Merry Christmas, Alex Cross ac-19 Page 4

  I assumed that Dr. Nicholson nodded, because Fowler’s voice came back to me as if he were returning to a business call he’d put on hold. “Hey, Cross. Sorry to keep you like that. You know how tough a courtroom can be.”

  “Right,” I said, still not quite understanding the twisted logic he had going. The courtroom. The jury. The Grinch. Then it dawned on me that trying to guide him to some safe resolution of the situation was perhaps not the best way forward, at least not yet. Better to play along with his version of reality, and perhaps use it.

  “Mr. Fowler. Seeing how you’ve named me jury foreman, I was wondering if I could come in the house and observe the proceedings,” I said matter-of-factly, going for a kind of could-I-borrow-your-lawnmower style.

  Nu and McGoey were looking at me as if I were insane.

  CHAPTER 15

  There was a long pause before Fowler said, “Why would you want to do that, Cross?”

  “Don’t jury members learn as much from a witness’s facial expressions and body language as they do from his testimony?”

  Another pause. That pause stretched into thirty seconds. The thirty seconds stretched into the longest minute of my life.

  My fear was that Fowler would explode again and turn his guns on the hostages. I could see McGoey shaking his head as if he knew I’d made the wrong move.

  Finally Fowler said, “I don’t think so, Cross. Nice try, but I don’t think so.”

  Persistence. Persistence.

  “It would give me the opportunity to hear your side of the story,” I said. “Face-to-face. Man-to-man.”

  Another few seconds.

  Then Fowler said, very quietly, very calmly, “I will frisk you when you come in, Cross. If I find you’re carrying a gun, I’m going to kill you. And then I’ll kill a hostage or two. Starting with the good Dr. Quack N. Cash.”

  “I don’t need a gun to have a conversation,” I said, and I handed my Glock to McGoey.

  Fifteen seconds passed. Then Fowler’s voice came again.

  “Jeremy, go open the front door for Mr. Cross. I’m going to be right behind you, buddy. So don’t even think about running out of the house. Understand? Okay, get going.” I guess the boy didn’t go fast enough, because I heard this father, on Christmas Eve, shout at his eleven-year-old son, “Move, Jeremy, or I will kick your fucking obscenely obese ass until you do!”

  I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight when I got my jacket and hat and headed toward the Nicholsons’ house.

  I walked through the now empty shelter and out into the falling snow thinking that I should have been with my family right then, at St. Anthony’s, singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” to start midnight mass.

  CHAPTER 16

  While I’d been on the phone with Fowler, Nu and McGoey had been putting the storm-and-protect operation into full effect. As I crossed Thirtieth Street I saw that SWAT officers had started circling the house again. Only this time their weapons were cocked and cradled. They were ready for trouble, for anything that might happen in the next few minutes. Like me getting killed.

  The second and third floors of the surrounding houses were manned with sharpshooters. Inside those four houses, lights flickered on and off slowly.

  Signals were being exchanged. I couldn’t begin to work out what they meant. I had other problems to figure out, and figure out fast. In a few seconds I was directly facing the house. My eyes darted to the right and I saw police officers quickly herding reporters back and away. The cops didn’t have to ask them twice, which made me wonder if I was making the right move here.

  The snow soaked the hem of my pants as I walked the short path to the house. The big front door, flanked by frosted-glass windows, was ajar. From inside the house came the sound of Diana Nicholson weeping. Suddenly, lights were turned off-front rooms, hallway, and all outdoor lights. Total blackout.

  I swallowed, stepped up onto the brick entry. The front door swung all the way open. A dark center hall loomed straight ahead. Then I saw the figure of a fat little boy run through the darkness, sobbing, and disappear toward the right.

  The night was so quiet that for one crazy moment I thought I could hear snowflakes landing. I stepped into the front hallway. The door shut, and I immediately heard Fowler behind me, breathing heavily.

  “Merry Christmas, Cross,” he said, and turned on the lights, revealing velvet-flocked wallpaper, really expensive stuff, on both sides of the hall.

