James Patterson - Cross Justice

Slippery described Bell perfectly.

No one at that table could peg exactly when Marvin Bell took control of my parents’ life. They said he’d slid into Starksville like a silent cancer when my mom turned twenty. He came bearing heroin and cocaine, and he gave out free samples. He got my mother and a dozen young women just like her strung out and desperate. He hooked my father too, but not just on the drugs.

“Your father needed money for you boys,” Aunt Connie said. “Selling and moving for Bell made him that money. And like Ethel was saying, Bell had his hooks into them so hard, they were just like his slaves.”

Ethel Fox said, “Once, Bell even ran your daddy out of your house, tied him with a rope to the back of his car, and dragged him down the street. No one moved to stop him.”

Flashing on that memory of the boys being dragged on a rope line the day before, I gaped at her, horrified.

“You don’t remember, Alex?” Aunt Hattie asked softly. “You were there.”

“No,” I said instantly and unequivocally. “I don’t remember that. I’d... remember that.”

The very idea of it made my head start to pound, and I just wanted to go somewhere in the darkness and sleep. Both my aunts and Sydney Fox’s mother looked at me in concern.

“What?” I said. “I just don’t remember it ever getting that bad.”

Aunt Connie said sadly, “Alex, it got so bad, the only way your mom and dad could escape was by dying.”

Hearing that after so long a day, I hung my head in sorrow.

Bree rubbed my back and neck, said, “Is Bell still a dealer?”

They argued about whether he was. Aunt Hattie said that soon after my father died, Bell took his profits and went twenty miles north, where he built a big house on Pleasant Lake. He bought up local businesses and gave every appearance of a guy who’d straightened out his life.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Ethel Fox snapped. “You don’t change your spots just like that, not when there’s easy money to be made. You ask me, he runs the underworld of this town and the towns all around us. Maybe even over to Raleigh.”

I raised my head. “He’s never been investigated?”

“Oh, I’m sure someone has investigated him,” Connie said.

“But Marvin Bell’s never been arrested for anything, far as I know,” Hattie said. “You see him around Starksville from time to time, and it’s like he’s looking right through you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Bree asked.

Hattie shifted in her chair. “He makes you uncomfortable just by being near, like he’s an instant threat, even if he’s smiling at you.”

“So he knows who you are? What you’ve seen?” Bree asked.

“Oh, I expect he knows,” Connie said. “He just don’t care. In Bell’s kingdom, we’re nothing. Just like Alex’s parents were nothing to him.”

“Any evidence linking Bell to Rashawn Turnbull?” Bree said.

Naomi shook her head.

Patty Converse seemed lost in thought.

I asked her, “Stefan ever mention him?”

My cousin’s fiancée startled when she realized I was talking to her, said, “Honest to God, I’ve never heard of Marvin Bell.”

I awoke the next morning to find my daughter, Jannie, at the side of my bed, shaking my shoulder. She had on her blue tracksuit and was carrying a workout bag.

“Six a.m.,” she whispered. “We have to go.”

I nodded blearily and eased out of bed, not wanting to wake Bree. I grabbed some shorts, running shoes, a Georgetown Hoyas T-shirt, and a Johns Hopkins hoodie, and went into the bathroom.

I splashed cold water on my face and then dressed, willing myself not to think about the day before and Marvin Bell and what my aunts said he’d done to my parents. Did Nana Mama know? I pushed that question and more aside. For a few hours, at least, I wanted to focus on my daughter and her dreams.

Nana Mama was already up. “Coffee with chicory,” she said, handing me a go cup and a small soft cooler. “Bananas, water, and her protein shakes are in there. There’s some of those poppy-seed muffins you like too.”

“Fattening me up?”

“Putting some meat on your bones,” she said, and she laughed.

I laughed too, said, “I remember that.”

When I was a teenager, about Jannie’s age, I’d gotten my height but weighed about one hundred and sixty dripping wet. I had dreams of playing college football and basketball. So for two years, Nana Mama cooked extra for me, putting some meat on my bones. When I graduated high school, I weighed close to two hundred.

“Dad!” Jannie whined.

“Tell Bree we should be back before ten,” I said, and I hurried out of the house with my daughter.

Jannie was quiet on the ride over to Starksville High School. It didn’t surprise me. She is incredibly competitive and intense when it comes to running. Sometimes she’s irritable before facing a challenge on the track. Other times, like that morning, she’s quiet, deep inside herself.

“This coach is supposed to be strong,” I said.

She nodded. “Duke assistant.”

I could see the wheels turning in her head. One of Duke University’s assistant track coaches ran the AAU team out of Raleigh during the summer. Some of her athletes would no doubt be on the track. Jannie was out to impress them all.

I pulled into a mostly empty parking lot next to the high school. At a quarter past six on a Saturday morning, there were only a handful of vehicles there, including two white passenger vans. Beyond them and a chain-link fence and bleachers, people were jogging, warming up.

“You’re here to train, right?” I said as Jannie unbuckled her seat belt.

She shook her head, smiled, and said, “No, Daddy, I’m here to run.”

We went through a gate, under the stands, and over to the track. There were fifteen, maybe twenty athletes there already, some stretching in the cool air, some just starting their warm-up laps.

“Jannie Cross?” A woman wearing shorts, running shoes, and a bright turquoise windbreaker jogged over to us. She carried a clipboard and grinned broadly when she stuck out her hand and said, “Melanie Greene.”

“Pleased to meet you, Coach Greene,” I said, shaking her hand and sensing her genuine enthusiasm.

“The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Cross,” the coach said.

Then she turned the charm on Jannie and said, “And you, young lady, are causing quite the stir.”

Jannie smiled and bowed her head. “You saw the tape of the invitational?”

“Along with every other Division One coach in the country,” she said. “And here you are, walking onto my track.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jannie said.

“Just for the record, you’ll only be a sophomore in the fall?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Coach Greene shook her head in disbelief and then handed me the clipboard and said, “I’m going to need you to sign a few forms here, saying we are not in any way, shape, or form considering this a recruitment meeting. This is summer work, and it’s all about training. And there’s an athletic release form from the Starksville school system at the bottom.”

I scanned the documents, started signing.

“Why don’t you take a lap and get warmed up,” Coach Greene said to Jannie, all business now. “We’ll be working two-hundreds this morning.”

“Yes, Coach,” Jannie said, looking serious as she put her bag on one of the low bleachers and ran out onto the track.

I signed the last of the documents and handed the clipboard back.

“You’re here how long?” Coach Greene asked.

“Unclear,” I said. “We’re down on a family issue.”

“Both sorry and glad to hear it,” she said, and she shook my hand again before jogging back to several women wearing AAU and Duke warm-up jackets.