James PATTERSON - Cross Country

His confidence was prodigious; it gave him a strange adult quality – while his feet dangled about six inches off the floor in my office.

“You ever think something like that might happen to you?” I asked him.

He snorted. “Every day. It’s no thing.”

“That’s okay with you, though? Makes sense? That’s how the world should be?”

“That’s how the world be. Bam.”

“So then” – I looked around the room and back at him – “why bother to sit here and talk to me about it? That doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“’Cause that bitch Lorraine fuckin’ make me come.”

I nodded. “Just because you come here doesn’t mean you have to say anything. But you do. You talk to me. Why do you think that is?”

He made a thing of getting all impatient. “You the witch doctor, you tell me.”

“You envy kids like the one who died? Working for a living? Running around with guns?”

He squinted at me, pulled the Lebron James Cleveland Cavaliers sweatband around his head a little lower. “Whad-dya mean?”

“You know, are you jealous of them?”

He smiled again, but only to himself. Then he slouched down on the couch and reached out with a toe to casually tip over the orange juice I’d given him. It spilled across the table between us. “Yo, they, got any Skittles in the machine downstairs? Go get me some Skittles!”

I did no such thing. After the session, I escorted Pop-Pop out to his social worker and told the boy I’d see him on Friday. Then I went home and picked up Nana.

We went to the Cox family funeral together. We held each other and cried with everybody else.

I didn’t care if people saw me cry anymore. I just didn’t care. If they were friends, they would understand. If they weren’t, what did it matter what they thought of me?

That philosophy, to give credit where credit is due, was a Nana-ism.

“THIS IS DETECTIVE Alex Cross. I’m with the Metro police here in Washington. I need to speak with Ambassador Njoku or his representative. It’s important, very important.”

Late that night, I was in the car with Bree, speeding to the Bubble Lounge in the heart of Georgetown. Four people were dead at the club. Two were Nigerian citizens, and one was the son of the ambassador. Advance reports had twenty-one-year-old Daniel Njoku as the gunman’s primary target. That meant one thing to me: The Njoku family didn’t need just notification; they might also need protection – if it wasn’t already too late. So far, all of the gang’s murders had involved families.

A night deputy from the Nigerian embassy was on the line with me. I kept one ear covered, trying to hear what she was saying above the wail of Bree’s siren.

“Sir, I am very sorry, but I will need more information than simply–”

“This is an emergency call. Their son Daniel was just murdered at a nightclub. We have reason to believe the ambassador and his wife may be in danger too. We’re sending police cruisers right now.”

“But, sir… the Njokus are not in the country. They are at a symposium, in Abuja.”

“Find them, then. Tell them to get somewhere secure. Please, do whatever you can do. Then call me back at this number. I’m Detective Cross.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir. I will call you back, Detective Cross.”

I hung up, feeling a little helpless. How was I supposed to stop a murder that could happen six thousand miles away?

“I WANT TO talk to the witnesses first. As many of them as I can. No one goes home.”

The Bubble Lounge had been a lively place, but by the time I got there it was a wrecking yard. There were overturned tables, smashed and scattered chairs, broken shards of glass everywhere. Body teams were working both floors; we had six GSW, one broken neck, and one suffocation. EMTs were still busily triaging the wounded. Young people were moaning and crying, and everyone I passed looked dazed, even the police officers.

Members of Daniel Njoku’s party were being held in the coat-check area. I found them sitting close together on sofas, huddled. One girl, wearing a tiny black dress with a man’s blazer over her shoulders, had blood smeared all over her neck and cheek.

I knelt down next to her. “I’m Detective Cross. I’m here to help. What’s your name?”

“Karavi,” she said. She had beautiful long hair and scared dark eyes, and I thought she might be East Indian. She looked to be early twenties at most.

“Karavi, did you get a look at the people who did this?”

“Just one man,” she whimpered to me. “He was huge.”

“Excuse me, sir,” one of the others interrupted, “but we need to speak with our lawyers before we say anything to police.” The speaker had an air of privilege about him; these twenty-somethings spent their Saturday nights in private boxes at a private club.

“You can talk to me,” I said to the girl.

“Nonetheless, sir–”

“Or,” I interrupted, “we can do this later tonight and tomorrow. After I’m done here with all of the others.”

“It’s all right, Freddy,” Karavi said, waving off the boy. “I want to help if I possibly can. Daniel is dead.”

We sat off to the side for a little privacy, and Karavi told me she was a grad student in cell biology at Georgetown. Both her parents were in the diplomatic corps, which was how she knew Daniel Njoku. They had been best friends but were never a couple. Daniel’s girlfriend, Bari Nederman, had been shot tonight too, but she was alive.

Karavi described the gunman as a lone black man, maybe six six, at least that tall, wearing dark street clothes. “And he just looked… strong,” she said. “He had huge, muscular arms. Everything about him was powerful.”

“How about his voice? Did he speak to anyone? Before he started to shoot?”

Karavi nodded. “I heard him say something like ‘I have an invitation’ just before he…” She trailed off, not able to finish the thought.

“What kind of accent?” I asked. “American? Something else?” I was pushing because I knew I’d never get a better, truer account than right now.

“He wasn’t from here,” she said. “Not American, I’m certain of that.”

“Nigerian? Did he sound like Daniel?”

“Maybe.” Her jaw clenched as she fought back the tears. “It’s hard to think straight. I’m sorry.”

“Anyone else here Nigerian?” I turned back toward the others. “I need someone with a Nigerian accent.”

One of the boys spoke up. “I’m sorry, Officer, but there’s no such thing,” He had a Jimi Hendrix’ fro and an open tuxedo shirt showing off his skinny chest and jewelry. “I speak Yoruban, for instance. There is also Igbo, and Hausa. And dozens of other languages. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for you to suggest–”

“That’s it!” Karavi put a shaking hand on my arm. I noticed a few of the others in the party were nodding too.

“That’s how the killer sounded. Just like him.”

I WAS STILL at the nightclub murder scene around two in the morning, conducting interviews that had begun to blend one into another, when the cell in my trousers pocket rang. I figured it might be the Nigerian embassy and answered it right away.

“Alex Cross, Metro,” I said.

“Dad?”

Damon’s voice on my cell shocked me a little. At two in the morning, why wouldn’t it? What was up now?

“Day, what’s going on?” I asked my fourteen-year-old, who was away at school in Massachusetts.

“Uh… nothing really,” Damon said. I think my tone had taken him off guard. “I mean – I’ve been trying to call you all day. I’ve got some good news.”