James Patterson - Cross Justice

“Someone taking care of his daughters?”

“They’re covered,” Frost said.

I sat back in my chair confidently, said, “Then I’m not saying anything until Pedelini wakes up. You talk to him. He’ll back me up.”

The door opened, and Naomi entered, saying, “Not another word, Alex.”

“That’s already the plan,” I said.

“You charging him?” my niece snapped.

“Not at this time,” Frost admitted.

“Then I’d appreciate his release,” she said. “Dr. Cross is an integral part of my defense. He’s not leaving town. You’ll find him in Judge Varney’s court if you need him.”

Ten minutes later we slipped out the back door of the police station to avoid the television news crews and walked down the alley toward the courthouse in the dawn light. Part of me wanted to go home and get some sleep. Instead, I called Nana Mama, told her I was okay and would see her at the trial. I texted Bree to call me as we went to a café for breakfast with Pinkie.

I drank three cups of coffee, ate three eggs sunny-side up, bacon, and hash browns, and related everything that had happened to me during the night.

“Why would Finn Davis want to kill Guy Pedelini?” Naomi asked.

“Maybe Davis saw Pedelini as I do: an essentially good guy corrupted by circumstances,” I said. “Under duress, these kinds of people don’t hold secrets long before they break, confess, and implicate others.”

“So the sheriff, and then Pedelini?” Pinkie said. “You think someone’s trying to clean house?”

“If you add in the busted brake line of our car, it sure looks like it.”

“Someone’s under pressure,” Naomi said.

“Someone?” Pinkie said. “Try Marvin Bell.”

“Bell’s vanished,” I said.

“Which means we were getting close, right?” Pinkie said.

“Close to something. But it’s still like a jigsaw that won’t piece—”

My phone rang. A number I almost recognized but couldn’t place.

“Cross,” I said.

“Drummond.”

I smiled. “How are you, Sergeant?”

“Peachy,” he said. “Mize is copping to it all and pleading insanity.”

“He might be right.”

“Not my call,” Drummond said. “Your case? You get that guy Bell?”

“Close,” I said. “But he’s vanished.”

“Runner.”

“Looks like it.”

“Your nephew’s trial?”

“My cousin’s trial. And, to be honest, unless we can come up with some counterevidence fast, he’s looking at death row.”

Drummond didn’t reply for several beats, and then said, “You never know when something’s going to turn things around.”

“True,” I said. I heard a clicking, looked at the caller ID, saw it was Bree.

I told the sergeant I had to take another call but would keep him posted, and then I switched lines.

“Hey,” I said. “Where are you?”

“At National Airport, about to board a flight back to Winston-Salem,” Bree said. “I just got some preliminary results e-mailed to me from the FBI lab.”

“And?”

Judge Varney gaveled the court to order at nine o’clock that Tuesday morning.

Before either of the attorneys could speak, the judge pointed his gavel toward the spectators, said, “Cece Turnbull? You in my court?”

Cece’s eyes were beet red and rheumy when she stood up and nodded.

“You gonna cause any more trouble?” he demanded.

“No, sir, Judge Varney,” she said in a tremulous voice. “I... I apologize. It’s just that—”

“Just nothing,” the judge said. “Long as you’re quiet, you can remain. But the first peep out of you and you’re gone for the duration. You understand?”

Cece nodded, sat down. Ann Lawrence leaned forward and patted her on the shoulder comfortingly. Sharon Lawrence sat next to her mother, pale, weak, and looking at her cell phone. Cece’s mother and father were behind the Lawrences. Mrs. Caine was staring into her lap while her husband sat ramrod straight in his business suit, arms crossed, focused completely on Judge Varney.

In those same moments, Police Chief Randy Sherman was sending hard glances at me and Nana Mama, who sat beside me, and at Pinkie, Aunt Connie, and Aunt Hattie, who were in the row behind us.

The bailiff led my cousin into the court. Stefan Tate’s facial swelling had gone down, but his skin was bruised a livid purple.

Patty Converse came in and took a seat next to Pinkie. I smiled. She nodded but wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“Where were we at adjournment?” Judge Varney asked his clerk.

“Detective Frost,” the clerk said. “Ms. Strong is still on direct.”

The older detective, who looked as tired as I was, took the stand.

Varney said, “I remind you you’re under oath.”

“Yes, Judge,” Frost said.

The district attorney let her assistant Matthew Brady take the lead in questioning the detective. Brady focused on other items gathered at the scene of Rashawn Turnbull’s rape and murder. Those pieces of evidence included a broken bottle of Stolichnaya vodka with Stefan Tate’s prints on it not ten feet from where the body was found.

During our first talk in the jail, my cousin said the bottle was probably his but that it must have been stolen from his apartment. The excuse was weak.

The weight of evidence against Stefan seemed overwhelming again. You could see it in the faces of many in the jury box. Stefan’s semen was at the scene of the crime. His prints were there. He killed that boy, deserved to fry.

“Detective,” Matthew Brady said. “You went to talk to the defendant the day Rashawn’s body was found.”

“That’s correct,” Frost said. “We found Mr. Tate at his house that morning.”

“How would you describe his condition?” Brady asked.

“Hung over. You could smell stale liquor on his breath.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That Rashawn’s body had been found,” Frost said. “And that we found his ID there covered with blood.”

“What was his reaction?”

“Went down on his knees and started sobbing.”

Frost said they took my cousin in for questioning and sealed the apartment until it could be searched by a forensics team. Before they interrogated Stefan they took his blood alcohol level, which registered as .065. Not legally drunk in North Carolina, but a solid indicator that he’d been drinking hard the night before.

Brady took the detective through the interrogation, in which Stefan steadfastly maintained his innocence. Yes, he’d been drinking the night before. He and his fiancée had had a fight. He’d stormed out, gone for a long walk, and picked up a bottle. He ended up passing out by the railroad tracks.

I glanced back at Patty Converse. She was staring at the floor.

“Did Mr. Tate say why he’d gone down by the tracks?” Brady asked.

“He said for no reason at all, and that made him hysterical,” Frost said.

“Did you believe him?”

“The hysteria? The anguish at what he’d done? Yes. That he went down by the tracks and passed out? No, I did not and do not. There was no evidence down there that put him anywhere near where he said he woke up.”

Frost went on to describe leaving Stefan in a cell under suicide watch while he and Carmichael searched the duplex where my cousin lived along with Sydney Fox and Patty Converse. The older detective found the pruning saw with Rashawn’s blood and flesh in the teeth on a shelf in the common basement along with some turkey-hunting equipment and a vial of methamphetamine.

“Was the saw or the meth vial hidden?” Brady asked.

“Yes. In a pack.”

“Odd that he would keep the weapon.”

“Mr. Tate’s blood alcohol level had to have been sky-high, and the brutality with which Rashawn was attacked suggests a berserk state,” Frost said. “Coming out of it, he probably wasn’t thinking too straight, dumped the saw where he found it.”