Patterson, James - Alex Cross 14 - Cross Country

We fired back. A round caught him and he dropped to the ground. But not before he'd given the adult enough cover to get outside. The driver's door was open. I couldn't see the large man, but I knew he was getting away.

Bree stopped beside the kid; I kept going. Down into the ditch, then up the other side.

I'd thought there were woods beyond the gulley, but now I saw there was just cedar screening and tall weeds.

Suddenly I heard the rattle of a chain-link fence. The large male was climbing it. By the time I pushed through the trees, he was over the top and running across the rear yard of some kind of storage facility.

I leveled my Glock against the chain link, then emptied the magazine. He was too far away. I didn't think I'd hit him and then he turned. He waved contemptuously, then disappeared like a cat into the darkness.

I called in the location and then ran back to see about Bree. She was still crouched near the ground, right where I had left her. She'd put her jacket over the dead boy's face. It was an odd thing for a cop in a shoot-out to do, but Bree liked to go her own way.

“You okay? ”I asked.

She didn't look up. “He was maybe twelve, Alex. Maybe that old. He ran suicide for the prick adult.”

“Was he alive when you got to him?” I asked her. Bree nodded.

“He say anything?”

“Yeah.” She finally looked up at me. “He told me to fuck myself. His last words on this earth.”

Cross Country

Chapter 20

I DIDN'T SLEEP more than a couple of hours that night. An officer and two civilians were dead-not to mention one of the boy killers, the “world's youngest terrorist,” according to a Washington Post headline the next morning. On top of everything else, I had an eight o'clock psych client to see at St. Anthony's.

Ever since the Tyler Bell case the year before, when I was literally stalked in my own office, I'd had to seriously reevaluate my life. The upshot: I'd decided my criminal cases were too high-profile too often for me to keep the private in private practice anymore. Now, I saw only two or three patients a week, usually pro bono, and I was satisfied with that. Most days, anyway.

But I didn't want to see this particular patient-not today.

It was ironic that I had a session with Bronson “Pop-Pop”

James that morning. He was eleven years old and probably the most advanced sociopath at that age I'd ever seen. Four months before, he'd made headlines when he and a seventeen- year-old beat two homeless men half to death. They had used, cinder block. It was Pop-Pop's idea. The district attorney hadn't figured out how to try the case yet, and Bronson was being held in juvenile custody. The one thing he had going for him was a very good social worker from Corrections, who made sure he got to his appointments with me.

At first I thought it best to keep the events of the last night out out of my head. Once the session got going, though, I changed my mind.

“Bronson, you hear about what happened at the service plaza in Virginia last night?”

He sat across from me on a cheap vinyl couch, fidgeting, the whole time, hands and feet always in motion. “Yeah, right, I heard. They was talking 'bout that shit on the radio. What of it?”

“The boy who died… he was twelve.”

Bronson grinned and put two fingers to his head. “Heard he got X-Boxed.”

His confidence was prodigious; it gave him a strange adult quality-while his feet dangled about six inches off the floor in my office.

“You ever think something like that might happen to you?” I asked him.

He snorted. “Every day. It's no thing.”

“That's okay with you, though? Makes sense? That's how the world should be?”

“That's how the world be. Bam.”

“So then”-I looked around the room and back at him-

“why bother to sit here and talk to me about it? That doesn't make much sense to me.”

“ 'Cause that bitch Lorraine fuckin' make me come.”

I nodded. “Just because you come here doesn't mean you have to say anything. But you do. You talk to me. Why do you think that is?”

He made a thing of getting all impatient. “You the witch doctor, you tell me.”

“You envy kids like the one who died? Working for a living? Running around with guns?”

He squinted at me, pulled the Lebron James Cleveland Cavaliers sweatband around his head a little lower. “Whad-dya mean?”

“You know, are you jealous of them?”

He smiled again, but only to himself. Then he slouched down on the couch and reached out with a toe to casually tip over the orange juice I'd given him. It spilled across the table between us. “Yo, they, got any Skittles in the machine downstairs? Go get me some Skittles!”

I did no such thing. After the session, I escorted Pop-Pop out to his social worker and told the boy I'd see him on Friday. Then I went home and picked up Nana.

We went to the Cox family funeral together. We held each other and cried with everybody else.

I didn't care if people saw me cry anymore. I just didn't care. If they were friends, they would understand. If they weren't, what did it matter what they thought of me?

That philosophy, to give credit where credit is due, was a Nana-ism.

Cross Country

Chapter 21

“THIS IS DETECTIVE Alex Cross. I'm with the Metro police here in Washington. I need to speak with Ambassador Njoku or his representative. It's important, very important.”

Late that night, I was in the car with Bree, speeding to the Bubble Lounge in the heart of Georgetown. Four people were dead at the club. Two were Nigerian citizens, and one was the son of the ambassador. Advance reports had twenty-one-year-old Daniel Njoku as the gunman's primary target. That meant one thing to me: The Njoku family didn't need just notification; they might also need protection-if it wasn't already too late. So far, all of the gang's murders had involved families.

A night deputy from the Nigerian embassy was on the line with me. I kept one ear covered, trying to hear what she was saying above the wail of Bree's siren.

“Sir, I am very sorry, but I will need more information than simply-”

“This is an emergency call. Their son Daniel was just murdered at a nightclub. We have reason to believe the ambassador and his wife may be in danger too. We're sending police cruisers right now.”

“But, sir… the Njokus are not in the country. They are at a symposium, in Abuja.”

“Find them, then. Tell them to get somewhere secure. Please, do whatever you can do. Then call me back at this number. I'm Detective Cross.”

“I'll do what I can, sir. I will call you back, Detective Cross.”

I hung up, feeling a little helpless. How was I supposed to stop a murder that could happen six thousand miles away?

Cross Country

Chapter 22

“I WANT TO talk to the witnesses first. As many of them as 1 can. No one goes home.”

The Bubble Lounge had been a lively place, but by the time I got there it was a wrecking yard. There were overturned tables, smashed and scattered chairs, broken shards of glass everywhere. Body teams were working both floors; we had six GSW, one broken neck, and one suffocation. EMTs were still busily triaging the wounded. Young people were moaning and crying, and everyone I passed looked dazed, even the police officers.

Members of Daniel Njoku's party were being held in the coat-check area. I found them sitting close together on sofas, huddled. One girl, wearing a tiny black dress with a man's blazer over her shoulders, had blood smeared all over her neck and cheek.

I knelt down next to her. “I'm Detective Cross. I'm here to help. What's your name?”