Merry Christmas, Alex Cross Read online

  They drank coffee and kept each other company. Jannie and Damon and Ava joined them just as Christmas Day was dawning. Everyone smiled and hugged and said merry Christmas, but the usual rush to rip open gifts just wasn’t there.

  “What this Christmas morning needs is a good hot breakfast,” Nana said.

  They all pretended to agree with her.

  “Well, let’s get into the kitchen and get to work. You don’t think I’m going to fix it all by myself, do you?” said Nana. “I need helpers.”

  The children followed her into the kitchen. Bree said she’d join them in a minute. “I love cracking eggs. Save that job for me,” she called after them.

  Then she picked up the remote and flicked on the television. Words at the bottom of the screen said CHRISTMAS HOSTAGE CRISIS.

  There was a shot of the big, handsome house in Georgetown. Snow and people and cops were everywhere. Then there was Alex carrying a woman from the house where the lunatic had been holed up. The news anchor identified her as Congressman Brandywine’s wife and said, “Detective Cross risked his life and entered the house unarmed to negotiate face-to-face with the madman. One life has been saved, but from what we understand, another one hangs in the balance—Fowler shot and wounded his ex-wife’s husband.”

  He’d gone into the house unarmed. Someone had been shot inside. Bree thought about that and said softly, as if the TV could hear her, “Oh, Alex, Alex, Alex. I don’t know if I can bear where you go.”

  Then she changed the channel.

  But Channel 4 had the identical story. That network, however, had a reporter on the scene. She held a microphone and was talking to the camera.

  “From superlawyer to drug addict to madman: that’s the road Henry Fowler took to arrive here this Christmas morning—”

  Bree punched POWER, threw the remote down. She rubbed her sleeve against her damp eyes. Then she shouted toward the kitchen, “Nobody better have touched those eggs!”

  CHAPTER

  29

  I FELT SOMEONE SHAKING ME. I JERKED AWAKE AND WAS SURPRISED TO SEE Detective McGoey standing in a weak, pale light.

  “It’s Fowler,” he said. “A couple of minutes ago it sounded like he was going rhino in there, and Nu was getting ready to give his men the go to assault when Fowler answered the phone, finally. He’s asking for you, Alex.”

  I nodded, sat up, shook the cobwebs from my head. “Time is it?”

  “Six fifteen,” McGoey said.

  “I slept for four hours?” I said.

  “There was no reason to wake you until now,” he said.

  I nodded dumbly, followed him toward the front of the van and Ramiro, who held out a phone to me. “This is Cross,” I said.

  “I’m disappointed in you” announced Fowler’s voice. “Very disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “You betrayed me. I’ve been looking out my windows. You’ve got me surrounded by an army.”

  “That’s the way it usually works when you’re armed to the teeth and you don’t talk to us,” I said.

  “Are they coming in after me? Are they going to shoot their way in?”

  “Unless you talk to us.”

  “Coming in here would be a mistake,” he said. “All you would find are bodies around the Christmas tree, mine included.”

  “But you’ll talk to me?” I asked. “Help me try to figure out a way to avoid that?”

  He didn’t reply, but he didn’t hang up either.

  “Is Dr. Nicholson still alive?” I asked.

  “Barry?” he shot back. “Sure, he’s alive. But he’s got a hell of a stomachache.”

  “Let him go,” I said. “Let me come in there with another unarmed officer and get him.”

  “No,” Fowler said. “I’m enjoying his suffering.”

  “Then let someone else in there go. One of your children.”

  Silence, and then he said, “A goodwill gesture, isn’t that what you said it would be?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wish granted,” he said. “I’m sending out the only one in this house I really care about.”

  Nu knocked on the wall, signaled me toward the van’s side window. I got up, saw the front door open. A black Labrador retriever with a red bow around its neck slunk out, and it startled and began to run away, its tail between its legs, when the door slammed shut.

  CHAPTER

  30

  FOWLER WAS DEFINITELY TOYING WITH US, DEMONSTRATING THAT EVEN WHEN HE was in mortal danger, with threats from the snipers and SWAT assaulters all around him, he was the one who decided who lived, who died. I could have gone the anger route, called him on it, put more pressure on him, but something told me it would backfire.

