James Patterson - I, Alex Cross

"Just for the sake of argument," he said, "what could you offer me by way of immunity?"

"Nothing right now. That's up to the DA."

"Right, 'cause you people never wheel and deal, is that it?"

"Here's what I can offer you," I said. "You tell us what you know, and then when the Secret Service comes looking for you, and they will, it won't be about obstruction of justice and conspiracy to cover up a string of murders."

I could only imagine how much Yarrow was hating me right now. Without ever taking his eyes off mine, he said, "Tell me something, Detective Sampson. Would you say your partner here is a vindictive man?"

Sampson laid a big hand on the roof of Yarrow's car. "Vindictive? Nah, that's not Alex. I'd say more like realistic . Might be a good word for you to consider about now."

At first, I thought Senator Yarrow was going to walk, or maybe even go postal with one of those TaylorMade irons of his. Instead, he reached into his pocket, and the doors on the Lincoln chirped open.

"Just get in the car."

YARROW'S CAR'S LEATHER interior reeked of coffee and cigarettes. I would have pegged him more as a cigar smoker.

"Let me get a few things out of the way," I said first. "You were a paying client of that club, yes or no?"

"Next question."

"You were aware that escorts connected to the club had died."

"No. That's not true," he said. "I'd just started to suspect something was wrong before all this fuss happened."

"And what did you plan to do with that information? Your suspicions."

Yarrow turned suddenly and pointed a finger in my face. "Don't interrogate me, Cross. I'm a goddamn US senator, not some worthless thug in Southeast DC."

"Exactly my point, Mr. Yarrow. You're a US senator and you're supposed to have a conscience. Now, do you have something for us or not?"

He took a beat, long enough to pull a pack of Marlboro Reds out of the console. I noticed that the flame on his gold Senate lighter shook when he used it.

After a couple long consecutive drags, Yarrow started to talk again, facing the windshield.

"There's a man you should check out. His name's… Remy Williams. If I had to guess, I'd say he's in this thing deep."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"That's a good question, actually. I believe that he used to be in the Secret Service."

Those last two words went off in my mind like a Roman candle. "Secret Service? What division?" I asked him.

"Protective Services."

"At the White House?"

Yarrow smoked almost continuously while the knuckles on his free hand went white gripping the wheel. "Yeah," he said with an exhale. "At the White House."

Sampson was staring over the headrest at me, and I'm sure we were wondering the same thing. Was this the White House connection we'd already heard about? Or the kind of coincidence that gums up investigations all the time? Senator Yarrow went on without any more prodding from me. "Last I heard, Remy was living in some godawful shack, way out in Louisa County, like one of those survivalists with the bottled water and the shotguns and all. Into the Wild kind of lifestyle."

"What's your association with him?" Sampson asked.

"He was the one who told me about the club in the first place."

"That doesn't really answer the question," I said. "Look, Senator, I'm not recording any of this. Not yet anyway."

Yarrow opened the window and twisted the last of his cigarette onto the pavement, then put the butt in his ashtray. I could sense him starting to circle the wagons again.

"He's my ex-wife's brother, okay? I haven't seen the bastard in over a year, and it doesn't matter. The whole point is, you take a drive out there, you might just have something more to do with your Saturday than harassing public servants."

IT WAS JUST over two hours' drive to the western edge of Louisa County, which was also about an hour south of Nicholson's club. Those two locations triangulated easily with the spot on I-95 where Johnny Tucci from Philly had been pulled over carrying my niece's remains in the trunk. Maybe we were actually getting somewhere with all this.

Yarrow's vague sense of the cabin sent us down a handful of wrong turns before we eventually found the right gravel road off Route 33. Several miles back through the woods, it came to a makeshift dead end, with a row of rocks blocking the way. They'd obviously been moved there by hand, and it didn't take us long to clear them.

Beyond that were two dirt tracks retreating into the brush, and another half hour of slow going before we saw anything man-made. Remy Williams's nearest neighbor seemed to be Lake Anna State Park to the east.

The driveway, such as it was, came up on the back of a rudimentary single-story building surrounded closely by fir trees. It looked unfinished from here, with a galvanized standing-seam roof but just warped and silvered plywood over Tyvek on the walls.

"Very nice," Sampson muttered, or maybe growled. "Unabomber east, anyone?"

It was bigger than Ted Kaczynski's famous shack, which I'd been to once before, but the general feeling was about the same: madman in residence.

Around front, the two small windows under a covered porch looked dark. There was a dirt yard big enough for several cars, but no sign of any vehicle. The place seemed completely deserted, and part of me hoped it was.

It wasn't until I'd driven around nearly full circle that I saw the wood chipper at the side of the house.

"Sampson?"

"I see it."

It was an old industrial unit, with two tires and a rusted trailer hitch balanced on a cinder block. Most of the paint was long gone, just a few impressionistic flecks of John Deere green and yellow on the frame. Next to it, a blue tarp was folded on the ground, weighted down with a two-gallon gas can.

I kept the car running as we got out, and I pulled my Glock.

"Anyone home?" I called halfheartedly.

There was no answer. All I heard was the wind, a few birds chattering in the trees, and my idling car.

Sampson and I took the porch from opposite sides to check the windows first, then the door.

When I looked in, it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. Then I saw a man, sitting in a chair against the far wall. It was too dark for details; I couldn't even tell if he was alive or dead. Not for certain. Not yet.

"Fuck," Sampson muttered,

Exactly right. My thoughts exactly.

THE SHACK'S FRONT door had no lock, just a hammered-iron latch, and as soon as I swung it open, the smell hit us.

It was that combination of sweet and putrid that's so distinct and so hard to take. Like fruit and meat rotting for days in the same barrel.

The place was mostly empty, with just a few pieces of furniture – a metal cot, a woodstove, a long farm table.

The only chair in the place was occupied, and Remy Williams had apparently died in it.

He looked graphic-novel-style slack jawed where part of his face had been blown off. A Remington shotgun was still half-clutched in his left hand, barrel pointed down at the soft pine floor.

The other hand hung loose at his side, and it looked like there was some kind of writing on his forearm. Writing? Was that it?

"What the hell?" Sampson covered his mouth and nose with his arm and bent down for a closer look. "Oh no, he didn't."

When I put my Maglite on it, I saw that the arm had been carved, not written on.

A six-inch hunting knife was on the ground at Williams's feet, streaked the same reddish brown as his skin. The letters were still easy enough to read:

SORRY

A LOT HAPPENED really fast after we found Williams. Within a few hours, we had new versions of all the old players on the scene – Virginia State Police out of Richmond and the FBI team from Charlottesville. There was no one I knew here, which was maybe a good thing and maybe not. I'd find out which pretty soon.