James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

“Right,” I said, still not quite understanding the twisted logic he had going. The courtroom. The jury. The Grinch. Then it dawned on me that trying to guide him to some safe resolution of the situation was perhaps not the best way forward, at least not yet. Better to play along with his version of reality, and perhaps use it.

“Mr. Fowler. Seeing how you’ve named me jury foreman, I was wondering if I could come in the house and observe the proceedings,” I said matter-of-factly, going for a kind of could-I-borrow-your-lawnmower style.

Nu and McGoey were looking at me as if I were insane.

There was a long pause before Fowler said, “Why would you want to do that, Cross?”

“Don’t jury members learn as much from a witness’s facial expressions and body language as they do from his testimony?”

Another pause. That pause stretched into thirty seconds. The thirty seconds stretched into the longest minute of my life.

My fear was that Fowler would explode again and turn his guns on the hostages. I could see McGoey shaking his head as if he knew I’d made the wrong move.

Finally Fowler said, “I don’t think so, Cross. Nice try, but I don’t think so.”

Persistence. Persistence.

“It would give me the opportunity to hear your side of the story,” I said. “Face-to-face. Man-to-man.”

Another few seconds.

Then Fowler said, very quietly, very calmly, “I will frisk you when you come in, Cross. If I find you’re carrying a gun, I’m going to kill you. And then I’ll kill a hostage or two. Starting with the good Dr. Quack N. Cash.”

“I don’t need a gun to have a conversation,” I said, and I handed my Glock to McGoey.

Fifteen seconds passed. Then Fowler’s voice came again.

“Jeremy, go open the front door for Mr. Cross. I’m going to be right behind you, buddy. So don’t even think about running out of the house. Understand? Okay, get going.” I guess the boy didn’t go fast enough, because I heard this father, on Christmas Eve, shout at his eleven-year-old son, “Move, Jeremy, or I will kick your fucking obscenely obese ass until you do!”

I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight when I got my jacket and hat and headed toward the Nicholsons’ house.

I walked through the now empty shelter and out into the falling snow thinking that I should have been with my family right then, at St. Anthony’s, singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” to start midnight mass.

While I’d been on the phone with Fowler, Nu and McGoey had been putting the storm-and-protect operation into full effect. As I crossed Thirtieth Street I saw that SWAT officers had started circling the house again. Only this time their weapons were cocked and cradled. They were ready for trouble, for anything that might happen in the next few minutes. Like me getting killed.

The second and third floors of the surrounding houses were manned with sharpshooters. Inside those four houses, lights flickered on and off slowly.

Signals were being exchanged. I couldn’t begin to work out what they meant. I had other problems to figure out, and figure out fast. In a few seconds I was directly facing the house. My eyes darted to the right and I saw police officers quickly herding reporters back and away. The cops didn’t have to ask them twice, which made me wonder if I was making the right move here.

The snow soaked the hem of my pants as I walked the short path to the house. The big front door, flanked by frosted-glass windows, was ajar. From inside the house came the sound of Diana Nicholson weeping. Suddenly, lights were turned off-front rooms, hallway, and all outdoor lights. Total blackout.

I swallowed, stepped up onto the brick entry. The front door swung all the way open. A dark center hall loomed straight ahead. Then I saw the figure of a fat little boy run through the darkness, sobbing, and disappear toward the right.

The night was so quiet that for one crazy moment I thought I could hear snowflakes landing. I stepped into the front hallway. The door shut, and I immediately heard Fowler behind me, breathing heavily.

“Merry Christmas, Cross,” he said, and turned on the lights, revealing velvet-flocked wallpaper, really expensive stuff, on both sides of the hall.

“Same to you, Mr. Fowler,” I said.

“Hands on the wall,” he said. “You know the drill.” He cackled. “Always have wanted to say that to a cop.”

I said nothing, just put my hands on the wall and spread my legs.

“Hope I didn’t make a mistake letting you into the house,” Fowler said.

“Well, that makes two of us,” I said before I felt the cold steel of a pistol muzzle pressed against the back of my neck.

Fowler did a damn near professional job of frisking me. Probably because he himself had been the subject of a body search at least thirty times in the last few years. The gun came away from the back of my neck.

“Fingers laced behind your head,” he said. “Then walk, and turn right at the end of the hall. If I see your fingers slip or get any sense you’re trying to turn on me, I’ll shoot first, Cross, and ask no questions later.”

I took the man at his word, put my hands where he wanted them, and walked to where his son had disappeared.

“There’s an overstuffed chair on your immediate right,” Fowler said. “Sit in it, hands on your lap.”

It looked like someone had fought a small war in the living room. A large Christmas tree was on its side, branches crushed or snapped by buckshot, its ornaments shattered, its lights out. The debris from the earlier shoot-up of the gifts was everywhere, the remnants almost unrecognizable: pieces of metal from the iPad, bits of gold from whatever Nicholson had had wrapped in the Tiffany box.

To my dismay, the window curtains had all been drawn. No one from the outside could see me, Fowler, or the three children and three adults lying on their bellies on the floor beside the ruins of the Christmas tree. I could feel the pleading hope and fear in their eyes, eyes that were red from fatigue and tension and crying.

An extremely attractive, fit, country-club kind of woman, Diana Nicholson wore only jeans and a black jogging bra. I had no idea what that was about. Her new husband was a big handsome guy who looked like he’d just walked off a sailboat. Everything about him screamed wealth and privilege except for his green-and-red Christmas sweater, which was slit down the back, nearly in two pieces.

I had no idea what that was about either.

The congressman’s wife, Melissa Brandywine, was lying next to Nicholson and his wife. A society-page regular, she had copper-colored hair that looked as if it’d just been styled at the salon. Her makeup was flawless too. But she was shaking uncontrollably, as if she were freezing. Why had Fowler involved her? Was it on purpose? Or had she just blundered into the crisis?

The children were an even sorrier sight than the grown-ups, maybe because they were kids in their pajamas and it was Christmas and their innocence had been destroyed. Young Trey was sucking his thumb. Chloe hugged a throw pillow that featured holly, red ribbons, and bells. Her twin, Jeremy, stared at nothing. I saw a dark stain on his pajama pants and realized the poor kid had been so frightened and humiliated by his father that he’d peed his pants.

So I already hated Fowler when he came around in front of me and showed me just how far he’d fallen since his glory days on K Street and in the courtroom. In place of the Italian suits he’d favored, he wore filthy jeans and a torn army-surplus jacket. He’d lost fifty or sixty pounds since those days. His eyes were sunken in his head. Several of his teeth were missing. There were scabs on his face that had been picked at and oozed. He carried a Glock 19 and a Remington shotgun that had been crudely sawed off.