Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

“That's how the three women were actually found. It was kept out of the trial so as not to hurt the families any more than we had to. The DA knew he had more than enough to convict Sergeant Cooper without using these brutal pictures.”

The photographs were right up there with the most grisly and graphic evidence I'd seen. Apparently, the women had all been found in the living room, not where each of them had been killed. The killer had carefully arranged the bodies on a large, flowered sofa. He had art-directed the corpses, and that was an element that definitely caught my attention. Tanya Jackson's face was resting in Barbara Green's crotch; Mrs. Green's face was in Maureen Bruno's crotch. Not just the faces but the crotches were painted blue.

Apparently, Cooper thought the three women were lovers. That may have even been the case. At any rate, that's why he thought Tanya rejected his advances. I guess it drove him to this."

Finally I spoke up. “These crime scene photos, however graphic and obscene, still don't prove that Ellis Cooper is your murderer.”

Captain Jacobs shook his head. “You don't seem to understand. These aren't copies of the crime scene photos taken by the police. These are copies of Polaroids that Cooper took himself. We found them at his place along with the knife.”

Donald Jacobs looked at me, then at Sampson. Tour friend murdered those women. Now you ought to go home and let the people around here begin to heal."

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Twelve

In spite of Captain Jacob's advice, we didn't leave North Carolina. In fact, we kept talking to anybody who would talk to us. One first sergeant told me something interesting, though not about our case. He said that the recent wave of patriotism that had swept the country since September 11 was barely noticeable at Fort Bragg. “We have always been that way! ”he said. I could see that, and I must admit, I was impressed with a lot that I saw on the Army post.

I woke early the next morning, around five, with no place to go. At least I had some time to think about the fact that this could be my last case. And what kind of case was it, really? A man convicted of three gruesome murders claiming to be innocent. What murderer didn't?

And then I thought of Ellis Cooper on death row in Raleigh, and I got to work.

Once I was up, I got on-line and did as much preliminary research as I could. One of the areas I looked at was the blue paint on the victims. I checked into VICAP and got three other cases of murder victims being painted, but none of them seemed a likely connection.

I then ran down a whole lot of information on the color blue. One thing that mildly interested me was the Blue Man Group performance artists who had started a show called Tubes in New York City, then branched out to Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas. The show contained elements of music, theater, performance art, even vaudeville. The performers always worked in blue, from head to toe. Maybe it was something, maybe nothing too early to tell.

I met Sampson for breakfast at the Holiday Inn where we were staying the Holiday Inn Bordeaux, to be more precise. We ate quickly, then drove over to the off-base military housing community where the three murders had taken place. The houses were ordinary ranches, each with a small strip of lawn out front. Quite a few of the yards had plastic wading pools. Tricycles and 'cozy coupes' were parked up and down the street.

We spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon canvassing the close-knit community where Tanya Jackson had lived. It was a working-class, military neighborhood, and at more than half the stops nobody was home.

I was on the front porch of a brick-and-clapboard house, talking to a woman in her late thirties or early forties, when I saw Sampson come jogging our way. Something was up.

“Alex, come with me!” he called out. “C'mon. I need you right now.”

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Thirteen

I caught up with Sampson. “What's up? What did you find out?”

“Something weird. Maybe a break,” he said. I followed him to another small ranch house. He knocked on the door and a woman appeared almost immediately. She was only a little over five feet, but easily weighed two hundred pounds, maybe two-fifty.

“This is my partner, Detective Cross. I told you about him. This is Mrs. Hodge,”he said.

“I'm Anita Hodge,” the woman said as she shook my hand. “Glad to meet you.” She looked at Sampson and grinned. “I agree. Ali when he was younger.”

Mrs. Hodge walked us through a family room where two young boys were watching Nickelodeon and playing video games at the same time. She then led us down a narrow hallway and into a bedroom.

A boy of about ten was in the room. He was seated in a wheelchair that was pulled up to a Gateway computer. Behind him on the wall were glossy pictures of more than two dozen Major League baseball players.

He looked annoyed at the intrusion. “What now?” he asked. “That's short for get out of here and leave me alone. I'm working.”

This is Ronald Hodge,“ Sampson said. ”Ronald, this is Detective Cross. I told you about him when we spoke before."

The boy nodded but didn't say anything, just stared angrily my way.

“Ronald, will you tell us your story again?” Sampson asked. “We need to hear it.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “I already told the other policemen. I'm sick and tired of it, 'know. Nobody cares what I think anyway.”

“Ronald,” said his mother. “That's not true and you know it.”

“Please tell me,” I said to the boy. “What you have to say could be important. I want to hear it in your words.”

The boy frowned and continued to shake his head, but his eyes held mine. “The other policemen didn't think it was important. Fuckheads.”

“Ronald,” said the boy's mother. “Don't be rude. You know I don't like that attitude. Or that kind of language.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I'll tell it again.” Then he began to talk about the night Tanya Jackson was murdered, and what he'd seen.

“I was up late. Wasn't s'posed to be. I was playing on the computer. ”He stopped and looked at his mother.

She nodded. “You're forgiven. We've been over this before. Now please tell your story. You're starting to get me a little crazy.”

The boy finally cracked a smile, then went on with his story. Maybe he had just wanted to set up his audience a little.

"I can see the Jacksons'yard from my room. It's just past the corner of the Harts' house. I saw somebody out in the yard. It was kind of dark, but I could see him moving. He had like a movie camera or something. I couldn't tell what he was taking pictures of, so it made me curious.

“I went up close to this window to watch. And then I saw there were three men out there. I saw 'em in Mrs. Jackson's yard. That's what I told the police. Three men. I saw 'em just like I see two of you in my room. And they were making a movie.”

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Fourteen

I asked young Ronald Hodge to repeat his story, and he did.

Exactly, almost word for word. He stared me right in the eye as he spoke, and he didn't hesitate or waver. It was obvious that the boy was troubled by what he had witnessed, and that he was still scared. After learning that murders had been committed in the house, he'd been living in fear of what he'd seen that night.

Afterward, Sampson and I talked to Anita Hodge in the kitchen. She gave us iced tea, which was unsweetened, with big chunks of lemon in it, and was delicious. She told us that Ronald had been born with spina bifida, an outcropping of the spinal cord that had caused paralysis from the waist down.