James Patterson - Cross Justice

Sure of himself now, Coco pushed on down a gallery rich with artwork, although the only piece he stopped to look at was an oil painting of the deceased. There you are, he thought, studying Ruth’s beauty. Caught at the moment of your ripeness, my dear, a gift to the universe.

Ruth and Stanley’s home was enormous and entirely too modern for Coco’s taste. But then again, what would you expect from the house that fake tits built? There was a great deal to be said for classic understatement, he believed.

As his mother liked to say: When it comes to your art, Coco, and fashion is art, take your motif to the limit and then back off several degrees .

Coco walked through a kitchen big enough to host an episode of Iron Chef and went down a hallway to a steel door. He checked the security system, got a white dust cloth from his bag, and covered his fingers with it before punching in the code. Five seconds later, he shut the garage door and waited for the electronic voice to tell him the system was armed.

The garage had four bays. The near one was empty. The second held Ruth’s Mercedes, and the third her husband’s Maserati. Coco’s beloved Aston Martin occupied the fourth bay. But before going to it, he reached into the Mercedes and removed the garage-door remote.

He backed the Aston out onto a colored concrete area, exited the car, pressed the remote, then wiped it down. When the garage door started to lower, he lobbed it inside, satisfied when it skittered to a halt a few feet from the Mercedes.

Someone intent on suicide would not bother to pick that up, would she? Coco was confident this was the case. He drove out through the security gates of Ruth and Stanley Abrams’s massive waterfront estate. Then he realized that the ladies of Palm Beach would already be gathering for cocktails. Maybe he’d go stroll by Oli’s Fashion Cuisine.

Would anyone recognize him at Oli’s? He was thrilled at his audacity, his taste for high-stakes games.

Let’s do it, girlfriend. Let’s really shake it up.

Ten minutes later, Coco parked the Aston Martin a few blocks away from his target zone. The vintage sports car was a risk, he knew. But he adored it, so it often caused him to act impulsively, demanding his attention when the Lexus would have done just fine.

Next time you’ll stay home, Coco thought and put on a pair of retro white-and-oval-framed sunglasses. He set off up the sidewalk, walking the way his mother had taught him, with his shoulders back, his head high, and his hips swaying like a pendulum.

The first man he encountered was a jogger in his fifties. Coco could feel his degenerate eyes looking over the Tangerine Dream. The second man, a Euro in yachting garb, dropped his sunglasses to gape openly.

That’s it, girl, Coco thought, putting just a little more sway in the booty for the Euro who’d no doubt turned to watch after the dream. Ahead, the yellow tables outside Oli’s were already filled with a stylish happy-hour crowd.

He took a breath, thought: Mysterious, now. Sexy. Alluring. Unobtainable.

That’s it, Coco. You’ve got it all.

Now flaunt it all.

He made his walk even more provocative, swaying his hips back and forth.

Coco raised his chin a degree as he passed the restaurant, ignoring the scene but aware of patrons twisting to look after him. He almost laughed to cause so much mistaken lust and envy.

Starksville, North Carolina

Though everyone had heard the judge’s order loud and clear, it was well into the afternoon before two deputies brought my cousin, wearing leg shackles and handcuffs locked to a leather belt around his waist, into an interrogation room. Even through the bruises and swelling, I could see Stefan Tate took after our mothers’ side of the family. He was in his early thirties, tall and heavy-boned like me and like Damon. And we all had the same jawline.

I flashed on an image of him as a little boy, running around Nana Mama’s yard during one of Aunt Hattie’s infrequent trips to Washington. He’d had this infectious laugh, and it seemed like he thought everything was a mystery and an adventure.

“Alex,” Stefan said thickly as he sat down. “Glad you came.”

I nodded, said nothing.

“Leave his wrists cuffed, but release them from the belt,” Naomi said. “He may need to use his hands. And turn off all cameras and microphones.”

“Already done on the cameras and mikes,” an officer said. “But there is zero chance we’re letting him use his hands.”

Ignoring her protests, they chained Stefan’s legs and the belt to a stout eyebolt in the cement floor and left.

Leaning toward us, Stefan said quietly, “I’d sweep the room for bugs.”

I wondered if he was serious or just being melodramatic. But Naomi thought enough of the idea to pull out her iPhone and call up a white-noise app that she turned on high.

“That works,” Stefan said. “And thank you again, Alex, for coming. You don’t know what it means to have you believe that I did not do these things.”

“I don’t believe one way or the other,” I replied evenly, studying him for signs that he was capable of doing the things he’d been accused of.

“I’m being framed,” he said.

“Listen carefully,” I said. “I am your cousin, but I do not represent you. Ultimately I’m here representing Rashawn Turnbull. I find out anything that says you killed that boy, I will help the prosecution put you in the chair, or whatever they use here.”

“Lethal injection,” Stefan said. “I will not lie to you. I did not kill Rashawn.”

“Why’d you assault the guards?” Naomi asked.

“Other way around, Counselor. They assaulted me.”

“We’ll get back to that,” I said. “You’ve read the indictment?”

“More times than you can count. Look, I’m telling you. This case? These circumstances? They’re manufactured, Alex.”

“You didn’t do any of it?”

“Some of it,” he admitted. “But nothing illegal. They’ve twisted things, taken them totally out of context.”

“Convince me like you’ve convinced Naomi,” I said, crossing my arms. “Start at the beginning.”

“‘A very good place to start,’” Stefan sang, and he tried to smile.

According to the particulars of the indictment, two months earlier, Rashawn Turnbull had been found dead in an abandoned limestone quarry, a piece of land undergoing annexation by the city of Starksville. The teenager had been drugged and forcibly sodomized, and his neck had been slashed with a saw. Semen and other evidence found at the scene pegged Stefan Tate, Rashawn’s eighth-grade gym teacher, as the killer. DNA also linked Stefan to the drugging and rape of seventeen-year-old Sharon Lawrence, a student at Starksville High School, and she had agreed to testify against him.

So I didn’t smile when my cousin sang that line from “Do-Re-Mi.”

Instead, for the next hour and a half, I listened closely to his side of the terrible crimes described in the indictment, interrupting only to clarify verifiable facts, names, and times. Otherwise, I followed the adage that if you really want to learn about someone, you should just shut up and listen.

“The day after Rashawn was found, they put the handcuffs on me, Alex,” my cousin said at the end of his version of events. “Ever since, I’ve been in here. No bail. Limited visitation, even with Patty and Naomi. I’m telling you, Alex, I’m being railroaded.”

I said nothing, still trying to absorb his story in light of the information given in the indictment.

He leaned forward. “You believe me, don’t you?”