James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

“And?”

“It showed an anomaly among teenagers who’d had the vaccine,” he replied. “They seemed to have suffered mild but permanent brain damage because of it.”

Diana gasped. “And you didn’t tell anybody?”

“And lose?” he screamed. “I couldn’t lose. You wouldn’t let me lose. The kids wouldn’t let me. The firm wouldn’t let me. And then you start screwing Barry, and the whole thing went to-”

He flipped off the shotgun’s safety. “Happy now, Cross? Ready to see the ultimate repercussions of my shredding that private investigator’s report?”

“What do you think killing everyone in this room is going to do for you, Henry?” I asked, glancing at a clock on the mantelpiece and seeing that it was a quarter past seven. “Erase what you’ve done?”

“Among other things.”

I gestured at the phone on the floor. “They’ve been listening.”

He swung the shotgun at me now. “I really don’t like you, Cross.”

“You can make it right, Henry,” I said.

“I’m going to hell for what I’ve done. I’ve made my peace with that.”

“My grandmother’s in her nineties, and she likes to say that every Christmas is a time for rebirth,” I said. “I can tell you how you can do that, if you’ll let me.”

His meth eyes hopped all over me. “You trying to sell me some twelve-step program?”

I made a show of looking at Diana and Dr. Nicholson and the children and then said, “I think you’ll want to hear this alone, Henry. You can decide later whether to tell them. We’ll go somewhere. The kitchen. Have a cup of coffee. I’ll tell you what I think.”

“How stupid do you think I am?” Fowler asked. “Yeah, we’ll go talk, and then these bastards’ll take off.”

“Don’t be crazy, Henry,” Diana said. “I would never leave Barry.”

Sadness mixed with loss flickered across his face. Fowler looked at me, reached into his pocket, fed himself something again.

“You taking a visit to the OxyContinent?” I asked.

“So what if I am?”

“Let’s go talk,” I said, thinking that it was good he was taking a narcotic.

Fowler blinked, then gestured toward the center hall. “My den.”

I didn’t want Fowler in the den, which was on the opposite side of the house. I wanted him in the kitchen, which was at the rear and overlooked a walled-in garden.

“I could really use some coffee.”

The narcotic was hitting Fowler, taking the edge off his high anxiety.

“Sure. We aim to please,” he said, then he cracked up and poked me forward with the gun.

We walked to the living room entranceway. Fowler stopped there and spun around. He held his shotgun in the air. For a moment I thought he might fire at the ceiling again. Instead, he spoke to his family with quiet contempt. “I swear to God, if any one of you moves, I will paint the walls with your blood.”

“Which way?” I asked, knowing full well where the kitchen was from blueprints Nu had shown me but wanting to seem ignorant and let Fowler think he remained in control.

“Right,” he said.

I pivoted and walked down the narrow hallway lined with framed family pictures, my mind whirling with all the ways this move could go bad. What if Diana defied Fowler and tried to get her kids out? What if she tried to run?

We passed the formal dining room on our right. The table was decorated and set like Martha Stewart was coming over for Christmas dinner. I could see the kitchen straight ahead, a light, airy space with lots of windows that looked out at the now leafless ancient oak trees that graced the backyard.

I stepped into the kitchen. Fowler stopped short in the hallway and said, “I took that photo. I used to call it the most beautiful picture in the world.”

I wanted Fowler to come into the kitchen, but he was transfixed and I had to see why. The moment I saw the picture I sensed another dimension to Fowler’s madness. One picture, it seemed, was worth a thousand rants.

In the photo, a younger version of Fowler’s family sat on the deck of a house that looked to be somewhere on the New England shore, or maybe in Jersey. Five years ago, it must have been, because Trey was a baby in Diana’s lap.

Fowler said, “See how perfect they all look, Cross, how…how…blond they are. It’s like a catalog…Brooks Brothers…Ralph Lauren. You know where that is? That’s Martha’s Vineyard, Oak Bluffs. See that house? That house cost me sixty thousand dollars to rent for the month of August. Some people don’t make sixty grand in a year. And that’s what I was spending on a damn rental in Martha’s Vineyard. Those were the days, man. Those were the days, my friend.”

I focused on the photograph that Henry Fowler had taken. His family sat smiling naturally in front of a great big weather-beaten house. All three children, even the baby, were wearing charcoal-blue sweaters. And Fowler was right. They looked good. They were tan. Diana’s hair was shorter. The kids and the light and Diana really did look beautiful. And everyone looked happy, facing the man who was taking the picture. Henry Fowler. I glanced at him and saw that the pain medicine was swirling in him, putting him in another place and time. I thought about trying to knock the gun from his hands, but he kept it out of reach. I’d pushed him, gotten him to reveal his demons, but I remained unsure if I could get him to give up. I glanced at the clock above the stove. Seven twenty-five a.m. Dr. Nicholson had been shot hours ago. He had to get medical attention. Which meant I needed Fowler in the kitchen. Now.

“God, what a summer,” Fowler said in a whisper, still staring at the photo. “We loved it there, all of us. We had an ocean view and a sailboat. Two college kids crewed for us. Every day we ate lobster and fries and clams and blueberry pie. I burned money. Burned money. Thought it would never end.”

Tears dripped down his cheeks. “I was the luckiest guy in the whole world, with the best family, the perfect family.” His voice turned bitter again and he gripped his gun as if he meant to club someone with it.

I took a step into the kitchen, hoping he’d follow. But Fowler just stood there, looking at the picture. “And then I blew it, Cross. I blew the perfect life.”

A small red dot appeared on his left hip, wavered, then began to travel up his body, toward his chest. The sniper Nu and I had ordered into one of the oak trees in the backyard had finally found Fowler through the window.

We’d decided before I reentered the house on Thirtieth street that we couldn’t afford to let Dr. Nicholson stay there much past seven thirty. Not if we wanted to have a chance at saving him. If I didn’t get Fowler to surrender, it was my job to lure him into the kitchen, where there were windows.

Seeing the red dot on his body, I knew Fowler was dead, and his ex-wife, his children, and Dr. Nicholson had a chance to live.

Fowler saw the dot on his chest and knew it too.

Call it something in my DNA, I don’t know. But I couldn’t watch this man get shot down on Christmas morning.

I launched myself at him, wrapped him up, gun and all, and drove him hard to the floor.

A rifle shot. Glass broke in a kitchen window. The picture of Fowler’s family shattered as a bullet passed through it and into the wall.

I threw a forearm against the back of Fowler’s head, bouncing his face off the hardwood floor, and then ripped the gun from his hands. I got up fast and put my boot on his neck, the muzzle of my gun against his temple. “Henry Fowler, you’re under arrest.”