Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross Kill

“What the hell just happened?” Bree demanded.

“I think she was doing a live sex show on the internet,” I said.

“No.”

“I swear,” I said.

The music shut off and a woman shouted, “Goddamnit, whoever you are, I’m calling the sheriff. They are going to hunt you down!”

“We are the police, Miss Pinder,” Bree yelled back.

“What the hell are you doing in my house, then?” she screamed. “I’ve got rights, and you had no right to come into my house or place of business!”

“You’re correct,” I said. “But we knocked and called out, and we felt we were doing a safety check on you.”

“What I do here is perfectly legal,” she said. “So please leave.”

“We aren’t here about your, uh, business,” Bree said.

“Who are you, then? What do you want?”

“My name is Alex Cross. I’m a detective with the DC Metro Police, and I’m here concerning Gary’s Girl.”

There was a long silence, and then the music cranked up. But over it I heard the sound of a door slamming loudly.

“She’s running,” Bree said, spun around, and took off.

I can hold my own in the weight room, but I am no match for Bree in a footrace. She exploded back through the house and barreled out the front door.

Delilah Pinder, who was now dressed in a blue warm-up suit and running shoes, had already sprinted around the end of the house and was charging across the front lawn, heading for the road. I came out the front door in time to see Bree try to tackle the big woman.

Delilah saw her coming and stuck out her hand like a seasoned running back, hitting Bree in the chest. Bree stumbled. The internet sex star raced out onto the road and headed toward the highway.

I cut diagonally through the yard, trying to close in on her from the side. But when I broke through the trees and jumped the stone wall onto the road, Bree was right back behind Pinder.

She jumped on the much bigger woman’s back, threw an arm bar around her neck, and choked her. Delilah tried to buck her off, and to pry her hold apart. But Bree held on tight.

Finally, the big woman stopped running. Her massive thighs wobbled, and she sat down hard at Bree’s feet.

“Oh, my God,” Bree gasped when I ran up. “That was like ‘Meet the Amazon.’”

“More like ‘Ride the Amazon,’” I said, as she put zip ties on Delilah’s wrists.

The woman was regaining her strength. She struggled against the restraints.

“No,” she said. “Let me go.”

“Not for a while yet,” I said, picking her up.

Delilah twisted her head around in a rage, and spit in my face.

“Knock that off!” Bree shouted, and wrenched up hard on Delilah’s bound wrists. “That kind of bullshit gets you in trouble, and you’re already in a world of trouble. Got it?”

Delilah was obviously in pain, and finally nodded.

Bree eased up on the pressure while I used a tissue to wipe my face.

“I don’t know what this is about,” Delilah said. “I told you, I have a legitimate business, registered with the state and everything. Delilah Entertainment. Check it out.”

“You know exactly what this is about,” I said, grabbing one of her formidable biceps and marching her back toward her house. “You’re a member of The Soneji. You’re Gary’s Girl. You like to take selfies of you and Gary together. Isn’t that true?”

Delilah looked at me smugly and said, “Every single word of it, Cross. Every single word.”

“Where is Gary Soneji?” Bree asked.

“I have no idea,” Delilah said. “Gary comes and goes as he pleases. Our relationship is strong enough for that.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it is,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But you understand you’ve abetted a man who shot a police officer in cold blood?”

“How’s that?”

“You housed him,” Bree said. “You fed him. You dressed up goth and had sex with him, maybe even did one of your kinky shows for him.”

“Every night, darling,” Delilah said. “He loved it. So did I. And that’s where yours truly will shut up. I have the right to remain silent. And I have a right to an attorney. I’m taking both those rights, right here and right now.”

Pale morning fog shrouded much of the cemetery from my view. The fog swirled on the wet grass, the melting snow that remained, and the gravestones. It left droplets on the pile of wilted flower bouquets and empty liquor bottles and remembrances that had to be moved before the backhoe could begin its work.

The last item was a baby doll, naked, with lipstick smeared on the lips.

Shivering against the dank March air, I zipped my police slicker higher and pulled on the hood. I stood off to one side of the grave with Bill Worden, the cemetery superintendent, alternately looking at the baby doll and watching the backhoe claw deeper into the soil. A baby doll, I thought, recalling a real baby tossed through the air with total indifference, if not cruelty.

Someone brought that doll here, I thought. In celebration. In reverence.

That’s just sick. How could you worship that?

I glanced at the headstone Worden dug from the ground after I’d brought him an order from a federal judge in Trenton. The grave marker was simple. Rectangular black polished granite.

“G. Soneji” was etched in the face, along with the date of his birth. The date of his death, however, had been chiseled away. That was it. No mention of his brutal crimes or his disturbing life.

The man six feet under the headstone was all but anonymous.

And yet they’d come. The Soneji. They’d chipped away at the gravestone. Spray-painted the grass to read “Soneji Lives.” I took pictures before the backhoe destroyed it.

“How many visit?” I asked over the sound of the digging machine.

Worden, the cemetery superintendent, tugged his hood over his head and said, “Hard to say. It’s not like we keep it under surveillance. But a fair number every month.”

“Enough to leave that pile of flowers,” I said, eyeing the baby doll again.

Worden nodded. “For some it seems almost like a pilgrimage.”

“Yeah, except Mr. Soneji was no saint,” I said.

Drizzle began to fall, forcing me deeper into the collar of my jacket. A few moments later, the backhoe turned off.

“There’s the straps, Bill,” the equipment operator said. “I’ll hand-dig the last of it.”

“No need,” Worden said. “Just hook up and lift, brush the dirt off later.”

The backhoe operator shrugged and got out cables, which he attached to the bucket. Then he got down into the grave and clipped the cables to the rings of stout straps that had been left after the casket was lowered.

“They’re not weakened by being in the dirt ten years?” I asked.

Worden shook his head. “Not unless something chewed through them.”

The superintendent was right. When the backhoe arm rose, the straps easily lifted the casket of a man I helped kill.

Wet dirt slid and cascaded off the top of the casket as it came free of the grave and dangled four feet above the hole. The wind picked up. The casket swayed.

“Put it down there,” Worden said, gesturing to one side.

I was fixated on the casket, wondering what was inside, beyond the charred remains I’d seen placed in a body bag beneath Grand Central Station a decade before. He was in there, wasn’t he?

Every instinct said yes. But...

As the casket swung and lowered, I happened to look beyond it and between two far monuments. The wind had blown a narrow vent in the fog. I could see a slice of the graveyard between those monuments that ran all the way to the pine barrens that surrounded the cemetery.