James Patterson - Cross Justice

“That’s where Rashawn was found,” Naomi said. “I’ll show you the crime scene photographs later, but he was facedown on that top slab, jeans around his right ankle, left leg hanging off the side. I don’t think you can see the discoloration on the rock from here, but when Pedelini found him, it had been raining less than an hour, and there was a—”

“Wait,” I said, lowering the binoculars. “Pedelini? As in the sheriff’s detective?”

“Correct,” Naomi said. “Pedelini spotted the body from up here. He said that when he got to Rashawn, despite the rain, there was a pink halo of blood all around the body.”

“The indictment said the neck had been sawed,” I said.

Naomi nodded. “You can read the full autopsy report.”

“They have the weapon?” Bree asked.

My niece cleared her throat. “A foldable pruning saw found in the shared basement of the duplex where Stefan, Patty, and Sydney Fox lived.”

“Stefan’s foldable pruning saw?”

“Yes,” Naomi replied. “He said he’d bought it because he was taking up turkey hunting and another teacher at the school who turkey hunted told him it was a good thing to have along.”

“His prints on it?” Bree asked.

“And Rashawn’s DNA,” Naomi said.

Bree looked at us skeptically. “So how does he explain it?”

“He doesn’t,” Naomi said. “Stefan says he bought the saw, took it out of the packaging at home, and put it in the basement with the rest of the gear he’d bought to go hunting.”

“How many ways into that basement?” Bree asked.

“Three,” Naomi replied. “From Stefan’s place, from Sydney Fox’s place, and through a bulkhead door out back. No sign of forced entry there.”

I lifted the binoculars and aimed them into the old quarry again, at that spot on the rocks where a thirteen-year-old boy had suffered and died.

“I want to go down there,” I said. “See it up close.”

“They’ve got the old road across from the church chained off, and it’s a fair walk in,” Naomi said. “At least twenty minutes off the main road. You’ll want bug spray, long pants, and long sleeves because of the chiggers. There’s poison sumac too.”

“We can’t leave a ninety-year-old in a car that long in this heat,” Bree said. “We’ll take Nana Mama home, get what we need, and come back.”

For the second time that morning, I saluted my wife.

We reached Loupe Street fifteen minutes later. Ali was still watching television, an adventure-hunting show featuring a big affable guy in a black cowboy hat.

“You ever heard of Jim Shockey?” Ali asked.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“He goes to all these, like, uncharted places and he hunts, like, ibex in Turkey and sheep in Outer Mongolia.”

“Outer Mongolia?” I said, looking closer at the screen and seeing a line of what I guessed were Mongolians with packs climbing some remote mountain with Shockey, the big guy in the black cowboy hat.

“Yeah, it’s dope,” Ali said, eyes fixed on the screen. “I didn’t know you could do things like this.”

“Outer Mongolia interest you?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“That’s right, why not?” I said, and I went upstairs to change. Naomi decided to stay behind and work on her opening statement. Nana Mama was making herself and Ali grilled cheese and green tomato sandwiches when Bree and I left.

We had the crime scene files and photographs with us as we approached the church again. The groundskeeper was finished and loading his mower onto a trailer. I looked for the chained-off and overgrown road that Naomi had shown us on the way out.

“Nana Mama’s right,” Bree said. “That is a beautiful cemetery.”

I looked up the rolling hill beyond the church, saw rows of tombstones and monuments. I remembered something my uncle Clifford had said two nights ago and something else my grandmother had said earlier this morning.

I pulled over, threw the Explorer in park, and said, “Wait here a second.”

I went to the groundskeeper, introduced myself, and asked him a few questions. His answers gave me chills up and down my spine.

Back in the car, I said, “Short detour before we go to the quarry.”

“Where are we going?”

“The cemetery,” I said, swallowing my emotions and putting the car in gear. “I think my parents are buried up there.”

Bree thought that over quietly for a few beats and then said, “You think?”

“The other night, Hattie’s husband said, ‘Christina’s next to Brock.’ Brock’s my mom’s brother, Aunt Connie’s late husband, and Nana Mama said he’s buried up there. My mom’s got to be buried beside her brother. And the groundskeeper said there’s also a Cross family plot up there.”

I drove through the gate and up the gently rolling hill, looking for the monuments that the groundskeeper had described.

“Alex,” Bree said softly. “You’ve never been to your parents’ graves?”

I shook my head. “People thought I was too young to go to my mother’s funeral, and we were sent to Nana Mama’s right after my father died. Given all that we’d been through, she wanted to spare us the pain of a funeral.”

Bree thought about that, said, “So your parents died close together?”

“Within a year of each other,” I said. “After my mother passed, my father was so heartbroken, he started drinking a lot more, using drugs.”

“That’s horrible, Alex,” she said, her brow knitting. “How come you’ve never told me that?”

I shrugged. “By the time I met you, my past was... my past.”

“And who took care of you and your brothers while all this was happening?”

I thought about that, driving slow, still scanning the hillside. “I don’t remember,” I said. “Probably Aunt Hattie. We always went to her house when things got—”

The monument was gray granite and far down a row of similar tombstones. The name cross was carved across the face of it.

I stopped the car, left it running for the air conditioner, and looked at my wife. Her features were full of pain and sympathy.

“You go see,” she said softly. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

I kissed her before climbing out into the heat and the clamor of insects coming from the woods. I went around the front of the Explorer and down the row of graves, my attention on the one that said Cross.

A general numbness settled in me when I reached the monument, which was barely tended. Grass grew up at the base. I had to crouch and spread it to find three small granite stones carved with initials. Left to right, they read:

I dug in the grass to the right of r.c. and found nothing but thatch and soil. There was no fourth stone. No J.C.

I stood and went around the back of the monument, finding more on the people buried there. The first name and the particulars startled me.

The second and third inscriptions read:

Puzzled, I climbed back into the car.

“What’s wrong?” Bree asked.

“My father’s not there. Nana Mama’s ex-husband, my grandfather, is, and his parents. I must have been named for my great-grandfather Alexander, who was a blacksmith.”