,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Detective Tom McGoey. Six whole days with the MPD. Originally from Staten Island.”

  “Happy holidays, Detective. Welcome to Washington. I got just a brief summary from Deputy Chief Chivers. You want to tell me all of it?”

  “God-awful Christmas gift for you. And me.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I already figured that much. Let’s hear the gory details.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  WE GOT IN HIS CAR, AND MCGOEY TURNED THE HEATER ON HIGH AND FLESHED out the story for me. I soon realized that it clearly was a god-awful situation, one with the potential to turn into a full-scale tragedy.

  The beautiful town house used to belong to Henry Fowler, a top-flight attorney who’d fallen on hard times. Fowler’s ex-wife, Diana, now owned the home and lived there with her new husband, Dr. Barry Nicholson, and her three children: eleven-year-old twins, Jeremy and Chloe, and six-year-old son, Trey.

  “Henry Fowler’s got them all in there,” McGoey said. “He’s armed to the teeth and said he is fully prepared to die tonight.”

  “It’s a wonderful life,” I said.

  “And it only gets better,” the detective said. “Melissa Brandywine’s in there too.” He gestured down the street to another, similar townhome. “She’s the neighbor, wife of Congressman Michael Brandywine of Colorado.”

  “The chief told me,” I grumbled; then I closed my eyes and rubbed at my temple. “Where’s he? Brandywine?”

  “At Vail with his two kids, waiting for her to come join them for their ski vacation. She was supposed to fly out this afternoon but made the mistake of bringing Diana a box of homemade cookies before she left.”

  Funny what a nice small-town gesture can get you in DC.

  “He giving you a reason? Fowler?”

  “He’s only spoken to us once, and that wasn’t part of the conversation,” McGoey said. “We wouldn’t have known anything if Mrs. Brandywine hadn’t used the toilet and texted her husband about what was going on inside.”

  “The congressman was the first to report it?”

  “Yeah, really lit a torch under everyone’s ass.”

  Mentally I began to compartmentalize, to push aside all my frustration at having to leave my family on Christmas Eve and focus on the task at hand. “Tell me about Fowler. His divorce. Whatever I should know.”

  “Headquarters isn’t exactly loaded up with personnel tonight, so we’re still waiting on most of the background check. But we know the Fowlers divorced two years ago. She filed, found the new hubby within two months, or maybe before, and moved on. Fowler not so much, evidently.”

  “Any idea what Fowler’s got for weapons?”

  “Oh yeah,” McGoey said, going to his notebook. “He gave us the breakdown the one time he picked up the phone.”

  Fowler claimed to have two Glock 19s. The Glock 19 is the standard-issue service weapon of the MPD, which means I carry a 19. The good thing about a 19 is that it holds nineteen rounds. The bad thing about a 19 is that it holds nineteen rounds. Fowler said he also had two twelve-gauge pump shotguns, two AR-15 rifles, and multiple magazines and boxes of ammunition for each weapon.

  Two of everything. What was that all about?

  I wrote it all in my notebook, jotted down Long lead time, and drew an arrow to the list.

  “That everything?” I asked.

  “Far as we know. Well, except for the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

  I frowned and said, “Didn’t know PB and Js were deadly weapons.”

  “Only to someone like Fowler’s youngest kid,” McGoey said. “Peanut allergy. One bite and he’ll have about ten minutes to live.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  AN IN-FAMILY HOSTAGE SITUATION IS, IN MY OPINION, THE HANDS-DOWN, no-argument worst kind of situation any police officer will ever face. I learned this a long time ago, when I was fourteen, to be exact. A freebaser named Willie Gonzalez took his family hostage down the street from where Nana Mama and I were living. After Gonzalez shot his pregnant wife, his two young daughters, and then himself, I saw one of the police officers who’d been negotiating with him. The poor cop was sitting in his car crying and drinking from an open pint of Jack Daniel’s.

  I’ve had the misfortune to be part of a dozen or so of these kinds of details in my career, a few times as lead negotiator, more often as a psychological consultant. There’s a broad spectrum of things that can happen when you’re a cop: You might have to sharpshoot a terrorist. Or meticulously unravel a kidnapping. Or even outfox a serial killer or two. Any of these situations can mess you up psychologically.

