James Patterson - Cross Justice

Despite their collective fear, several jury members nodded.

“I would too,” Nana Mama whispered. “You know him, Alex?”

“Met him in Florida,” I whispered. “He’s a cop.”

“What happened to his face?”

“First Gulf War.”

I knew the source of the scarring, but what had happened to Drummond in the few days since I’d seen him? Why in God’s name would he do something this rash? Destroy his career and reputation? His life?

I’d talked to Drummond about Marvin Bell and how frustrated I was at not being able to link him to the web of secrets we’d been uncovering in Starksville. And the sergeant had asked me about Bell several times. He’d done it on the phone that very morning. Drummond had obviously been close by when he called me. And Bell had never left the area. The sergeant had been holding him hostage somewhere, torturing him into a confession.

But why?

“We’ll start at the beginning, Marvin, way, way back, more than thirty-five years,” Drummond said. “You sold drugs in Starksville then, built a nice little business out of it, didn’t you?”

“No,” Marvin Bell said, sounding bewildered. “I—”

From out of nowhere, Drummond pulled out a small ball-peen hammer. He snapped it forward with power, speed, and accuracy. The round head of the hammer smashed into Bell’s swollen left hand, and he howled in agony.

“Try again, Marvin,” Drummond said, waving the hammer in Bell’s peripheral vision. “You sold drugs. You built a gang.”

“Yes,” Marvin Bell whimpered. “I sold drugs. I built a gang.”

“Here in Starksville?”

“Yes.”

“Name of that gang?”

“The Company.”

There it is, I thought. Bell started the Company. He’s Grandfather.

Drummond said, “You had a ruthless business model, Marvin. Got people addicted on freebies until they were like your slaves. You had people killed. You killed people yourself.”

“I never killed anyone,” Marvin Bell said, crying. “I keep telling you that and you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t believe you,” Drummond said, wagging the hammer. “But we’ll come back to that. You admit you made a lot of money dealing drugs?”

Marvin Bell looked from his hands to the hammer, and nodded sullenly.

“You laundered that money in legitimate businesses all around Starksville,” Drummond went on.

Looking as if his world was ending, Bell said, “Yeah.”

“But even after you’d bought the legit businesses, you didn’t stay away from the drug trade, did you?”

Bell set his jaw as if he were going to argue, but then he shook his head.

“Course not,” the sergeant said. “Moving coke and heroin and meth was just too lucrative. The money was almost too easy if you were smart about it. So one day you noticed the freight trains going back and forth all day and all night through Starksville, and thought, Why not use them? Why not expand? Am I summarizing your personal history correctly?”

Bell tried to move his hands and gasped before nodding.

“Yes,” Drummond said. “You built a distribution network that stretches from Montreal to Miami?”

Again, Bell said, “Yes.”

“And with all that money, you bought yourself an estate up on Pleasant Lake, a gorgeous beachfront place down on Hilton Head, and a condo in Aspen. Trips all over the world. Art collector. Isn’t that right?”

He nodded.

“Got your adopted son, Finn Davis, involved too.”

Bell swallowed, said, “Finn’s part of it.”

“Finn kill his ex-wife?” Drummond asked. “Sydney Fox?”

I heard a creak behind me as Pinkie sat forward.

Marvin Bell looked around the room as if desperate for someone to rescue him. Drummond lashed out again with the hammer, hit Bell’s right hand. Bell let out a scream that shook everyone in the room except Drummond, who seemed calm, clinical.

“Answer the question, Marvin,” the sergeant said. “Did Finn Davis shoot Sydney Fox?”

“Yes.” Bell moaned.

“Fucking knew it,” Pinkie said, and he smacked his fist in his palm. “That sonofabitch.”

“Why did he kill her?” Drummond asked.

“’Cause he hated her, and she needed killing.”

“Why did Sydney Fox need killing?”

“Having been married to Finn, she suspected too much,” Bell said. “And she was talking to Tate, who was poking around the train tracks. It was all no good, so he killed her.”

Drummond asked, “Did Sydney Fox know about your supplier?”

Marvin Bell groaned and shifted in his chair, said, “No.”

“Your distribution system got so big you were having trouble getting supply, especially methamphetamine, correct?” Drummond flipped the hammer in the air and caught it.

Marvin Bell flinched, said, “Yes.”

“So you found a secret partner right here in Starksville who could manufacture meth for you. In fact, a partner who could provide you with an almost unlimited supply and never get caught. Right?”

A secret partner? I thought.

“I called it,” Bree whispered, lowering her iPhone and pumping her fist.

“Called what?” I said.

Before she could answer, Drummond said, “Is that correct, Marvin?”

“Yes. I had a partner.”

Judge Varney had broken out in a sweat and looked agitated, and I feared he was about to keel over again from kidney-stone pain.

Drummond said, “You and your partner, you didn’t like Stefan Tate sneaking around, looking into things by the tracks, did you?”

“No.”

“You and your partner decided that Stefan Tate had to go.”

Marvin Bell moved his hands, winced, said, “I agreed Tate had to go. But I had no idea what he had in mind. No idea that he’d do all that to the boy.”

“You know for a fact your partner killed Rashawn Turnbull?”

Bell looked out into the spectators and seemed to be speaking directly to Cece Turnbull. “I know for a fact he killed Rashawn and framed Tate. He told me so himself afterward.”

“What did your partner say?” Drummond said. “Word for word.”

Bell swallowed and replied, “He said he’d gotten rid of two problems at the same time, Stefan Tate and his black bastard grandson.”

For two seconds, the silence in that courtroom was so deep and complete you could have heard a mouse in the walls. I was tired, wrung out. It took me a full two seconds to figure out the killer, and then I twisted around, looking for Harold Caine.

Rashawn’s grandfather. Owner of a fertilizer company. Chemist, no doubt. Racist? Grandfather?

Caine’s expression seemed electrified by the charge. His body had gone rigid. His lips were peeled back. And he was clinging so hard to the bench in front of him that I thought his fingers might snap like Bell’s.

Caine’s wife stared at him like he was something unthinkable and cowered from his side.

Caine noticed, turned his head to her, said, “It’s not true, Virginia. He’s—”

“It is true!” Cece Turnbull screeched.

Caine’s daughter had twisted around and was looking past Ann and Sharon Lawrence to face her father two rows back. “You always hated Rashawn! You always hated that a nigger fucked your lily-white Southern daughter and left you with a living, breathing tarnish on the Caine family name!”

“No, that’s not true!”

Cece went over the back of her bench then, stepped up next to Ann Lawrence, and launched herself at her father. She crashed into him, slapping and scratching at his face.

“You treated my boy worse than dirt his entire life!” she screamed. “And you stole my Lizzie. Rashawn had as much of your precious blood as my Lizzie, and you cut it out of him with a pruning saw!”