Джеймс Паттерсон: The People vs. Alex Cross

The feed cut away to a local station’s news desk and an anchor who began prattling on about the kidnapping.

In her office downtown, Bree hit the mute button on her remote. She didn’t want to hear the talking heads sum up the case. She knew the situation cold.

The critical first forty-eight hours of the investigation had elapsed with little progress. Part of that was due to the fact that the FBI had stepped in to take over the case because it was a kidnapping and Gretchen had likely been taken across state lines. Bree and DC Metro had been largely cut out at that point, especially after the FBI reviewed the tape of the snatching and saw the police car. As far as she knew, there’d been no ransom note, no attempts by the kidnappers to contact anyone.

“Chief?” Sampson said, knocking at her door. “We’ve got something.”

Before Bree could reply, Detective Fox barged in front of Sampson and said, “I think we should be reporting this to the FBI. They’re the higher authority now.”

Bree’s expression hardened. Ainsley Fox had never met a regulation or rule she didn’t worship as gospel.

“Detective Fox,” Bree said. “Last time I looked, your badge said DCMP, and you report to me. Anything you have, I want to hear.”

“For Christ’s sake, Fox,” Sampson said when the detective hesitated. “I’ll tell her if you won’t.”

Sampson took a seat, opened a file, and began by noting that all DC Metro patrol cars carried GPS trackers that transmitted their locations to databanks. A check of those banks showed no Metro cruisers in the vicinity of Washington Latin at the time of the kidnapping and murder.

“But Ali Cross’s video clearly shows a patrol car with all the right markings and decals of a Metro rig,” Sampson said. “Someone detailed that car to perfection, even configured the sirens and blues exactly the way we do.”

“Where does that take us?” Bree asked. “To body shops? Places that rent stunt vehicles to the movies?”

Sampson glanced at his new partner and said in a grudging tone, “At some point, maybe, but Detective Fox has turned up a more promising lead.”

Fox almost smiled. She pushed back her lank hair, got out her laptop, typed something, then spun the screen around. Bree saw a picture of a blond woman, late twenties or early thirties, earth-mama sort, no makeup but very attractive in a wholesome way. She was vaguely familiar.

“Cathy Dupris,” Fox said. “She disappeared from her home in small-town southern Pennsylvania ten weeks ago.”

Bree remembered, then said, “The neighbors claimed an ambulance came, and men dressed in EMT uniforms rushed into her house and took her out on a stretcher. But there was no record of a 911 call or a private ambulance request.”

“And no ransom note,” Fox said, nodding.

“What’s the connection?” Bree asked.

Fox called up another photograph of another pretty blonde, Delilah Franks, a bank teller in Richmond, Virginia, who’d vanished six months before.

Bree said, “Don’t they think the boyfriend’s responsible?”

“She was having an affair behind his back,” Fox said. “But maybe that’s just a coincidence. Maybe Delilah was taken for some other reason.”

“You think you know that reason?” Bree said.

“Show her the pair first,” Sampson said.

Fox typed a third time and showed Bree a split screen featuring school portraits of two teenage girls, both blond, both very cute.

“That’s seventeen-year-old Ginny Krauss on the left,” Fox said. “Alison Dane, sixteen, is on the right. Both girls disappeared nearly seven months ago from rural Hillsgrove, Pennsylvania.”

Bree frowned. “I haven’t heard anything about this.”

“Because the families and police up there have kept it mostly quiet,” Fox said. “The parents of both girls are devout Christians. They and the sheriff’s investigators believe the girls ran away because of their parents’ extreme views about the evils of lesbianism.”

“The girls are gay?” Bree said.

“And in love, evidently,” Fox said, and she typed again.

She pulled up a photograph of a blue Toyota Camry in a muddy clearing in the woods. The rear and front windows were blown out, and the driver’s door was ajar, revealing shattered glass on the seats.

“The day after the girls failed to come home, sheriff’s investigators found Alison’s car at a popular party and make-out spot in a clearing way out in the state forest,” Fox said, typing some more. “Now here’s the change in pattern.”

Bree sat forward when she saw a handsome little boy.

“Timmy ‘Deuce’ Walker,” Fox said. “Twelve years old. The same day the girls go missing, Deuce vanishes from his neighborhood, which is less than a mile from where the car was found. A month later, a hiker discovers Deuce’s remains in the woods roughly six miles from where the girls’ car was.”

“You think they’re all related?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Fox said, typing.

The screen jumped to a web page that displayed the photos of the missing women against a backdrop of chalk outlines of bodies on a pavement. Across the top of the page there was a platinum wig that looked like Marilyn Monroe’s hairdo the night she sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy.

Below the wig, letters that looked like melting red wax spelled out the site’s name: www.Killingblondechicks4fun.org.co.

I studied father Fiore and saw the priest’s anguish. I took a deep breath, let it out, and said, in sincere sympathy, “That is a doozy of a dilemma, Father.”

“It’s torn me apart,” Fiore said, tears welling. “I want what I can’t have.”

I didn’t know what to say; not at first, anyway.

But then I asked, “Do you think God lays out a path for all of us?”

“I do,” he said without hesitation.

“So you think you were meant to meet Penny and her sons?”

“I believe that’s true. But why? As a test of my faith?”

“I don’t think anyone could ever question your faith, Father. And I don’t think this is a lesser-of-two-evils situation. More like the greater of two goods.”

“I don’t follow,” Fiore said.

I set my notepad aside. “If you stay a priest, you’ll sacrifice personal happiness to continue to help the poor and the members of your congregation. But if you leave, you could find similar, rewarding work, marry Penny, and raise her sons with as much love as possible, which is a noble thing too.”

He thought about that. A sharp knock came at my outer door.

“I should go,” Fiore said, looking at the time.

“They can wait.”

“No,” the priest said, standing. “You’ve given me much to pray about, Dr. Cross. I appreciate it. I really do.”

I shook his hand. “You’ll let me know what you decide, Father?”

“I will,” he said. “And say hello to your grandmother for me.”

I followed him into the hallway and to the door. When I opened it, John Sampson was standing there. The two men nodded to each other, then Father Fiore climbed the stairs and left, and John came in.

“You here for counseling?” I asked Sampson, shutting the door behind him.

“Got that covered,” he said, going into the office and taking my chair. “I’m here off the record — way off the record. Not supposed to be talking to you about cases at all, per order of your wife and Chief Michaels. But my new, uh, temporary partner is driving me up the wall, and I needed your perspective.”

“Honored to give it,” I said, glancing at the scar on Sampson’s forehead, remembering how he’d looked in the moments after he was shot by a follower of the late Gary Soneji. It was a miracle I was even talking to him.