Джеймс Паттерсон - The People vs. Alex Cross

“I’m Cassandra Chalabi,” she said.

“Of course you are,” I said, furious. “Sorry to bother you.”

We shut the door. Sampson said, “Con artist.”

“Total pro. Pathological liar.”

“How much you wanna bet she’s started making a third move since we left?”

“Not a nickel. Lourdes Rodriguez, Annie Cassidy, whatever she calls herself, is in the wind.”

When Sampson and I returned to the front door of the arts building, gloom had set in outside, and a chill rain fell on hurried pedestrians bent to the storm.

“We’re gonna get soaked,” Sampson said.

“Run for it,” I said. I jerked open the door and hopped out. Rain driven by a strong north wind pelted my face and eyes, forcing me to duck my head and throw my forearm across my brow as I ran toward the car, virtually blind.

As I was crossing Seventh Street, I stepped in a pothole. My right foot and shoe were submerged, my ankle and lower shin hit the edge of the depression, and I stumbled and sprawled in front of a Chrysler Sebring waiting at the light.

But that probably saved my life, because as soon as I tripped, I heard a thumping noise and the Sebring’s right headlight exploded.

“Shooter!” Sampson shouted; he grabbed me by the back of the jacket, hauled me behind the Sebring, and threw me to the ground just before a second bullet smacked into the grille and penetrated the radiator, which threw steam.

The Sebring’s driver started screaming in a language I didn’t recognize. My shin was screaming in a language I didn’t recognize. But I forced myself to dig for my service weapon and badge.

“Where is he?” I said.

Sampson said, “I caught a flash of the first shot, elevated slightly, northwest corner of the intersection and back. Sounded suppressed too.”

I ignored the pain in my leg and got up enough to look over the hood through the teeming rain. The traffic light on one-way South Street had gone yellow. Two cars passed. Their headlights threw glare that dazzled me until the third shot.

I saw the flare of it, and then the Sebring’s windshield and passenger-side window fragmented as the bullet passed through both. I ducked down, hearing the frightened screams from the driver turn petrified.

“Pickup parked on the north side of South Street,” I said.

The light turned green on Seventh. The hysterical Sebring driver stomped on the gas, but the car bucked, stalled, and belched steam and smoke before dying ten feet into the intersection. The drivers of several cars behind us spun their tires, trying to get around the Sebring.

Other cars began honking frantically.

Sampson said, “Pickup’s running the red.”

In one motion I stood and had my pistol in my shooting hand over the Sebring’s passenger-side mirror. I was aiming at the pickup, which was trying to avoid the skidding cars in the intersection. For a moment I had nothing to shoot at.

Then I picked up a shadow, someone dressed in black standing in profile against the back of the truck cab. He shifted, exposing the sound suppressor on the muzzle of his rifle.

“Gun,” I said; I fired, and missed.

The gunman returned fire, but the shot went wide. Sampson’s shot went wide as well, two feet to the gunman’s right, shattering the truck’s driver-side window. The brakes went on. A Volvo station wagon turning the corner onto South smashed into the truck’s rear corner panel, throwing the gunman off his feet. He fell behind the walls of the truck bed.

I hobbled after a charging Sampson, his gun and badge up to oncoming traffic, and my gut feeling was that something terrible was going to happen unless I kept up with my partner.

Trying to back up, the Volvo almost ran us over. We dodged around it as the pickup’s brake lights went off and the truck started to roll again, passing beneath street lamps as it slowly gained speed.

We ran with it, and I caught a glimpse of the driver, a scruffy-faced guy with a tangle of dark hair and bleeding cheeks. The pickup pulled away. The gunman rose to his knees in the bed and looked at us, grinning.

The truck sped up and was gone into a mash of red taillights long before the police sirens started to wail.

“No light on the license plate,” Sampson said in disgust as we walked through the still-pouring rain back to the smoking Sebring. “Probably smashed when it got rear-ended.”

“There was enough light on the shooter, though,” I said, limping and feeling twisted and toyed with. “He likes to call himself Alden Lindel.”

At home the next evening, I was on my back with my ankle elevated and iced, watching coverage of the shooting incident on a DC station.

“There Detective Cross goes again,” said assistant U.S. attorney Nathan Wills, peering in disgust at the camera from under an umbrella. “He’s not back on the job a week and already the bullets are flying.”

“Those bullets flew my way first,” I said and stabbed the remote until the screen went black.

“The brass know that,” Bree said, coming out of the kitchen into our great room and setting a cup of coffee on the table beside me.

“Michaels put me on leave,” I said. “Again.”

“Department regulations,” Bree said, sitting beside me. “Sampson’s no better off than you.”

“Better ankle,” I said.

“Well, there’s that,” Bree said.

We fell into a silence that got longer. I stared at the blank screen, wondering for the hundredth time why the man impersonating Alden Lindel was fixated on me. Was he part of the crew that tried to frame me for murder? Picking up where Claude Watkins and Kimiko Binx left off?

And what about Lourdes Rodriguez? Was that even her real name?

In the wake of media uproar surrounding the shooting in Philly, Chief Michaels had been in no mood to seek a search warrant for her new apartment, even when we explained that she’d set us up to be assassinated.

“I’m beginning to wonder if this is worth it anymore,” I said, looking over at Bree. “Being a cop, I mean.”

Cocking her head, frowning, she set her coffee down. “You’re serious?”

“I’m serious enough to know that I want to stay being a psychologist, a counselor, at least part-time,” I said. “I enjoy it. It feels right and matters in a way hunting down bad guys just doesn’t anymore, Bree.”

She gazed at me, blinked. “You are serious.”

“I guess I am. Maybe it’s time. They say most people have five careers in their lives. Maybe this is how I’m supposed to be the best I can be in the future.”

“A higher calling?”

I sighed. “Is that so hard to believe?”

Bree smiled at me, but there was a tinge of sadness in it. “No, I could understand it. At least of an ordinary cop, who’d seen too much. But you’re no ordinary cop, Alex Cross.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Tell that to the awards and citations you have piled in your attic office. Tell that to all the families of victims you’ve helped just by being you, relentless, smart, and professional with a moral compass that is unwavering.”

“I’m impulsive,” I said. “I get shot at. A lot.”

“Because you have the God-given knack of getting close to bad guys and upsetting their plans. You actually do that on a regular basis, Alex. Very, very few detectives can say that.”

Before I could reply, Ali pounded through the kitchen and out to us.

“Dad!” he said. “I think I’ve finally found my sport!”

Of my three children, my youngest might be the brightest, but he is, shall we say, challenged athletically. Ali had tried various sports — basketball, baseball, and even lacrosse — but nothing ever clicked, and he seemed to trip over his own feet a lot.