  “You love your dog, Fowler?” I asked.

  “What kind of man doesn’t love his dog?” he replied sharply.

  “A man who has a cat,” I said.

  “Funny, Cross.”

  “I appreciate you letting the dog go,” I said. “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Mindy,” Fowler said.

  “We thank you for releasing Mindy, and I assure you she’ll be well cared for. But I need more, Fowler, if I’m going to keep these trained professionals from kicking down your door and trying to blow your head off before you can hurt anyone else.”

  A long silence. “Like what?”

  I looked over at Nu and McGoey and then said, “I want to come in again—with medical personnel. I want to take Barry out of there.”

  Fowler began to scream, finally going rhino. We heard things breaking, and then he came back on the line. “I don’t care what you want! I want what I want! Barry’s going to die! Got that? He’s going to die for what he did to me! And so is my ex-wife. They took my life! Now I’m going to take theirs. I am going to kill them all.”

  “I’m coming in, Henry,” I said. “Right now.”

  But he’d hung up.

  CHAPTER

  31

  “PANCAKES OR WAFFLES?” NANA ASKED IN A VOICE SO CHEERFUL THAT everybody knew it was put on. Add to that the fact that both Jannie (always pro-waffle) and Damon (fiercely pro-pancake) said they didn’t really care, and it was obvious that worry about Alex had pretty much sucked the joy right out of the holiday.

  “It’s Christmas,” Nana finally said. “Why don’t I just make both? Pancakes and waffles coming up!”

  No response from the kids.

  Suddenly Nana yanked off her apron and flung it to the kitchen floor. “Enough of this!” she shouted and began to march up and down, swinging her fists like she was punching the heavy bag in the basement.

  That got everyone’s attention.

  “Now, you all listen to me,” Nana said, snatching up a wooden mixing spoon and shaking it at them. “I don’t like this terrible situation any more than you do. I’ve got a grandson who’s missing for Christmas. Does it make me gloomy? Does it make me angry? Does it make me sad?”

  She peered around at them in the intimidating way she’d perfected as a vice principal. “The answer to all three of those questions is yes. It certainly does. My heart’s as heavy as yours. I could burst into tears any minute. Fact is, I did, twice last night, and I may do it again. But the truth is, life has to be lived. This Christmas is today. Now. This Christmas will never come again. And I don’t mean to be giving a holiday sermon, but Christmas is about hope and faith. And we’d all better realize that, you hear me? Hope and faith. You hear me?”

  Except for bacon popping in the frying pan, the room was silent.

  “I said—you hear me?”

  “It’s hard to feel hope and faith when you’re sick to your stomach,” said Jannie. “No one who doesn’t live in a police family can understand what this feels like, Nana.”

  “It sucks,” Damon added.

  “I don’t disagree with any of that,” their great-grandmother said. “If it were easy, I wouldn’t have to be delivering this lecture.”

  “Okay, we embrace hope and faith,” Bree said.
She squeezed Nana’s shoulders and gave her a kiss. “At least, I do.”

  “Now, that’s fine,” Nana said. “I hope your stepchildren will have the same common sense. Now, whoever dropped my apron on the floor, please pick it up and give it to me.”

  Everyone laughed…a little.

  “Then we’ll have a real fine breakfast,” she went on. “And then we’ll go into the living room, and we’ll each open up one gift. And then…”

  “Then what?” Ava asked.

  “Then Damon will go out and shovel the front walk. So when his father gets home we can all go to church.”

  CHAPTER

  32

  “YOU ARE NOT GOING BACK IN THERE,” LIEUTENANT NU SAID. “I’LL NEVER BE able to look your wife in the eye again.”

  “Join the club on that one,” I said, jumping up. “But I’ve got to go back in there, or that doctor is dead and maybe the others too. And I have a plan.”

  “And that plan is?” McGoey asked.

