James Patterson - Cross Justice

Bree jumped up and went to Cece, who’d broken down sobbing as she feebly tried to continue her assault on her father. Bree pulled Cece off and held her while Caine slumped there, chest heaving, blood oozing from those scratches, looking around like a cornered animal at all the people in the courtroom watching him.

“None of it’s true,” Caine told them in a hoarse whisper. “None of it!”

“It’s all true!” Bell shouted from the witness stand. “You sick fuck. You deserve to burn in hell for what you did.”

The courtroom doors were flung open again. Two men and a woman, all wearing business suits, came in carrying pistols and badges.

The woman said, “My name is Carol Wolfe, FBI special agent in charge of the Winston-Salem office. Put the gun down, Sergeant Drummond.”

Drummond kept the shotgun to the back of Bell’s head, said, “I’m not quite done yet, Agent Wolfe. Mr. Bell here has one more thing to get off his chest.”

Marvin Bell seemed genuinely puzzled, said, “I told you everything.”

“Not all of it,” Drummond said. “You said you’ve never murdered anyone in your life.”

“That’s a fact,” Bell said.

“Never smothered anyone — a woman, maybe?” Drummond said. “Thirty-five years ago?”

“No.”

“You were her drug dealer,” the sergeant insisted. “She was dying of cancer, and no one was paying you for the heroin her husband was using to ease her pain.”

Bell shook his head.

“You got her husband damn-near-overdose high on smack,” Drummond said. “And then you smothered her with a pillow while he watched, so numb he couldn’t stop you.”

Drummond was breathing hard. He said, “Then, for almost a year, you made him work for you, and finally, when he was no use to you anymore, you tied that man to your car with a rope just like the one around your neck here, and you dragged that poor bastard through the streets, called him a wife killer, a mother killer.

“You alerted the police, said he’d murdered his wife, and gave him to the young men who were already in your pocket. Officer Randy Sherman and Deputy Nathan Bean. You paid them to make it look like he tried to escape. Judge Varney, a young assistant district attorney at the time, was there too. They pushed that man to the railing, and he didn’t understand why they went back to the cruisers and then turned and pulled their guns. Then they shot him, and he fell off the bridge and into the gorge. Isn’t that the way it happened, Marvin?”

Drummond had dropped the hammer and was holding the shotgun against Bell’s head so hard his hands were shaking.

“Yes, yes,” Bell whined. “That’s what happened.”

Judge Varney pounded with his gavel. “That is not true!”

Police Chief Sherman was on his feet, about to protest, but the FBI agent said, “Chief, you’re under arrest. And you too, Judge Varney.”

I don’t remember getting to my feet, only that I was, suddenly, and staring across the courtroom at Drummond as if down a vast tunnel of time.

“Who are you, Sergeant?” I said, realizing that Nana Mama was standing up beside me. “How do you know all these things?”

Tears streamed down Drummond’s expressionless face as he withdrew the shotgun barrel from Bell’s head and looked toward me and my grandmother.

“I know these things, Alex,” he choked out, “because in another lifetime, my name was Jason Cross.”

Nana Mama gasped, reached for her heart, and toppled against me. Her frail ninety-pound body almost bowled me off my own liquid feet. I had to take my eyes off Drummond to regain my balance and hold her up.

“Is it true?” my grandmother whispered into my chest, as if she couldn’t bear to look Drummond’s way.

“That’s impossible,” Bell said, craning his neck to look at Drummond. “Jason Cross took a bullet, went into the gorge. He never came out.”

“Yes, he did,” said Pinkie, who’d also gotten to his feet. “My uncle Clifford found him down on the river that night. Nursed him back to health.”

“Is Clifford here in Starksville?” Drummond called to Pinkie. “I would sure like to see the second best friend I’ve ever had. Maybe take him to Bourbon Street like we always talked about.”

“Oh my God.” My aunt Hattie gasped.

“It’s a miracle,” my aunt Connie cried.

I looked down at Nana Mama, saw my grandmother dissolving through sheets of tears.

“It’s him,” I whispered. “I don’t know how, but it’s him.”

When I looked up, Drummond had left Bell in the witness stand, handed the shotgun to Detective Frost, and was coming toward us with tears streaming down his blank face and his arms cast open.

“You don’t know how much I missed the both of you,” he said. “You have no idea of the loneliness without you.”

I slid into my father’s arms and he slid into his mother’s as if they were the most natural and familiar acts possible.

We bowed our heads into one another, suddenly apart from everyone else in that courtroom, like a miniature universe unto ourselves. I don’t think any of us managed to utter an intelligible word in those first few moments of reunion. But I know we were communicating deeply in a whole other language, like people embraced by holy spirits and speaking in tongues of fire.

Two weeks and two days after we’d arrived in Starksville, on a warm, clear Saturday afternoon, we had ourselves a proper reunion in Aunt Hattie’s backyard. Everybody who mattered to me in life was there.

Damon had flown into Winston-Salem the day before to meet his grandfather, which had been as emotional and satisfying as every other moment of my dad’s return to my life. Naomi’s mother, Cilla, and my brother Charlie had come in the day before that.

At first, Charlie had not believed Nana Mama and me when we’d called him with the news. Then he’d gotten angry and said he wasn’t interested in meeting someone who’d cut out on us thirty-five years before. But Cilla and Naomi had insisted, and when Charlie laid eyes on our dad, all had been forgiven. The only thing that would have made it better was having my late brothers Blake and Aaron there too, and we all shed tears over those tragedies.

My best friend, John Sampson, and his wife, Billie, had come in that morning. Sampson and my dad had hit it off immediately, and when Drummond wasn’t sitting by my uncle Cliff, he and John were trading cop stories and laughing.

Stefan Tate was there with his fiancée, Patty Converse, the two of them looking as in love as any couple I’d ever seen. Special Agent Wolfe was there as well.

Evidently, the FBI had been looking at Starksville with suspicions of judicial and police misconduct long before my father called Wolfe and told her to come listen to the shocking testimony about to come out in the courtroom of Erasmus P. Varney.

I went over to Agent Wolfe, said, “What do you think my dad’s chances are?”

Wolfe said, “Well, he’s not going back to his job with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. They’ve been pretty clear on that, but I don’t think he’ll end up being prosecuted for taking Bell hostage and marching him into court.”

“You don’t think?” I asked. “Pretty extreme move.”

“It was,” she said. “But we arrested the police chief and the presiding judge in Stark County, and the sheriff’s been murdered. And Guy Pedelini regained consciousness and spilled everything on all of them. The DA’s office is even under investigation. Basically, there’s no one left in Starksville to go after your dad, and I don’t know what federal statute would apply.”