  But dealing with someone holding family members hostage is like trying to stop a Mack truck carrying a full load of insanity. Usually the person with the gun—more often than not, it’s an obsessive, substance-abusing male, like Willie Gonzalez—is so far gone he doesn’t give a damn about his hostages, or his future. He blames them for something. He blames himself for something. He can’t get his facts straight or see the truth of his circumstances. It’s a lose-lose situation all the way around.

  As for hostage negotiators, well, we are usually smart and well trained, but we rarely pull off the heroics you see in movies. Have I ever seen the abductor listen to the negotiator and then throw down his weapon and come out with his hands up? Sure, about as often as I’ve seen the Redskins win the Super Bowl. Two or three times. It’s in the realm of possibility. But the odds are stacked against it.

  We got out of the car and headed toward the police vans where McGoey said officers were trying to reestablish contact with Fowler. Nearly an inch of snow had fallen and the storm was only getting worse. My feet began to freeze again.

  “Think they have an extra pair of boots?”

  The detective looked at my shoes and said, “I’ve only been here six days.”

  “Good point,” I said, thinking that I really did not like cold and snow. “Whose property is this?” I asked, indicating the Georgian brick mansion his car was parked in front of.

  “Ambassador from Nigeria. No idea how to pronounce the name.”

  “Nice place the ambassador from Nigeria’s got.”

  “Yeah, half his country is starving to death, and this dude’s living in six bedrooms in Georgetown. Guess he’s gone for the holidays too.”

  “Probably to Lagos. I’ve been there. A real hellhole. Then again, from the look of things, maybe I’d rather be in Lagos tonight myself.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE, LIEUTENANT ADAM NU, WAS THE SWAT COMMANDER on duty that night. He was the kind of guy who was always thinking ahead. After hearing the weather report earlier, he’d ordered his men to erect tarps and wind blocks behind the two MPD vans. They’d put down outdoor carpet over the snow already on the ground, then run extension cords and put lights up as well. A gas-fired construction heater had been brought in and was blowing two hundred thousand BTUs as members of his team sorted their gear. And he had an extra pair of black tactical boots and wool socks.

  “You certainly know how to prepare for a blizzard, Adam,” I said, sitting on a bench inside the makeshift shelter and changing socks.

  “Raised in Duluth by a father who loved ice fishing,” Nu said, shrugging.

  “You have men already deployed?” I asked.

  Nu confirmed that he had several men set up at different distances and places around the Nicholsons’ house. The snow made it impossible to put our people on the roofs of the adjacent homes, the ideal locations. But he had men trying to track down the absentee owners to get permission to enter their homes. That way, the officers could take up window positions, where they might be able to peer inside the Nicholsons’ residence with binoculars or thermal imaging systems.

  Nu also had heavily armored SWAT officers consta
ntly circling the house along the perimeter of the property. They each carried a SIG Sauer P226, a high-powered rifle with precision location.

  “Shouldn’t those guys be set up to snipe?” McGoey asked.

  “I have enough,” Nu said. “And FBI research has shown that moving men keep the perp off balance. Sometimes confuses him into revealing himself.”

  “Floor plans?” I asked.

  “Ramiro’s got a copy inside,” Nu said, and we entered the van on the left.

  Detective Diego Ramiro, another friend, as well as a hostage negotiator with far more experience than me, was one of three people in the van who were speed-dialing the landline inside the Nicholson home and the cell phones belonging to the doctor, his wife, and the wife of Congressman Brandywine.

  For all we knew, Fowler had seized all phones. For all we knew, Fowler enjoyed the nonstop ringing. That’s just how variable and bizarre these family hostage situations can be.

  Ramiro, a thickly built guy in his early fifties, punched off his own cell, looked at me in extreme frustration, and said, “Alex, we can’t do a goddamned thing if this son of a bitch won’t pick up his phone and talk to us.”

  I’d worked with Ramiro before. He wasn’t one to lose his cool. Then again, like me, like everyone there, he wasn’t home on Christmas Eve. We were all stuck in a blizzard, waiting for a lunatic to answer the phone.

