James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

“I get it, Henry,” I said. “Your kids didn’t turn out the way you planned. Welcome to the club. It’s what makes them human. And the disappointment? That’s your issue. Deal with it.”

He looked surprised, then his eyes narrowed and he snarled, “Who the fuck do you think you are, Dr. Phil?”

“Isn’t that why you asked me in here?” I said.

“I asked you in to serve as jury foreman,” he snapped. “I’m running the show here, or haven’t you noticed?”

“Look,” I said. “It’s Christmas Eve. You obviously aren’t happy with your life or your family. But I am happy. I have a family I love. I’d like to get back to them, so I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what it was that broke you.”

Fowler didn’t know what to make of that. He clearly hadn’t expected it.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“You were at the top of the game on K Street, making millions, making headlines, and then it all unravels,” I said. “I get the overspending, the consumerist wife, the messed-up kids. But lots of guys in this town have those problems, and they aren’t holding their families hostage on Christmas Eve. So what was it? What caused you to unravel?”

For a second there I wondered if I’d gone too far, been too direct, too confrontational. But then Fowler smiled icily at me.

“You want to know the straw that broke the camel’s back, Cross?” he asked, reaching into his jacket and coming up with a glass vial.

“Wouldn’t hurt to understand your side of things,” I said.

Fowler squatted by the glass coffee table, tapped white powder onto it, and started laying the powder out in lines with a hotel-room key card. “I suppose that’s a reasonable request, but I’m going to have to get my head on straight to tell that story.”

He rolled up a dollar bill and snorted two of the five lines. Shuddering, he closed his eyes, then he shivered and said, “Now, that’s more like it.”

“How long have you been up, Henry?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m seeing things clear and for what they are, Cross. So I’ll tell you what you want to know about me going off the deep end.”

“Okay,” I said, noticing the slight tremor that was visible in his fingers. If he had been shooting and snorting meth for more than, say, thirty-six hours, the rhino could be paying us a visit at any moment.

“So it’s Christmas not that many years ago,” Fowler began. “And we’re home. We’re happy. We hold a party the afternoon of Christmas Eve. It’s been a big-money year for me, and Diana’s spared no expense. Catered. The whole nine yards. And I don’t know why, but it was one of those years when people stayed in DC for the holidays. Nearly everyone we knew came. Even Barry, an old friend from Georgetown, who arrived dressed as Santa Claus. Even dear Melissa and her husband, Congressman Brandywine, made an appearance. Anyway, about an hour into the festivities, I’m working the room. A potential client asks for a business card and I go to my office. Door’s locked. I knock. No one answers.”

Fowler paused, snorted two more lines, then got to his feet and shrugged. “Locked door. It happens. I’ll get it open later. But anyway, long story short, I go back to the party, apologize to my potential client, and promise to contact him after the New Year. I get a drink. I’m looking around. The party’s right at its peak. I get this weird feeling. So I go out the back door and around to the bulkhead below my office window. I look in and what do I see?”

Fowler walked over to stand by Dr. Nicholson. Then he booted the man hard in the ribs. Over the doctor’s groaning, Fowler said, “This one’s sitting in my Georgetown law school rocking chair. Dear Diana, my lovely wife of many years, is kneeling before him, and-” He broke into song. “‘I saw Mommy sucking Santa Claus, underneath the mistletoe so bright!’”

Diana had turned beet red and would not meet my eyes. Dr. Nicholson was still crunched up after the kick to his ribs.

“Says a lot, that you loved her so much that seeing her with another man would crush you like that,” I told Fowler. “But is that true?”

Fowler looked at me with instant hatred. “You calling me a liar, Cross?” He pointed to his wife. “I didn’t confront her. I wanted to know how deep this went, whether he was a fling or something more. Turns out she was fucking the eyeglass maker like he was the featured artist in the stud-of-the-month club. Can you believe it? She was pissing away our marriage with a guy who makes a living by saying, ‘Now, can you read the next line? What about the line under that?’”

He glared at his ex-wife and Barry, and I feared he’d start kicking them again, or worse. Fowler shook the pistol at Dr. Nicholson and said to me, “They had a standing reservation for a room at the Four Seasons, where they’d screw their brains out and stick me with the tab.” Fowler’s face had turned bright red. He paced the room, nervously scratching his arms and chest.

“Are you beginning to understand what happened here, Cross? What drove me to debase myself? Do you see who the victim is now?”

I said nothing. I just looked at Fowler and tried to seem objective. There would be no stopping his rant. He pointed to Melissa Brandywine.

“Now, you may be wondering who this lucky holiday guest is. Well, show Mr. Cross your pretty face, Missy. I said show him your face.” He grabbed her by the chin and squeezed hard.

She cried out. “Henry, please.”

“C’mon, Missy, show the big phony smile that helped get your husband elected to Congress. While you’re at it, show him your net-worth statement, and Cross will understand why your husband really got elected to Congress.”

The congressman’s wife turned her head toward me. She looked sad, broken, and embarrassed, and I had to wonder why.

“Dear Mrs. Brandywine,” Fowler said. “The publicity expert. The woman behind all those White House luncheons and all those embassy receptions. You know who else she is?”

“Henry, please don’t,” Melissa Brandywine said.

“Nonsense,” Fowler said. “It’s time to lay all our cards on the table. Not even dear Diana knows this, but after discovering that my wife was a whore, I got drunk and decided I deserved a whore. And who better to turn to than the wife of a man whore? She’d made overtures before. I just decided to take her up on it. Little secret? She likes a finger up the-”

Diana screamed, “The children! Henry! Your children, for God’s sake! Why can’t you stop this? Why can’t you move on? Why do you have to destroy everything around you? Just let it go.”

To my astonishment, Fowler did not explode. He just stood there looking like he’d come to in the middle of a sleepwalk. Everything was suddenly quiet in the room, so eerily quiet that I thought I could hear snowflakes against the windows behind the thick curtains.

Fowler walked quickly to a sofa that faced the hostages. He sat down, waved the gun slowly at them, and said as if in a trance, “I want to let it go, Diana, but it won’t let me go.”

He looked at me. “Ever feel like that, Cross? That something just won’t let you go?”

I flashed on the dark shadow fleeing the scene as my first wife lay dying in my arms. “Sure.”

“Then you’ll understand that it’s time for you to go,” he said. “The trial’s over. All have been found guilty, and I’ve got a penalty phase to prepare for.”

“Don’t do this,” I said. “No matter what trust may have been broken. No matter what was done to you, Fowler, this is not the way to deal with it.”