I look over at Aiden, whose eyes have filled with tears.
“I still miss her,” he says, his voice quaking. “You’da—you’da liked her.”
“I know I would have.” I take Aiden’s hand in mine. “But you still have family. You still have me. You’re my hero, Aiden. And you’re my brother.”
I lean over and kiss him on the cheek. He recoils slightly. I don’t get the sense that a lot of women have kissed him in his life.
“Okay,” he says awkwardly. His face brightens just a bit. “That’d be okay.”
123
I NESTLE my feet into the sand and let out a long sigh. The beach is utter chaos in mid-August, kids running everywhere, boats and parasails and sand castles, but to me it feels like complete and total peace.
Four months, almost to the day, since it all happened.
Four months since Justin’s murderous ways were exposed and he was taken into custody, a now-infamous killer who will go down in history with the legions of others. Someone told me they did a Google search on his name and got over ten thousand hits.
Hooray for him.
“Let’s go watch,” says Noah, sitting next to me.
“Not sure I want to.”
“Oh, c’mon. Come on. You don’t wanna watch?”
I relent, pushing myself out of the sand, fitting my toes into my sandals, my fingers intertwined with Noah’s.
“Your hair’s getting long again,” I say. “Are you going back to Surfer Jesus?”
“Hey, be nice to me,” he says, squeezing my hand. “I’ve been through a lot. I’ve been shot at by a cop two times.”
“But she intended to miss each time,” I add.
“So she says. So she says.”
We climb onto the pavement of the parking lot and walk up Ocean Drive.
A thick crowd is gathered at the gate of 7 Ocean Drive. A couple of news crews as well. It’s been like that ever since everything happened. They say there was a spike in tourism this summer due to all the people who wanted to come see this house.
So there will be a few people, some shop owners, who might be sorry to see what’s about to happen. But I think most people will approve.
“Just in time,” Noah says.
The wrecking ball slams into the roof first, crushing the slate inward, the spears and ornamental gargoyles disappearing in a satisfying rush, a collective gasp of awe from the crowd. They told me it will take hours to knock down the entire mansion. I told them I didn’t care how long it took, I just wanted everything gone. The house. The tunnel and dungeon beneath. The carriage house.
It’s my property, after all. That’s what all the lawyers concluded after reviewing the trust documents. The property went into trust because nobody knew that Holden VI had left behind any offspring. So now it’s mine.
It won’t be for long. I wish I could open a museum or a shelter for battered women or something on this property, but this is prime real estate, and there are zoning laws designed to protect its value.
So I’ve put this massive lot up for sale, hopefully to a nice family who will build a nice new house with a very different future. The Realtors quoted me an estimate that’s more money than I’d make in my lifetime, and far more money than I’ll ever need. So I’ll keep a fraction for myself and give the rest of the proceeds to Aiden Willis.
Another whack from the wrecking ball, this time taking out the wraparound balcony, the master bedroom where so many people lost, or took, their lives—centuries of horror gone with one crushing boom.
“I’m gonna miss that house,” says Noah.
I laugh. It feels good to laugh. Odd, unusual, but good.
“But speaking of houses,” he says, “those rooms aren’t going to paint themselves.”
Our new place, he means. Not far down the road from Uncle Lang’s old house. A three-bedroom, two-bathroom in a nice, quiet spot. Quiet sounds good right about now. We cosigned the loan, on the salaries of a newly promoted detective, first grade, and the owner of a new handyman business.
Seeing this house, even in its deliciously beaten and battered form now, brings back everything from that final night.
I lean into Noah. “You were that sure I wouldn’t shoot you?” I ask.
He cradles me with an arm. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “It was clear that you were madly in love with me.”
I smile to myself. I am, in fact, madly in love with this man.
I watch the wrecking ball do its work. I said I didn’t want to watch, but now I’m fixated. Now I have to see it. I have to see every single piece of limestone battered and knocked to the ground. I need to see every inch of earth turned over—
Noah looks at me, sees the intensity in my face.
“Y’know what?” he says. “I changed my mind. This is boring. This house is old news. I wanna go to our new house.”
This man understands me, sometimes better than I understand myself.
“Me too,” I say.
We walk off, hand in hand, leaning against each other, the sun beating down on us.
Behind us, another boom, the sound of crushing rocks, another awed gasp from the crowd, but neither of us looks back.
Alex Cross
Goes Home
For an excerpt, turn the page.
WHEN I saw the road sign that said we were ten miles from Starksville, North Carolina, my breath turned shallow, my heartbeat sped up, and an irrationally dark and oppressive feeling came over me.
My wife, Bree, was sitting in the passenger seat of our Ford Explorer and must have noticed. “You okay, Alex?” she asked.
I tried to shrug the sensations off, said, “A great novelist of North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe, wrote that you can’t go home again. I’m just wondering if it’s true.”
“Why can’t we go home again, Dad?” Ali, my soon-to-be-seven-year-old son, asked from the backseat.
“It’s just an expression,” I said. “If you grow up in a small town and then move away to a big city, things are never the same when you go back. That’s all.”