  “Same to you, Mr. Fowler,” I said.

  “Hands on the wall,” he said. “You know the drill.” He cackled. “Always have wanted to say that to a cop.”

  I said nothing, just put my hands on the wall and spread my legs.

  “Hope I didn’t make a mistake letting you into the house,” Fowler said.

  “Well, that makes two of us,” I said before I felt the cold steel of a pistol muzzle pressed against the back of my neck.

  CHAPTER 17

  Fowler did a damn near professional job of frisking me. Probably because he himself had been the subject of a body search at least thirty times in the last few years. The gun came away from the back of my neck.

  “Fingers laced behind your head,” he said. “Then walk, and turn right at the end of the hall. If I see your fingers slip or get any sense you’re trying to turn on me, I’ll shoot first, Cross, and ask no questions later.”

  I took the man at his word, put my hands where he wanted them, and walked to where his son had disappeared.

  “There’s an overstuffed chair on your immediate right,” Fowler said. “Sit in it, hands on your lap.”

  It looked like someone had fought a small war in the living room. A large Christmas tree was on its side, branches crushed or snapped by buckshot, its ornaments shattered, its lights out. The debris from the earlier shoot-up of the gifts was everywhere, the remnants almost unrecognizable: pieces of metal from the iPad, bits of gold from whatever Nicholson had had wrapped in the Tiffany box.

  To my dismay, the window curtains had all been drawn. No one from the outside could see me, Fowler, or the three children and three adults lying on their bellies on the floor beside the ruins of the Christmas tree. I could feel the pleading hope and fear in their eyes, eyes that were red from fatigue and tension and crying.

  An extremely attractive, fit, country-club kind of woman, Diana Nicholson wore only jeans and a black jogging bra. I had no idea what that was about. Her new husband was a big handsome guy who looked like he’d just walked off a sailboat. Everything about him screamed wealth and privilege except for his green-and-red Christmas sweater, which was slit down the back, nearly in two pieces.

  I had no idea what that was about either.

  The congressman’s wife, Melissa Brandywine, was lying next to Nicholson and his wife. A society-page regular, she had copper-colored hair that looked as if it’d just been styled at the salon. Her makeup was flawless too. But she was shaking uncontrollably, as if she were freezing. Why had Fowler involved her? Was it on purpose? Or had she just blundered into the crisis?

  The children were an even sorrier sight than the grown-ups, maybe because they were kids in their pajamas and it was Christmas and their innocence had been destroyed. Young Trey was sucking his thumb. Chloe hugged a throw pillow that featured holly, red ribbons, and bells. Her twin, Jeremy, stared at nothing. I saw a dark stain on his pajama pants and realized the poor kid had been so frightened and humiliated by his father that he’d peed his pants.

  So I already hated Fowler when he came around in front of me and showed me just how far he’d fallen since his glory days on K Street and in the courtroom. In place of the Italian suits he’d favored, he wore filthy jeans and a torn army-surplus jacket. He’d lost fifty or sixty pounds since those days. His eyes were sunken in his head. Several of his teeth were missing. There were scabs on his face that had been picked at and oozed. He carried a Glock 19 and a Remington shotgun that had been crudely sawed off.

  Fowler stared at me for an uncomfortable few sec
onds, then he smiled, really showing off the rotting gaps where his teeth had been.

  “You have time for a joke, Cross?” he asked. “Lighten things up a bit? Holiday spirit and all that?”

  CHAPTER 18

  I was beginning to feel it, the turmoil Fowler seemed to secrete from every pore. I could smell it too. He reeked of that weird sour body odor that follows crazy people who live on the street too long.

  “So there’s this ignorant, oblivious man,” Fowler began. “He’s sitting on the veranda of his rented bungalow in St. John’s with his trophy wife. Beautiful sunset. Glowing tans. They’re drinking from a marvelous bottle of burgundy grand cru from the Cote d’Or. His wife says, ‘I love you.’ The man looks over and says, ‘Is that you talking, or is it the wine?’ She looks at him as if he’s a fool and says, ‘Actually, dear, I was talking to the wine.’”