  I told Nu that while I’d slept, part of my mind must have worked out what was really behind Fowler’s fall from glory and his actions of the past twenty-four hours.

  “We can use it, I think,” I said, and I told them what I was considering.

  “Shit,” Nu grumbled. “You do have to go back in there.”

  He hustled me into a SWAT armored vest, and I went back out into the blizzard once more. It was six thirty, a pale winter dawn, the second time I crossed Thirtieth Street to the Nicholsons’ home. The newscasters and onlookers had been pushed back. Only the vans and the MPD officers, the medics, and the SWAT teams were allowed to remain close to the house.

  I picked up the shovel the congressman’s wife had brought me and started shoveling my way up the walk through thirteen inches of snow. Church bells rang from the direction of O Street, probably Christ Church. From the other direction, more bells, probably Mt. Zion.

  More than ever I felt like I was part of something that was staining the celebration, and as I rapped on the front door, I felt ready to do some cleaning up. But was I right? Would my plan work?

  I heard the creak of floorboards, and my resolve grew weaker.

  The door opened. I stepped inside, hands raised. Fowler kicked shut the door, pushed me face-up against the wall, and frisked me again. “Not a good idea, Cross,” he said as he searched me. “Coming back in here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I can’t let you leave now.”

  CHAPTER

  33

  BECAUSE IT WAS CHRISTMAS MORNING, A SPECIAL DAY, NANA AGREED TO MAKE her sweet bacon. The recipe: thick bacon fried in a cast-iron skillet, then covered with brown sugar and baked in the oven.

  “I only cook sweet bacon for a holiday or a birthday,” she had always said. That used to be the rule of the house. Her house, she insisted, even though Alex had bought and paid for it. But once, Damon had insisted that Arbor Day was a real holiday, and Nana had agreed with him. And after that, she changed the rule. Now she said: “I only cook sweet bacon for a major holiday or a birthday.”

  Waffles. Pancakes. Cheese grits. And sweet bacon.

  “There may be no need to cook the turkey later on,” Bree said. “This meal could last me the whole day. Maybe the whole week.”

  “You speak for yourself,” Damon said. “I’ll be ready for turkey and mashed potatoes. And those yams I love with the mini-marshmallows.”

  The maple syrup was soaking into the waffles and pancakes. The sweet bacon strips were crunchy-crisp. And the mood was finally cheerful.

  Then Jannie spoke. “You know, it seems to me there’s only one thing missing from this breakfast table,” she said.

  They all immediately thought of Alex. A somber mood reinvaded the room. There was quiet. Nana squeezed her lips together to keep from tearing up. Bree looked out the window of the kitchen door.

  Damon shot a why’d-you-make-everyone-feel-bad-again look at Jannie. She realized that her innocent comment had been misinterpreted and had upset everyone.

  Jannie said, “Oh, no! Listen. Listen. What I meant was, what’s missing are those ridiculous reindeer antlers and the flickering electric red nose that Damon puts on every Christmas.”

  “Oh, I forgot all about those stupid…those stunning antlers,” Nana said.

  “Get outta here,” Damon said. “That’s not happening. You wear the antlers. Nana can wear the antlers.”

  “Nobody wears those antlers like you,” Jannie said and giggled.

  “Oh please, can I see them on you? Oh please,” said Ava.

  “I don’t even know where those dumb things are,” Damon said.

  “Lucky for us I do,” said Jannie. “I’ve got them right here.”

  And she produced from under her chair a pair of cloth antlers attached to a headband and decorated with a sprig of plastic holly. She also had a tiny red lightbulb fixed to a big rubber band that would fit snugly around Damon’s head.

  Then Nana said, “Before we see Damon dressed like a reindeer, let’s join hands and say a prayer.”

  They held hands and bowed their heads. Nana spoke.

  “Dear Lord, Who on this blessed Christmas Day brought Your Son into the world, we ask You to look with kindness on another son. Your son Alex. As he strives to help others, we ask You to help him. To keep him from harm. To protect him from evil. According to Your holy will.”

  Then together the Cross family said, “Amen.”