“Oh,” Ali said, and he returned to the game he was playing on his iPad.
My fifteen-year-old daughter, Jannie, who’d been sullen most of the long drive down from DC, said, “You’ve never been back here, Dad? Not once?”
“Nope,” I replied, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Not in…how long, Nana?”
“Thirty-five years,” said my tiny ninety-something grandmother, Regina Cross. She sat in the backseat between my two kids, straining to look outside. “We’ve kept in touch with the extended family, but things just never worked out to come back down.”
“Until now,” Bree said, and I could feel her gaze on me.
My wife and I are both detectives with the DC Metro Police, and I knew I was being scrutinized by a pro.
Really not wanting to reopen the “discussion” we’d been having the past few days, I said firmly, “The captain ordered us to take time off and get away, and blood is thicker than water.”
“We could have gone to the beach.” Bree sighed. “Jamaica again.”
“I like Jamaica,” Ali said.
“Instead, we’re going to the mountains,” I said.
“How long will we have to be here?” Jannie groaned.
“As long as my cousin’s trial lasts,” I said.
“That could be, like, a month!” she cried.
“Probably not,” I said. “But maybe.”
“God, Dad, how am I going to stay in any kind of shape for the fall season?”
My daughter, a gifted track athlete, had become obsessive about her workouts since winning a major race earlier in the summer.
“You’re getting to work out twice a week with an AAU-sanctioned team out of Raleigh,” I said. “They come right to the high school track here to train at altitude. Your coach even said it would be good for you to run at altitude, so please, no more about your training. We’ve got it covered.”
“How much attitude is Starksville?” Ali asked.
“Altitude,” corrected Nana Mama, a former English teacher and high school vice principal. “It means the height of something above the sea.”
“We’ll be at least two thousand feet above sea level,” I said, and then I pointed up the road toward the vague silhouettes of mountains. “Higher up there behind those ridges.”
Jannie stayed quiet several moments, then said, “Is Stefan innocent?”
I thought about the charges. Stefan Tate was a gym teacher accused of torturing and killing a thirteen-year-old boy named Rashawn Turnbull. He was also the son of my late mother’s sister and—
“Dad?” Ali said. “Is he innocent?”
“Scootchie thinks so,” I replied.
“I like Scootchie,” Jannie said.
“I do too,” I replied, glancing at Bree. “So when she calls, I come.”
Naomi “Scootchie” Cross is the daughter of my late brother Aaron. Years ago, when Naomi was in law school at Duke University, she was kidnapped by a murderer and sadist who called himself Casanova. I’d been blessed enough to find and rescue her, and the ordeal forged a bond between us that continues to this day.
We passed a narrow field heavy with corn on our right, and a mature pine plantation on our left.
Deep in my memory, I recognized the place and felt queasy because I knew that at the far end of the cornfield there would be a sign welcoming me back to a town that had torn my heart out, a place I’d spent a lifetime trying to forget.
MY NIECE was on the sidewalk in front of the county courthouse arguing with an earnest-looking African American man in a well-cut gray suit. Naomi wore a navy blue skirt and blazer and clutched a brown legal-size accordion file to her chest, and she was shaking her head firmly.
I pulled over and parked, said, “She looks busy. Why doesn’t everyone wait here? I’ll get directions to where we’re staying.”
I climbed out into what was, by Washington, DC, standards, a banner summer day. The humidity was surprisingly low and there was a breeze blowing that carried with it the sound of my niece’s voice.
“Matt, are you going to fight every one of my motions?” Naomi demanded.
“Course I am,” he said. “It’s my job, remember?”
“Your job should be to find the truth,” she shot back.
“I think we all know the truth,” he replied, and then he looked over her shoulder at me.
“Naomi?” I called.
She turned and saw me, and her posture relaxed. “Alex!”
Grinning, she trotted over, threw her arms around me, and said quietly, “Thank God you’re here. This town is enough to drive me mad.”
“I came as soon as I could,” I said. “Where’s Stefan?”
“Still in jail,” she said. “Judge’s refusing to set any kind of bail.”
Matt was studying us—or, rather, me—intently.
“Is your friend the DA?” I asked quietly.
“Let me introduce you,” she said, “rattle his chain.”
“Rattle away,” I said.
Naomi walked me over to him, said, “Assistant district attorney Matthew Brady, this is my uncle and Stefan’s cousin Dr. Alex Cross, formerly of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and currently a special investigator with the Washington, DC, Metro Police.”
If Brady was impressed, he didn’t show it, and he shook my hand with little enthusiasm. “You’re here why, exactly?”
“My family and I have been through a rough time lately, so we’re on a little R and R to visit my roots and provide my cousin with some moral support,” I said.
“Well.” He sniffed and looked at Naomi. “I think you should be thinking plea bargain if you want to give Mr. Tate moral support.”
Naomi smiled. “You can stick that idea where the sun don’t shine.”
Brady grinned pleasantly and held up his hands, palms out. “Your call, but the way I see it, Naomi, you plea, and your client lives a life behind bars. You go to trial, and he most certainly gets the death penalty.”