  Fowler looked around the room. Nobody was laughing. If anything, they were all even more terrified than before he’d told his joke.

  “You remember that, don’t you, Diana?” Fowler asked.

  “No, Henry, I don’t,” she said.

  He smiled in a threatening way. “Of course you do. And if you don’t, you should. It’s so emblematic of who we were that-”

  “Stop it!” Diana screamed. “You’ve got to stop this, Henry. At least let the children go.”

  “Don’t be a party pooper, Diana. Show the spirit of the season,” Fowler said, waving her off before looking at me. “My dear ex-wife has never dealt well with reality or the truth. As you shall hear, Cross.”

  I couldn’t let this go any further. “She’s right, Henry. Why don’t you let your children go? It’s Christmas, a hard time. But don’t take it out on them.”

  He leveled the pistol at me. “Why shouldn’t I take it out on them, Cross? They’re the ones who drove me here. They and their uncaring, greedy, materialistic mother, the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “Mister.” I heard a child’s voice. It was Trey. He was looking at me. “Mister, can you ask Daddy to go back to his house so Santa can come?”

  Before I could deliver any words of comfort, Fowler walked over and jammed his black-booted foot on the boy’s ear.

  “Shut up, Trey, or we’ll be playing Hide the Skippy Super Chunk. Besides, I told you. I’m going no place.”

  Fowler looked at me, scratched at his face, said, “Kids. They never listen.”

  I’d begun to compile a catalog of Fowler’s tics and twitches-the face scratching, the hand rubbing, the massaging of the back of his neck, the quick bite to the side of his ring finger on his left hand. If he sat next to you on the Metro, you’d stand up quickly, move away, and get off at the next station.

  He picked up the phone on the end table next to my chair and hit Redial.

  I heard a voice say, “This is Ramiro.”

  Fowler laid the receiver on the table.

  “It’s Cross,” I said. “I’m all right.”

  “Now that the jury has been seated, are we ready to hear opening statements?” Fowler said, looking at me.

  I hesitated, then nodded.

  “Excellent,” Fowler said, rubbing the back of his gun hand. “Let’s begin with an introduction. Diana, sweetheart? Kids? Barry? This is the famous Alex Cross. He’ll be the jury foreman for these proceedings.”

  His words had lost their frantic quality and now flowed with the easy delivery of a top-flight defense attorney. Despite all the drugs and self-abuse, this madman had polish and brains, which made him even scarier to me.

  “Court is now in session!” Fowler intoned in a deep voice, as if he were a bailiff. “The Honorable Grinch Who Stole Christmas presiding!”

  CHAPTER 19

  Fowler began marching around the room singing at the top of his lungs, “‘He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch!’” Then he stopped next to his ex-wife and put his boot on her back.

  “First up in the box,” Fowler said, looking at me. “The evil mastermind behind my destruction: Diana Alstead Fowler Nicholson.”

  “Henry,” she said and began to whimper.

  “Hush now, Diana,” Fowler soothed. “I’ll talk for you. If I get anything wrong, you just speak up.” He looked up. “The fair Diana Alstead was originally from Charleston, South Carolina. Daughter of parents born into multigenerational wealth, she grew up in a life of ease, the expectation of immediate material gratification simply a part of her DNA. She attended the finest schools, Choate Rosemary Hall and then Georgetown. There she meets this kid on full scholarship. Henry Fowler is beneath her station in life, but he shows promise. He’s majoring in chemistry and English and wins entry to the Georgetown law school. She sees he’s a hardworking guy and latches onto him like a leech in a swamp.”

  Diana was looking at me with this pitiful expression as she cried, “That’s not true, Henry. I loved you.”