  I said, “How long have we been calling Fowler?”

  Diego flipped through his notepad. “We started almost an hour ago.”

  McGoey said, “That’s when Fowler was real chatty about who he had in there and what kinds of guns and ammo he had.”

  “Keep talking to him,” I said. “Leave messages. Every single time.”

  Ramiro nodded, gave the order to the others. I sat there listening for several moments, wishing to God I had more information on Fowler. What had taken him from a life as a wealthy attorney to this desperate hour?

  I’d no sooner asked myself that question when Ramiro waved his finger at me and McGoey, then hit a button on his mobile. It was connected wirelessly to speakers inside the van. We heard a woman’s muffled voice, noises, and then a whimper. We held our breath and stared at the speakers as if they were video monitors.

  “Mr. Fowler?” Ramiro began. “Thank you for—”

  Gunshots exploded on the other end of the line.

  The Christmas horror show had begun—or maybe it had just ended.

  CHAPTER

  6

  DAMON STOOD ON TIPTOES ON A WOBBLY KITCHEN CHAIR. HE WAS SWEATING AND trying very hard to hook a delicate antique angel to the top of the Christmas tree.

  “I’ll get a stepladder, get up there myself,” Nana Mama said.

  “I don’t need a stepladder and I’m certainly not letting my ninety-year-old great-grandmother use one,” Damon shot back.

  “You’re just lazy,” Nana Mama declared. “Your father raise you like that, or are you majoring in that subject at that fancy prep school you go to?”

  Damon didn’t know whether to be angry or start laughing at the fact that she was busting his chops like this. At last his fingers secured the angel to the tree with a piece of ancient white lace Nana Mama said had belonged to her grandmother.

  “There,” he said, jumping off the chair and looking at the old woman. “A little applause?”

  “For what?” his great-grandmother asked.

  “For getting the angel up there?”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “You’d have gotten me that stepladder, I’d have done it myself a lot quicker.”

  “And broken your hip,” Bree said as she began packing up the ornaments and lights that had not made the tree this year. “Thank you, Damon. She looks beautiful up there.”

  Nana Mama sighed, said, “I don’t understand why the top of the tree is always the last thing we decorate. It should be the first, so the angel can look down on us while we decorate the tree. That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?”

  Damon didn’t reply. No one replied. No one except Nana Mama had felt much like talking since Alex left.

  But Nana just kept going. “Jannie, what do you think?” she asked.

  “With all due respect, Nana,” Jannie said, “I think that you think that if you keep talking, we’ll forget Dad is out on a case and might get hurt on Christmas.”

  Nana walked to Jannie and hugged her tightly. “You are one smart girl, Jannie. Smart women run in this family.”

  Damon rolled his eyes. Bree smiled slightly, and Nana tried her hardest to snap back into her sensible self. She said, “That Alex. He’s my fault. I admit it: I didn’t raise that boy right. If I had, he’d never be foolish enough to go out on a nasty case on Christmas.”

  Again, nobody said a word.

  Then Bree looked up from her packing and said, “Listen. It’s pretty obvious that Alex won’t be home for a while. Maybe quite a while. So let’s just make the best of it. Merry Christmas to all.”

  Ava added, “And to all a good night.”

  Nana tried to smile, but her eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” she choked out. “A good night. Please, dear Lord, let it be a good night.”

  Damon melted, went to his great-grandmother, hugged her, and said, “It will be, Nana. I promise you, it will be.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  THE SOUNDS OF THE SIX RAPID-FIRE GUNSHOTS RANG IN MY SKULL.

  Six hostages, I thought. Was it over? Were we looking for bodies?

  And then we heard the hysterical cries of children. “Daddy, no!”

  They were quickly drowned out by an angry and ugly voice blaring over the speakers in the van: “I could have taken out every one of these sad excuses for humanity, each and every one of these sad pieces of shit. But I didn’t. You know why? Because you don’t unwrap your presents on Christmas Eve. You wait until the high holy day of consumerism to do that. Isn’t that right? Well, not this time, folks! I just unwrapped them all!”

