“Oh, Jesus,” Pedelini said.
I looked up, saw the detective balancing a coffee mug and two cans of Mr. Pibb on a small tray. His skin had lost three shades of color.
“I am so sorry, Dr. Cross,” he said, chagrined. “I…I ran your name through our databases, and those files came up. So I…requested them.”
“My name?” I said. “What are these?”
Pedelini swallowed, set the tray down, and said, “Old investigative files.”
“On what?” Bree said, standing to look.
The detective hesitated, and then said, “Your mother’s murder, Dr. Cross.”
At first I thought I’d misheard him. I squinted and said, “You mean my mother’s death?”
“I don’t think so,” Pedelini replied. “They were filed under homicide.”
“My mother died of cancer,” I said.
The detective looked puzzled. “No, that’s not right. The database says murder by asphyxiation, case eventually closed due to the death of chief suspect, who was shot trying to escape the police and fell into the gorge.”
In total shock, I said, “Who was the chief suspect?”
“Your father, Dr. Cross. Didn’t you know?”
Part Three
Underworld
Chapter
31
Three hours later, Bree drove us back through the streets of Birney. The pain of reading those files was still raw, still searing.
Bree put her hand on mine, said, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, Alex. But I’m here for you, sugar. Any way you need me, I’m here for you.”
“Thank you. I…this just changes everything, you know?”
“I know, baby,” Bree said, and she pulled up in front of the bungalow where the files said my dad had smothered my mother with a pillow.
I got out of the car feeling like I’d just been released from the hospital after a life-threatening illness, weak and unsure of my balance. I started toward the front porch with my mind playing tricks on me, seeing flashes of shattered, disjointed memories: my boyhood self running down the train tracks in the rain; watching my father being dragged by a rope; and, finally, staring at my mother’s dead body in her bed, looking so frail, and small, and empty.
I don’t remember falling, only that I hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me and set my world spinning.
“Alex?” Bree cried, rushing to my side.
“I’m okay.” I gasped. “Must have tripped or…Where’s Nana?”
“Probably inside,” Bree said.
“I need to talk to her,” I said.
“I know you do, but—”
“Dad!” Ali cried, pushing open the screen door and jumping off the stoop.
“I’m okay, son,” I said, getting to my feet. “Just haven’t eaten enough.”
The door slammed again. Naomi came out, looking concerned.
“He got a little dizzy,” Bree explained.
“Where’s Nana?” I asked.
“At Aunt Hattie’s,” she said. “They’re making dinner.”
“I think you need to go inside and lie down, Alex,” Bree said.
“Not now,” I said, and I fixed on my aunt’s house like it was a beacon in the night.
I took my tentative first steps still bewildered and seeking solace from my grandmother. But by the time I was on Hattie’s porch, I was moving fast, angry and seeking answers.
I stormed inside. Aunt Hattie, Aunt Connie, and Uncle Cliff were in the kitchen. My aunts were dipping tilapia fillets in flour, getting them ready to fry, when I walked in and said, “Where’s Nana?”
“Right here,” she said.
My grandmother was tucked into a chair on my left, reading a book.
I went to her, loomed over her, my hands balled into fists, and said, “Why’d you lie to me?”
Nana Mama said, “Take a step back there, young man. And what’d I lie to you about?”
“My mother!” I shouted. “My father! All of it!”
My grandmother shrank from me and raised her arm defensively, as if she thought I might hit her. The truth was I’d been on the verge of doing just that.
It rattled me. I stepped back, glanced around the room. My aunts were staring at me in fear, and Bree and Jannie and Ali and Naomi had come in and were looking at me like I had gone mad.
“None of that now,” Uncle Cliff roared, standing up with his walker and shaking his finger at me. “No mugging old ladies on my train. You sit your ass down, show me your ticket, or I will throw you off, next stop. You hear?”
Uncle Cliff trembled with force, and I was suddenly a kid again, weak and dizzy. I grabbed a chair and sat, put my head in my hands.
“Alex, what’s happened?” Nana Mama demanded.
“Just tell me why you all lied to me,” I said with a groan. “That’s all I want to know.”
Chapter
32
“I swear to you, I knew nothing about this!” Nana Mama cried after Bree told her what we’d read in the files. She looked to my aunts, said, “Is this true? Did you know?”
Aunt Hattie and Aunt Connie were holding on to each other in such a way that they didn’t have to say a word.
“Why?” Bree asked.
“Because,” Aunt Hattie said, her voice shaking. “Those terrible things that went on, they were so traumatic, so horrible, that you, Alex, blocked it all out. It was like you’d never seen what happened to your father. We figured it was nature’s way of helping you deal with it and that you’d be better off believing your mom died from the cancer and your dad from the drinking and the drugs.”
“But why lie to me?” my grandmother demanded, as shaken as I’d been.
“You’d been through so much already and gone so far in life, Regina,” Aunt Connie said, choking. “We didn’t want to make you suffer any more than you had to. Alcohol and drugs, you could understand. Jason had been headed for that early grave already. But his killing Christina, and then the way he died. We just couldn’t tell you. We thought it would break your heart when your heart needed to be strong for Alex and his brothers.”