  CHAPTER

  34

  STRANGELY, THE SOUNDS I’D COME TO ASSOCIATE WITH THE NICHOLSON HOUSE were gone. No weeping, no screaming, and no children’s voices. Even the crazy man who ran the show was silent as he walked behind me, prodding me forward with the muzzle of one of the shotguns.

  I surveyed the wreckage of the room in the light that seeped in from behind the curtains. The three children were still lying on the floor and seemed to be sleeping. A red velvet club chair had been viciously slashed open since I left. A mahogany end table had been broken up and the pieces partially burned in the fireplace.

  Diana sat cross-legged on the floor with her husband’s head resting on her lap. She looked pale and exhausted. The doctor looked a whole lot worse. He lay motionless, his eyes closed. This was a life-or-death situation, and I had a good idea which side of the equation Nicholson was favoring.

  I glanced at Fowler, who’d edged around the room but was still covering me with the shotgun. He was less manic than when I’d left him more than four hours before. His eyes were droopy, as if he’d taken something to counteract the methamphetamine, which meant he was vulnerable. That was good; if he almost passed out, it would give me a chance to subdue him. But if he went back to the meth, he’d quickly turn unpredictable.

  “Why are you wearing the vest?” he asked, and I thought I smelled liquor.

  “My boss made me wear it,” I replied as I moved toward Nicholson and his wife. “Said I couldn’t come in here without it.”

  “Means they’re coming soon,” Fowler said.

  “Only if you want it that way, Henry,” I said, kneeling next to the wounded doctor to take his pulse. It was slow, erratic, but it was there.

  “He’s dying,” Diana whispered. “And there’s nothing I can do.”

  “That’s all right,” Henry said behind me. “Let them come.”

  I heard the tap, tap, tap of steel on glass, looked over my shoulder, and saw exactly what I did not want to see. Fowler had dumped the rest of his meth in the vial out onto the coffee table.

  “That necessary, Henry?” I asked.

  “Course,” he said, grinning at me maliciously with his rotten teeth. “How else am I going to be alert enough to see all this to its logical conclusion?”

  He bent over, booted a line up each nostril. He sat up and shook his head, as if the meth had lit a fire in there. “There you go,” he said. “That’s how you get the edge on.”

  “Henry, we’ve got to get Barry some help.”

  “You’re like everybody else here, Cros
s,” Fowler said, skin flushing as he went into another one of his rages. “Nobody listens. Or if they do happen to listen, they don’t understand what I’m saying. That was Diana all the way. In one ear and out the other. What I’m saying is Barry boy’s going to die anyway. We are all going to die anyway. Now, I could plug another bullet into his belly to finish the job, but I want Diana to see him slowly wind down like a goddamned toy. Yeah, a toy. Like that stupid electric poodle that Chloe has. Bark-bark-bark. Then two barks, then one bark, then no bark.”

  I found myself shaking my head in amazement at his bizarrely directed venom. Diana, however, looked weary and close to collapse. She ignored Fowler’s ravings and just kept gently stroking her husband’s pale hand.

  “Henry, I came in here because I had some questions about the story you told me earlier.”

  “What story?” he asked.

  “Why you’re here,” I said, getting up. “Why you’re doing this.”

  “I told you everything you needed to know,” Fowler sneered.

  I looked around, trying to feel my way through uncharted territory and help Nicholson without setting Fowler off. I spotted an unscathed bottle of Absolut vodka on a shelf opposite the downed Christmas tree.

  I moved toward it, saying, “But you didn’t tell me everything there was to know, did you, Henry?”

  “You got all you’re going to get,” Fowler said as I picked up the bottle. “What are you doing?”

  “Helping Barry,” I said.

  Fowler flicked off the safety on the shotgun. “I told you that was not happening.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to shoot me,” I said, spotting a dress shirt in a gift bag that had been torn open during Fowler’s long tirade.

  I looked up to see him aiming the shotgun at me. Somehow I stayed calm and said, “But if you shoot me and the rest of your family, no one will ever know what became of you, Henry. You’ll be written off as just some lunatic rather than a man who couldn’t stomach being himself.”