Джеймс Паттерсон - The People vs. Alex Cross

Over the next twenty minutes or so, the story came out.

Stetson was a math and computer genius who should have gone to Caltech, but his father was a trustee and fervent supporter of Catholic University. His first night at the school, Stetson had introduced Cyr and Vertze to the dark web. They’d found the Killingblondechicks website and started posting about it for fun.

“Fun?” I said.

“C’mon,” Stetson said. “No one thinks those videos are real.”

“Have you unlocked the videos?”

“You can’t. I tried. The locked world, the unknown, it’s just part of the fantasy of virtual reality, man, a place to safely experience and vent frustrations without consequences.”

I reappraised the eighteen-year-old, thinking that he was entirely too smart for his own good. “You boys experience frustration with blondes?”

“Hasn’t every guy on the face of the earth?” Vertze said.

Cyr and Stetson both started laughing. I had to admit it was a funny line, and I fought not to smile.

Finally, I said, “If I look around in your pasts, am I going to find a blonde one of you disliked so much that she ended up kidnapped? Or dead?”

Cyr said, “My first girlfriend was a blonde. Caught her messing around with my best friend’s older brother. They’re married now. Not kidnapped. Not dead. Just miserable.”

Vertze said, “My anti-blondeness stems from a severe German teacher junior year who had zero sense of humor. I thought about sticking a pin in her ass but refrained — at least, long enough to get an A.”

Stetson and Cyr laughed again. I couldn’t help it and smiled.

“What about you, Brian?” I said, looking at Stetson.

Stetson sobered and said, “My blonde story is like all blonde stories. They’re all about the princess complex that’s sold to them each and every day.”

After dinner, once Jannie had gone upstairs to do homework and Ali had settled in to watch Meru, an excellent documentary about extreme mountain climbers, I told Bree and Nana Mama about Brian Stetson, disguising him as a client and not revealing his name.

“The princess complex?” Bree said. “And how exactly did he define that?”

“He said it starts at birth with blond girls,” I said. “They’re dressed as princesses in the crib. Then they’re sold the princess story in movies, in advertising, all around them, until they believe that if they can just be beautiful enough, they’ll attract Prince Charming and live happily ever after.”

Nana Mama said, “An eighteen-year-old told you all that?”

“A sharp one. He had the root theory of blonde stories figured out.”

Bree said, “I knew a blonde who was just like that, treated like a princess her whole childhood. Leanne Long. She was an honest-to-God nice person, and she became a nurse and married a really nice guy, so it doesn’t always work according to that kid’s theory.”

“This old lady needs her sleep,” my grandmother said, taking her cane and getting up.

“We’re right behind you,” I promised. “We’ll make sure the place is spotless for you in the morning.”

“Bless you, dear,” she said, and she kissed my forehead.

When Nana Mama was out of earshot, Bree turned serious and said, “Alex, how long did you think you could be involved in the Gretchen Lindel investigation without me knowing?”

“The client story didn’t work?”

“Uh, no.”

I told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

When I was done, Bree was spitting mad.

“What were you thinking, going onto campus like that?” she demanded. “Entering a dorm room without a warrant? Threatening possible witnesses without authority and while on suspension due to pending homicide charges?”

I’d known most of that was coming, but it still hurt. I’d let her down.

“I wanted to be useful, Bree,” I said. “It felt like I was back in the game.”

“Your clients and practice are your game now. Have nothing to do? Work on your defense. Help Anita and Naomi make your case ironclad. And the next time you feel the need to lie or hide things from me, Alex? Please don’t.”

I had a hollow feeling in my stomach and said, “You’re right. I just... you’re right. It will never happen again.”

I hoped she’d forgive me. I hated going to sleep when one of us was mad at the other.

After several moments, Bree sighed and said, “So you don’t think those college boys are involved?”

My shoulders relaxed. I felt like we were getting back to level ground.

“Beyond the posts, no, not as far as I could tell.”

“You don’t think we should get a warrant for their computers?”

“And get them all expelled for being smart, nosy, teenage male nerds with blonde chips on their shoulders?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Bree said, getting up and extending her hand to me.

I took it, kissed the back of her hand, and said, “Princess?”

She started laughing, said, “Charming?”

I got up, grinning. “That’s me.”

John Sampson had never heard a collective grief quite like this. The crying, wailing, and whimpering seemed to come from every room he passed.

Innocence destroyed, Sampson thought. Up until now, their lives have been one shooting star after another, and that’s gone.

Looking shell-shocked, Wally Christian, Georgetown University’s security chief, walked beside Sampson and Detective Ainsley Fox down a hall on the first floor of Village C West, a residential building for freshmen. A DCMP patrol officer stood aside so they could go through the double doors into the common area.

Sampson paused just beyond the doors and took in the carnage with one long, sweeping glance.

A young brunette in a Hoyas sweatshirt was sprawled on a couch, dead, a gunshot to her neck. A second young woman with short brown hair lay facedown and dead on the carpet. EMTs rushed out of the room with a gurney carrying a very large Samoan American male with two chest wounds.

“How many saw it?” Sampson asked.

“Seven,” Wally Christian said. “We’ve moved them to the common room upstairs. The chaplains are with them.”

“Who’s the missing girl?” Fox asked. “The blonde?”

“Patsy Mansfield,” Christian said. “A sophomore. Real star.”

“As in, people knew who she was?” Sampson said.

“On campus, you bet. She plays lacrosse, all-American as a freshman, and, well, you’ve seen the picture of her I put out with the Amber Alert. She’s quite the looker.”

As all of them took the stairs to the second floor of the dorm, Sampson thought of what Alex had told him over the phone about the three freshmen at Catholic University with bad attitudes about blondes. He wondered if they were involved here and made a note to check on their whereabouts at the time of the incident.

The seven witnesses to the homicides of the brunettes and the kidnapping of Patsy Mansfield all told much the same story. Eleven students were hanging out in the lounge around seven that Saturday evening when two men came in from outside. They wore black balaclavas and olive-green workman’s coveralls with Georgetown University written on the back. They drew pistols with silencers and ordered everyone to the floor except Patsy Mansfield.

“Wait,” Detective Fox said. “They used her name?”

“Definitely,” said Tina Hall, a freshman. “They knew who she was.”

Hall and the others said the two men told Mansfield that things would go easier if she just went with them. But then Keoni Latupa, a linebacker on the football team and a good friend of Patsy’s, grabbed one of the men and threw him to the ground so hard that his gun clattered away. Latupa scrambled for it, but the other man shot and wounded him before he could get to it.