Nana Mama gazed off into a distance, her lower lip quivering, then looked at me and started to weep.
I went to her, got down on my knees, and laid my head in her tiny lap, feeling her anguish as my own, feeling her tears splash on my face as I said, “I’m sorry I called you a liar.”
“I’m sorry ’bout everything, Alex,” she said, stroking my head the way she used to when I first went to live with her. “I’m sorry about every bit of it.”
There was a heaviness in the air when we finally got around to eating. No one said much the rest of the night. Or at least, I don’t remember anything specific until I went to my aunts after dessert and forgave them. They cried all over again when we hugged.
Aunt Connie said, “We didn’t mean all this to come out.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“You sure?” Aunt Hattie asked.
“You were trying to protect me,” I said. “I get that.”
Aunt Connie said, “But you still don’t remember anything?”
“I’ve been getting flashes,” I admitted. “But not much more than that.”
Aunt Hattie said, “Maybe that’s all God wants you to remember.”
I nodded, kissed them both, and went out the door after my family. Jannie was already heading up the porch stoop to our bungalow. Bree was walking along with Ali and Naomi. Ali saw me, turned, and ran back.
I put my arm around my boy’s shoulder, said, “See the lightning bugs?”
“Yeah,” Ali said, like he didn’t care.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“Dad?” he said, not looking at me. “Can we go home?”
“What? No.”
“But I don’t like this place,” he said. “I don’t have any friends, and I don’t like how it hurts you to be here. And how it hurts Nana.”
I picked up my youn
gest and held him tight to me, saying, “I don’t like how it hurts either, son. But I promised I’d help Stefan. And in this life, a man is only as good as his word.”
Chapter
33
After Mass that Sunday morning, Nana Mama and I dropped Bree and the kids back at the bungalow. I drove us close to the arched bridge and parked. My grandmother took my arm, and we walked slowly out onto the span above the gorge.
The Stark River was roaring down there, throwing up white haystacks, spinning into dark whirlpools, and surging against the walls as far as the eye could see downstream. I remembered my parents were always telling me and my brothers never to go near the bridge or the river.
“Dad used to say there was no worse way to die than drowning,” I told Nana Mama. “I honestly think he was scared of the gorge.”
“Because I taught him to be scared of it,” my grandmother said quietly. “My little brother, Wayne, died down there when he was six. They never found his body.”
She said nothing for a few long moments, just stared at the roiling water four stories below us like it held terrible secrets.
Then Nana Mama shook her head. “I can’t bear to think of how terrified your father must have been as he fell.”
“According to the report, he was probably dead before he hit the water.”
“And you don’t remember any of it?” she asked.
“I had a nightmare last night. It was raining and there was lightning, and I was running down the tracks and then toward the bridge. I saw flashing lights before I heard gunshots. And then there were men out on the bridge, looking over, just like we are now.”
“What a waste,” my grandmother said. “Just a wasted, tragic life.”
She started to cry again, and I hugged her until she calmed.
Wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, she said, “Do you think that’s all there is about what happened? That report?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s a couple of people I’d like to talk to about it.”
“You’ll let me know?”
“If I find something, you’ll know it,” I promised.
On the ride back to the bungalow, I drove through the east end of Birney so Nana Mama could see the house she’d been living in when Wayne died. I pulled over next to the ramshackle building. It was just two blocks from the river.
“I’ll never forget that day,” she said, gesturing at the house. “I was eight and there on that porch playing with one of my friends when my mama came out the house, asked where Wayne had gotten to. I said he’d gone off down the street to see his buddy Leon.
“She went down after him to Leon’s house, which was right there on the corner of South Street across from the gorge,” she went on. “Mama saw Wayne and Leon over on the rocks above the river. She saw him fall. You could hear her screaming all the way here. She never got over that. The fact that his body was never found just ate her up. Every spring she’d make my dad go downriver with her to where the gorge spills onto the flat so they could see if the floods had swept Wayne’s body out. They looked for twenty years.”
“I’m beginning to see why you wanted to leave this place,” I said.
“Oh, your grandfather saw to that,” she said.
“What was he like?” I asked. “Reggie.”
“Huh,” Nana Mama said, as if she didn’t want to talk about him, but then she did. “He was not like anyone I’d ever met before. A charmer, I’ll give him that. He could sweet-talk like it was his second language, and the way he told you about his adventures at sea made you want to listen forever. He swept me off my feet with those stories. And he was handsome, and a good dancer, and he made a lot of money, by Starksville standards.”
“But?”
Nana Mama sighed. “But he was away five, six months a year. I’m sure he caroused outside our marriage when he was in foreign ports because he wasn’t shy about doing it when he came home. Got to the point where all we did was fight. He didn’t mind drinking while we fought, and he didn’t mind using his fists either. I decided one day that, despite my marriage vows, that wasn’t the life I wanted, or deserved. So I divorced Reggie and got enough money out of it to go on up to Washington and start all over. All in all, it was the best move I’ve ever made.”
