Patterson, James - Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

CHAPTER One

Things were going pretty well that day. I was driving a bright-orange school bus through Southeast on a blistering-hot morning in late July and I was whistling a little Al Green as I drove. I was in the process of picking up sixteen boys from their houses and also two foster homes. Door-to-door bus service. Hard to beat.

Just one week earlier I had returned from Boston and the Mr. Smith murder case. Mr. Smith and a deranged killer named Gary Soneji had both been involved in that one. I needed a rest and I'd taken the morning off to do something I'd been looking forward to for a change.

My partner, John Sampson, and a twelve-year-old named Enrol Mignault sat behind me on the bus. John was wearing Wayfarer shades, black jeans, a black T-shirt that read: ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED MEN. SEND DONATIONS TODAY. He is six-nine, a very solid two hundred fifty pounds. We've been friends since we were ten, when I first moved to DC.

He, Errol, and I were talking about the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, almost shouting over the bus's blustery, occasionally misfiring engine. Sampson had his huge arm lightly draped over Errol's shoulders. Proper physical contact is encouraged when dealing with these boys.

Finally, we picked up the last little guy on our list, an eight-year-old who lived in Benning Terrace, a tough project known to some of us as Simple City.

As we left the project, an ugly smear of graffiti told visitors everything they needed to know about the neighborhood. It read: YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE WAR ZONE, AND YOU LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT.

We were taking the boys out to Lorton Prison in Virginia. They would be visiting their fathers for the afternoon. They were all young, between eight and thirteen. The Alliance transports forty to fifty kids each week to see their fathers and mothers in different prisons. The goal is a lofty one: to bring the crime rate in Washington down by a third.

I'd been out to the prison more times than I cared to remember. I knew the warden at Lorton pretty well. A few years back I'd spent a lifetime there, interviewing Gary Soneji.

Warden Marion Campbell had set up a large room on level one, where the boys met with their fathers. It was a powerful scene, even more emotional than I'd expected. The Alliance spends time training the fathers who want to participate in the program. There are four steps: how to show love; accept fault and responsibility; attain parent and child harmonies; new beginnings.

Ironically the boys were all trying to look and act tougher than they actually were. I heard one boy say, You weren't in my life before, why should I listen to you now?' But the fathers were trying to show a softer side.

Sampson and I hadn't made the run to Lorton before. It was our first time, but I was already sure I'd do it again. There was so much raw emotion and hope in the room, so much potential for something good and decent. Even if some of it would never be realized, it showed that an effort was being made, and something positive could come from it.

What struck me most was the bond that still existed between some of the fathers and their young sons. I thought about my own boy, Damon, and how lucky we were. The thing about most of the prisoners in Lorton was that they knew what they had done was wrong; they just didn't know how to stop doing it.

For most of the hour and a half, I just walked around and listened. I was occasionally needed as a psychologist, and I did the best I could on short notice. At one little group, I heard a father say, 'Please tell your mother I love her and I miss her like crazy.' Then both the prisoner and his son broke into tears and hugged one another fiercely.

Sampson came up to me after we'd been in the prison for an hour or so. He was grinning broadly. His smile, when it comes, is a killer. 'Man, I love this. Do-gooder shit is the best.'

'Yeah, I'm hooked myself. I'll drive the big orange bus again.'

'Think it'll help? Fathers and sons meeting like this?' he asked me.

I looked around the room. 'I think today, right now, this is a success for these men and their sons. That's good enough.'

Sampson nodded. 'The old one-day-at-a-time approach. Works for me, too. I am flying, Alex.'

So was I, so was I. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

As I drove the young boys home that afternoon, I could see by their faces that they'd had positive experiences with their fathers. The boys weren't nearly as noisy and rambunctious on the way back to DC. They weren't trying to be so tough. They were just acting like kids.

Almost every one of the boys thanked Sampson and me as they got off the big orange bus. It wasn't necessary. It sure was a lot better than chasing after homicidal maniacs.

The last boy we dropped off was the eight-year-old from Benning Terrace. He hugged both John and me and then he started to cry. 'I miss my dad,' he said, before running home.

Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

CHAPTER Two

That night, Sampson and I were on duty in Southeast. We're senior homicide detectives and I'm also liaison between the FBI and the DC police. We got a call at about half past midnight telling us to go to the area of Washington called Shaw. There'd been a bad homicide.

A lone Metro squad car was at the murder scene, and the neighborhood psychos had turned out in pretty fair numbers.

It looked like a bizarre block party in the middle of hell. Fires were blazing nearby, throwing off sparks in two trash barrels, which made no sense, given the sweltering heat of the night.

The victim was a young woman, probably between fourteen and her late teens, according to the radio report.

She wasn't hard to find. Her nude, mutilated body had been discarded in a clump of briar bushes in a small park, less than ten yards off a paved pathway.

As Sampson and I approached the body, a boy shouted at us from the other side of the crime tape. 'To, yo, she's just some street whore!'

I stopped and looked at him. He reminded me of the boys we'd just transported to Lorton Prison. 'Dime-a-dozen bitch. Not worth your time, or mine, dee-fectives,' he went on with his disturbing rap.

I finally walked up to the young wisecracker. 'How do you know that? You seen her around?'

The boy backed off. But then he grinned, showing off a gold star on one of his front teeth. 'She ain't got no clothes on an' she layin' on her back. Somebody stick her good. Sure sound like a whore to me.'

Sampson eyed the youth, who looked to be around fourteen, but might have been even younger. 'You know who she is?'

'Hell, no' The boy pretended to be insulted. 'Don't know no whores, man.'

The boy finally swaggered off, looking back at us once or twice, shaking his head. Sampson and I walked on and joined two uniformed cops standing by the body. They were obviously waiting for reinforcements. Apparently, we were it.

'You call Emergency Services?' I asked the uniforms.

'Thirty-five minutes ago, and counting,' said the older-looking of the two. He was probably in his late twenties, sporting an attempted mustache and trying to look like he was experienced at scenes like this one.

'That figures.' I shook my head. You find any ID anywhere around here?'

'No ID. We looked around in the bushes. Nothing but the body,' said the younger one. 'And the body's seen better days.' He was perspiring badly and looked a little sick.

I put on latex gloves and bent down over the corpse. She did appear to be in her mid to late teens. The girl's throat had been slit from ear to ear. Her face was badly slashed. So were the soles of her feet, which seemed odd. She'd been stabbed a dozen or more times in her chest and stomach. I pushed open her legs.

I saw something, and it made me sick. A metal handle was barely visible between her legs. I was almost sure it was a knife and that it had been driven all the way into her vagina.