  “Oh, boo-hoo, Cindy Lou Who. We’re telling the truth here, not repeating old fantasies,” Fowler said. “I had almost twenty years to study this particular specimen, Mr. Foreman. Here is my expert testimony: Diana is that woman at the Sotheby’s jade auction bidding far too much for a ten-thousand-dollar green statue of a water buffalo, or a yak, I’m not sure which. She’s that woman who sets her authentic Regency dining table with two-thousand-dollar James Robinson place settings. She’s the type they fawn over at Bloomies and Bergdorf Goodman, the woman whose skinny little ass they kiss at Prada, the woman they serve tea to in private rooms at Tiffany in Washington and New York. Yes, my ex is quite the gal.

  “Hey, she shared her genes with me to create this winning trio,” he said, gesturing to his children.

  “You’ve already met Trey, who’s never met an allergy or affliction he didn’t adore. Sick all the time, right from birth, pneumonia then. You name a childhood disease, and my boy’s had it. Meets with top medical specialists two, three times a week. Best that money can buy, isn’t that right, son?”

  Trey began to snivel. “I can’t help it, Dad.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Fowler said soothingly. “Most of your mother’s defective DNA strands just happened to spool out to you. And those that didn’t found their way into your older brother and sister.”

  He smiled at me. “I’m a lucky, lucky man, Cross.”

  “That so?” I asked, hoping he’d continue to vent, expend his emotional energy, and then see the hopelessness of his situation before the meth could turn him full rhino.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Fowler asked acidly. “Doesn’t luck just seem to shimmer all around me?”

  “It used to,” I said.

  He looked off into the distance, said, “Yes, it did, before my surroundings and close companions conspired to warp me.”

  Here was paranoia, crystal meth’s staple emotion. I could already hear the angry persecution story coming.

  Fowler didn’t let me down.

  CHAPTER 20

  Fowler crossed to his son Jeremy and used his boot to push the boy over onto his back, where he cringed like a dog.

  “Here he is,” Fowler said. “My scion. The apple of my eye. Make that the apple strudel, cake, pie, and Pop-Tart of my eye. Not to mention my favorite bed wetter. By the looks of it, he’s regressing, pissing his pants now, instead of his mattress.”

  The boy was humiliated. Jeremy began to make hiccupping noises that broke into chokes and sobs.

  “Stop, Daddy!” Chloe screamed. “You’re making it worse. You’re ruining everything! You always ruin everything!”

  “Ahh, Chloe,” Fowler said. “My Little Miss Perfect.” He looked to me. “Chloe is exceptionally smart, a trait that no doubt came from my end of things. But that intelligence crossed with my ex-wife’s narcissism produced a young lady who tries to control the world as if it orbited around her head.”

  “I get it, Henry,” I said. “Your kids didn’t turn out the way you planned. Welcome to the club. It’s what makes them human. And the disappointment? That’s your issue. Deal with it.”

  He looked su
rprised, then his eyes narrowed and he snarled, “Who the fuck do you think you are, Dr. Phil?”

  “Isn’t that why you asked me in here?” I said.

  “I asked you in to serve as jury foreman,” he snapped. “I’m running the show here, or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Look,” I said. “It’s Christmas Eve. You obviously aren’t happy with your life or your family. But I am happy. I have a family I love. I’d like to get back to them, so I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what it was that broke you.”

  Fowler didn’t know what to make of that. He clearly hadn’t expected it.

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

  “You were at the top of the game on K Street, making millions, making headlines, and then it all unravels,” I said. “I get the overspending, the consumerist wife, the messed-up kids. But lots of guys in this town have those problems, and they aren’t holding their families hostage on Christmas Eve. So what was it? What caused you to unravel?”

  CHAPTER 21

  For a second there I wondered if I’d gone too far, been too direct, too confrontational. But then Fowler smiled icily at me.

  “You want to know the straw that broke the camel’s back, Cross?” he asked, reaching into his jacket and coming up with a glass vial.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to understand your side of things,” I said.

  Fowler squatted by the glass coffee table, tapped white powder onto it, and started laying the powder out in lines with a hotel-room key card. “I suppose that’s a reasonable request, but I’m going to have to get my head on straight to tell that story.”

  He rolled up a dollar bill and snorted two of the five lines. Shuddering, he closed his eyes, then he shivered and said, “Now, that’s more like it.”