She fell silent then for a few moments. “You saw Reggie’s grave?”
“He’s with his parents,” I said.
“Always liked Alexander and Gloria. They treated me kind, and they loved your father, especially Alexander.”
“I was named after him,” I said.
“You were.”
“He was a blacksmith.”
“The best around these parts. Never wanted for work.” She sighed again, said, “I need to take a nap.”
“I know the feeling,” I said, putting the car in gear.
We rolled back toward Loupe Street and the bungalow with the car windows down. Along the way, we passed Rashawn Turnbull’s house. There was a gleaming, cream-colored Cadillac Escalade parked out front.
I spotted three people on the porch. A tall man with iron-gray hair wearing a blue suit and a blond, sharply dressed woman in her fifties were engaged in a furious argument with a sandy-haired younger woman in cutoff shorts and a red T-shirt.
The younger woman sounded drunk when she shrieked: “That’s bullshit! You never gave a shit about him alive! Leave my house and stay the hell out of my life!”
Chapter
34
Bree and I waited almost an hour, had lunch, and made sure that Nana Mama had gone to take her nap before returning to Rashawn Turnbull’s house.
“So that was definitely Cece?” Bree asked when I pulled in where the Escalade had been parked.
“Sure fit the description,” I said, getting out.
We went up on the porch. A trash can had been turned over and was surrounded by broken beer bottles and old pizza boxes. Inside, a television blared the music from one of the Star Wars movies, Darth Vader’s theme.
I knocked, got no answer. I knocked again, much harder.
“Go the fuck away!” a woman screamed. “I never want to see you again!”
I yelled, “Mrs. Turnbull? Could you come to the door, please?”
Glass smashed inside before the television went quiet. Then the ratty yellow curtain on the near window was pulled aside. Rashawn’s mother peered blearily at us through the screen. You could tell at a glance that she’d been beautiful once, but now her hair was the color and consistency of loose straw, her yellowed teeth were ground down, and her skin was sallow.
Her sunken, rheumy hazel eyes drifted when she asked, “Fuck are you?”
“My name’s Alex Cross,” I said. “This is my wife, Bree.”
Cece lifted a cigarette, took a drag with contempt, said, “I don’t go for none of that Jehovah’s shit, so get your ass off my porch.”
Bree said, “We’re police detectives.”
Rashawn Turnbull’s mother squinted at us, said, “I know all the cops in Starksville and for three towns around, and I don’t know either of you two.”
“We’re from Washington, DC,” I said. “We work homicide up there, and I used to be with the FBI.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
I hesitated, then told her. “We’re looking into your son’s case.”
“What for?”
“Because my cousin is Stefan Tate.”
You’d have thought I punched her. Her head snapped back and then shot forward in rage. She hissed, “That evil sonofabitch is gonna die for what he did. And I am going to be there to see it happen. Now get off my porch before I find my granddad’s shotgun.”
The curtain fluttered shut.
“Mrs. Turnbull!” I yelled. “We do not work for Stefan. If my cousin killed your boy, I’ll be sitting right there beside you when they execute him. I told Stefan the same thing. We work for only one person. Your son. Period.”
There was no answer, and for a moment I thought she might indeed h
ave gone in search of her granddad’s shotgun.
Bree called out, “Cece, will you please talk to us? I promise you we have no ax to grind. We just want to help.”
There was no answer for several beats.
Then a pitiful voice said, “There’s no helping this, or me, or Rashawn, or Stefan. No one can change any of it.”
“No, we can’t change what’s happened,” I said. “But we can make sure the right person suffers for the horrible things that were done to your boy. Please, I promise you we won’t take up much of your time.”
A few moments later, a bolt was thrown, and the door creaked inward.
Chapter
35
In the course of my career, I have entered the homes of many grieving mothers and witnessed my share of shrines erected in mourning for a lost child. But I’d never seen anything quite like this.
Broken furniture. Broken liquor bottles. Shattered plates and mugs. The small living area was a complete shambles except for an oval coffee table that featured a green marble urn surrounded by a collection of framed photographs of Rashawn from infancy on up.
The older pictures all looked like yearly school portraits. In every one, Rashawn was grinning magnetically. Seriously, you did not want to take your eyes off that boy’s smile.
Around the entire edge of the table and surrounding the pictures like the spokes on a medicine wheel, there were toys, everything from an air-soft pistol to action figures, stuffed animals, and Matchbox cars. The only things on the table that looked like they hadn’t belonged to Rashawn were a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff vodka, two blackened glass pipes, a small butane torch, and a baggie of some white substance.
On the wall hung a sixty-inch flat-screen. It was split horizontally into two feeds. The lower one was playing The Empire Strikes Back, the volume turned down low. The upper one showed home videos of Rashawn as a young boy, four, maybe five. He was wearing a cape and jumping around swinging a toy lightsaber.