“Good-bye,” she said sweetly as she took my arm. “We’ve got to be going.”
“Nice meeting you,” I said.
“Likewise, Dr. Cross,” he said and walked away.
“Kind of a cold fish,” I said when he was out of earshot and we were heading back to my car.
“He’s gotten that way since law school,” she said.
“So you’ve got history?”
“Just old classmates,” Naomi said, then broke into a squeal of delight when Jannie opened the Explorer’s door and climbed out.
In a few moments everyone was out on the sidewalk hugging Naomi, who couldn’t get over how tall and strong Jannie had become and got tears in her eyes when my grandmother kissed her.
“You don’t age, Nana,” Naomi said in wonder. “Is there a painting in an attic somewhere that shows your real age?”
“The Picture of Regina Cross.” Nana Mama chortled.
“It’s just so good to see you all,” Naomi said, and then her face fell slightly. “I just wish it were under different circumstances.”
My wife said, “We’ll figure out the real story, get Stefan released, and have a nice vacation.”
Naomi’s face fell a little further. “That’s easier said than done, Bree. But I know the aunties are waiting for us. Why don’t you follow me?”
“Can I drive with you, Scootchie?” Jannie asked.
“Of course you can,” Naomi said, and she pointed across the street. “I’m the little red Chevy there.”
We left downtown and entered more residential neighborhoods, which were full of sharp contrasts. The houses were either run-down or freshly painted. The cars were either brand-new or about to fall apart. And the people we saw on the streets were either shabbily dressed or turned out in the latest urban attire.
We drove onto the old arched bridge that spanned the Stark River Gorge. The granite walls of the gorge were six stories high and flanked the river, which was running fast and churning over huge boulders. Ali spotted kayakers down in the whitewater.
“Can I do that?” he cried.
“Not on your life,” Nana Mama said firmly.
“Why not?”
“Because that gorge is a deadly place,” she said. “There’s all sorts of phantom currents, and there’re shelves and logs under that water. They’ll trap you and never let you out. Growing up, I knew at least five kids who died down there, including my little brother. Their bodies were never found.”
“Really?” Ali said.
“Really,” Nana Mama said.
Naomi kept on straight across the bridge. We bounced back over the railroad tracks into Birney, a very run-down section of town. The vast majority of the bungalows along the streets of Birney were desperately in need of TLC. Kids played in the red-clay front yards. Hounds bayed at our passing. Chickens and goats scattered off the roads. And the adults sitting on the front stoops looked at us suspiciously, as if they were familiar with everyone who came to the starkest part of Starksville and knew we were strangers.
That oppressive sense I’d suffered when I’d seen the sign to town returned. It became almost overpowering when Naomi turned onto Loupe Street, a cracked and potholed road that ended in a cul-de-sac in front of the only three homes in the neighborhood that seemed well maintained. The three bungalows were identical and the paint looked recent. Each home boasted a low green picket fence around a watered lawn and flowers growing in beds by a screened-in front porch.
I parked behind Naomi and hesitated in my seat when my wife and son got out. Nana Mama wasn’t in any hurry either, and I caught the grim expression on her face in the mirror.
“Alex?” Bree said, looking back in the passenger door.
“Coming,” I said. I got out and helped my grandmother down.
We went around the car slowly and then stopped, looking at the closest of the bungalows as if it held ghosts, which for us it did.
“You been here before, Dad?” Ali asked.
/> I let my breath out slow, nodded, and said, “This is the house where Daddy grew up, son.”
“LAND SAKES, is that you here already, Aunt Regina?” a woman cried before Ali or any other member of my family could say anything.
I took my eyes off the house where I’d lived as a boy and saw an old locomotive of a woman wearing a red floral-print muumuu and bright green beach sandals charging off the porch next door. She had a toothy smile and was shaking her hands overhead as if she were bound for a revival tent and some of that old-time religion.
“Connie Lou?” Nana Mama cried. “Young lady, I believe you’ve lost weight since you came to see me summer before last!”
Connie Lou Parks was my mother’s brother’s widow. Aunt Connie had lost weight since we’d last seen her, but she was still built like a linebacker. When she heard my grandmother’s praise, however, her ample body trembled with pleasure, and she wrapped Nana Mama in her arms and kissed her noisily on the cheek.
“My God, Connie,” Nana Mama said. “There’s no need to slobber.”
My aunt thought that was hilarious and kissed her again.
My grandmother got her to stop by asking, “How’d you lose the weight?”
“I went on a cavewoman diet and started walking every day,” Aunt Connie declared proudly, and she laughed again. “Lost forty-seven pounds, and my diabetes numbers are better. Alex Cross, you come here now! Give me some sugar.”
She threw open her arms and bear-hugged me. Then she looked up at me with misted eyes. “Thank you for coming to help Stefan. It means the world to us.”
“Of course. I didn’t think twice about it,” I said.
“Sure you did, and that’s understandable,” she said matter-of-factly, and then she went to embrace Bree and the children, gushing over each of them in turn. Nana Mama always said my aunt Connie had never met a stranger. My grandmother was right. All my memories of her were filled with smiles and infectious laughter.