  Fowler started laughing like a happy madman.

  “Please, Daddy!” a girl’s voice sobbed. Chloe Fowler.

  “Please what?” Fowler snarled. “‘Please don’t shoot Barbie, Daddy? If you shoot Barbie, who will Ken love, Daddy?’”

  A male voice was then heard. Dr. Nicholson. “You’re terrifying her, Fowler. She’s your own daughter.”

  “No!” Fowler snorted derisively. “Is that right, Barry? You know everything, don’t you, Barry? Mr. Optometrist—fucking cash-flow doctor of the year.”

  A gun blasted. We heard glass breaking and more crying.

  Fowler was shouting. “See that? See that, Mr. Optometrist? Shut the hell up, Mr. Optometrist! Or you’re going to look just like everything else under the Christmas tree.” He began to sing: “‘O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum!’”

  “Mr. Fowler!” Ramiro yelled into his phone.

  “‘How lovely are thy branches!’” Fowler sang, and then he stopped. We heard footsteps. The phone was picked up.

  Fowler whispered, “What did old Henry the magic man and his magic wand take out, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Anyone? Anyone?”

  He paused. McGoey, Nu, and Ramiro glanced at me, confused. Before I could even think about how to interpret Fowler’s ravings, he said, “Awww, let’s see. A nice new iPad. Got it right in the apple…and here we have what used to be an Xbox Kinect. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, plaintiff should be thanking me, not suing me. Now my idiot sons will have more time for homework. And my ex-wife’s Tiffany bauble? I mean, c’mon, have you ever seen such overpriced crap? There ought to be a law against Tiffany and Nordstrom. I mean, look at that beautiful blue polo sweater of Barry’s. Cashmere does not stop buckshot, now, does it, ladies and gentlemen?”

  Fowler stopped talking. All we could hear was his rushed breath, and I wondered if he was on drugs or drinking or both.

  “Hey, Mr. Fowler,” Ramiro said calmly, carefully, almost softly—the way they teach you in the FBI courses about hostage negotiation.

  “Who the
hell are you?” Fowler shot back.

  “My name is Ramiro. I’m glad to hear that the people you’ve got in there are okay. That’s good news.”

  Fowler exploded: “What are you, another whiny-ass cop? These people in here are not doing okay, Officer Whiny Ass. Once the sun rises and all the Cindy Lou Whos down in Whoville have sung their song, I’m going to blow their heads off once and for all.”

  The children began to cry again.

  Ramiro glanced at me. I made a downward motion with my hands. Stay calm. Do everything calmly.

  “I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Fowler,” Ramiro said. “How about we talk, work things out?” Good, I thought. Calmly engage him. Establish common ground.

  “You some kind of hostage negotiator?” Fowler asked.

  Ramiro hesitated. Not a good thing. He said, “I’m just a guy who wants to hear what you have to say, Mr. Fowler.”

  “Tell it to the jury, whiny ass!” Fowler shouted. “I am never talking to you ever again. Ever.”

  Click.

  CHAPTER

  8

  OUTSIDE, THE WIND BEGAN TO PICK UP, SLASHING THE SNOW SIDEWAYS. THE lawn in front of the Nicholsons’ house had disappeared beneath the three inches that had already fallen.

  “How do we handle this guy, Alex?” Ramiro said. “He sounds psychotic.”

  “Or wasted on something stronger than pathological rage,” I said.

  Adam Nu was on the phone with Congressman Brandywine, assuring him that as far as we knew, his wife was still alive among the hostages inside. I studied the notes I’d jotted down after Fowler hung up, trying to see some kind of pattern to his ravings.

  He’d talked to us as if we were the jury and he were arguing his case in civil court. He admitted shooting the Christmas presents. He’d called his ex-wife’s husband “Mr. Optometrist—fucking cash-flow doctor of the year.” He clearly loathed Barry Nicholson. He clearly had deep-seated money resentment. Called Christmas the “high holy day of consumerism.” Ranted about Tiffany. He had even referred to Cindy Lou Who and Whoville, from the Grinch story.