James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

Fowler stared at me for an uncomfortable few seconds, then he smiled, really showing off the rotting gaps where his teeth had been.

“You have time for a joke, Cross?” he asked. “Lighten things up a bit? Holiday spirit and all that?”

I was beginning to feel it, the turmoil Fowler seemed to secrete from every pore. I could smell it too. He reeked of that weird sour body odor that follows crazy people who live on the street too long.

“So there’s this ignorant, oblivious man,” Fowler began. “He’s sitting on the veranda of his rented bungalow in St. John’s with his trophy wife. Beautiful sunset. Glowing tans. They’re drinking from a marvelous bottle of burgundy grand cru from the Cote d’Or. His wife says, ‘I love you.’ The man looks over and says, ‘Is that you talking, or is it the wine?’ She looks at him as if he’s a fool and says, ‘Actually, dear, I was talking to the wine.’”

Fowler looked around the room. Nobody was laughing. If anything, they were all even more terrified than before he’d told his joke.

“You remember that, don’t you, Diana?” Fowler asked.

“No, Henry, I don’t,” she said.

He smiled in a threatening way. “Of course you do. And if you don’t, you should. It’s so emblematic of who we were that-”

“Stop it!” Diana screamed. “You’ve got to stop this, Henry. At least let the children go.”

“Don’t be a party pooper, Diana. Show the spirit of the season,” Fowler said, waving her off before looking at me. “My dear ex-wife has never dealt well with reality or the truth. As you shall hear, Cross.”

I couldn’t let this go any further. “She’s right, Henry. Why don’t you let your children go? It’s Christmas, a hard time. But don’t take it out on them.”

He leveled the pistol at me. “Why shouldn’t I take it out on them, Cross? They’re the ones who drove me here. They and their uncaring, greedy, materialistic mother, the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Mister.” I heard a child’s voice. It was Trey. He was looking at me. “Mister, can you ask Daddy to go back to his house so Santa can come?”

Before I could deliver any words of comfort, Fowler walked over and jammed his black-booted foot on the boy’s ear.

“Shut up, Trey, or we’ll be playing Hide the Skippy Super Chunk. Besides, I told you. I’m going no place.”

Fowler looked at me, scratched at his face, said, “Kids. They never listen.”

I’d begun to compile a catalog of Fowler’s tics and twitches-the face scratching, the hand rubbing, the massaging of the back of his neck, the quick bite to the side of his ring finger on his left hand. If he sat next to you on the Metro, you’d stand up quickly, move away, and get off at the next station.

He picked up the phone on the end table next to my chair and hit Redial.

I heard a voice say, “This is Ramiro.”

Fowler laid the receiver on the table.

“It’s Cross,” I said. “I’m all right.”

“Now that the jury has been seated, are we ready to hear opening statements?” Fowler said, looking at me.

I hesitated, then nodded.

“Excellent,” Fowler said, rubbing the back of his gun hand. “Let’s begin with an introduction. Diana, sweetheart? Kids? Barry? This is the famous Alex Cross. He’ll be the jury foreman for these proceedings.”

His words had lost their frantic quality and now flowed with the easy delivery of a top-flight defense attorney. Despite all the drugs and self-abuse, this madman had polish and brains, which made him even scarier to me.

“Court is now in session!” Fowler intoned in a deep voice, as if he were a bailiff. “The Honorable Grinch Who Stole Christmas presiding!”

Fowler began marching around the room singing at the top of his lungs, “‘He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch!’” Then he stopped next to his ex-wife and put his boot on her back.

“First up in the box,” Fowler said, looking at me. “The evil mastermind behind my destruction: Diana Alstead Fowler Nicholson.”

“Henry,” she said and began to whimper.

“Hush now, Diana,” Fowler soothed. “I’ll talk for you. If I get anything wrong, you just speak up.” He looked up. “The fair Diana Alstead was originally from Charleston, South Carolina. Daughter of parents born into multigenerational wealth, she grew up in a life of ease, the expectation of immediate material gratification simply a part of her DNA. She attended the finest schools, Choate Rosemary Hall and then Georgetown. There she meets this kid on full scholarship. Henry Fowler is beneath her station in life, but he shows promise. He’s majoring in chemistry and English and wins entry to the Georgetown law school. She sees he’s a hardworking guy and latches onto him like a leech in a swamp.”

Diana was looking at me with this pitiful expression as she cried, “That’s not true, Henry. I loved you.”

“Oh, boo-hoo, Cindy Lou Who. We’re telling the truth here, not repeating old fantasies,” Fowler said. “I had almost twenty years to study this particular specimen, Mr. Foreman. Here is my expert testimony: Diana is that woman at the Sotheby’s jade auction bidding far too much for a ten-thousand-dollar green statue of a water buffalo, or a yak, I’m not sure which. She’s that woman who sets her authentic Regency dining table with two-thousand-dollar James Robinson place settings. She’s the type they fawn over at Bloomies and Bergdorf Goodman, the woman whose skinny little ass they kiss at Prada, the woman they serve tea to in private rooms at Tiffany in Washington and New York. Yes, my ex is quite the gal.

“Hey, she shared her genes with me to create this winning trio,” he said, gesturing to his children.

“You’ve already met Trey, who’s never met an allergy or affliction he didn’t adore. Sick all the time, right from birth, pneumonia then. You name a childhood disease, and my boy’s had it. Meets with top medical specialists two, three times a week. Best that money can buy, isn’t that right, son?”

Trey began to snivel. “I can’t help it, Dad.”

“Of course you can’t,” Fowler said soothingly. “Most of your mother’s defective DNA strands just happened to spool out to you. And those that didn’t found their way into your older brother and sister.”

He smiled at me. “I’m a lucky, lucky man, Cross.”

“That so?” I asked, hoping he’d continue to vent, expend his emotional energy, and then see the hopelessness of his situation before the meth could turn him full rhino.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Fowler asked acidly. “Doesn’t luck just seem to shimmer all around me?”

“It used to,” I said.

He looked off into the distance, said, “Yes, it did, before my surroundings and close companions conspired to warp me.”

Here was paranoia, crystal meth’s staple emotion. I could already hear the angry persecution story coming.

Fowler didn’t let me down.

Fowler crossed to his son Jeremy and used his boot to push the boy over onto his back, where he cringed like a dog.

“Here he is,” Fowler said. “My scion. The apple of my eye. Make that the apple strudel, cake, pie, and Pop-Tart of my eye. Not to mention my favorite bed wetter. By the looks of it, he’s regressing, pissing his pants now, instead of his mattress.”

The boy was humiliated. Jeremy began to make hiccupping noises that broke into chokes and sobs.

“Stop, Daddy!” Chloe screamed. “You’re making it worse. You’re ruining everything! You always ruin everything!”

“Ahh, Chloe,” Fowler said. “My Little Miss Perfect.” He looked to me. “Chloe is exceptionally smart, a trait that no doubt came from my end of things. But that intelligence crossed with my ex-wife’s narcissism produced a young lady who tries to control the world as if it orbited around her head.”