The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross 25)

“You think you know that reason?” Bree said.

“Show her the pair first,” Sampson said.

Fox typed a third time and showed Bree a split screen featuring school portraits of two teenage girls, both blond, both very cute.

“That’s seventeen-year-old Ginny Krauss on the left,” Fox said. “Alison Dane, sixteen, is on the right. Both girls disappeared nearly seven months ago from rural Hillsgrove, Pennsylvania.”

Bree frowned. “I haven’t heard anything about this.”

“Because the families and police up there have kept it mostly quiet,” Fox said. “The parents of both girls are devout Christians. They and the sheriff’s investigators believe the girls ran away because of their parents’ extreme views about the evils of lesbianism.”

“The girls are gay?” Bree said.

“And in love, evidently,” Fox said, and she typed again.

She pulled up a photograph of a blue Toyota Camry in a muddy clearing in the woods. The rear and front windows were blown out, and the driver’s door was ajar, revealing shattered glass on the seats.

“The day after the girls failed to come home, sheriff’s investigators found Alison’s car at a popular party and make-out spot in a clearing way out in the state forest,” Fox said, typing some more. “Now here’s the change in pattern.”

Bree sat forward when she saw a handsome little boy.

“Timmy ‘Deuce’ Walker,” Fox said. “Twelve years old. The same day the girls go missing, Deuce vanishes from his neighborhood, which is less than a mile from where the car was found. A month later, a hiker discovers Deuce’s remains in the woods roughly six miles from where the girls’ car was.”

“You think they’re all related?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Fox said, typing.

The screen jumped to a web page that displayed the photos of the missing women against a backdrop of chalk outlines of bodies on a pavement. Across the top of the page there was a platinum wig that looked like Marilyn Monroe’s hairdo the night she sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy.

Below the wig, letters that looked like melting red wax spelled out the site’s name: www.Killingblondechicks4fun.org.co.

CHAPTER

9

I STUDIED FATHER Fiore and saw the priest’s anguish. I took a deep breath, let it out, and said, in sincere sympathy, “That is a doozy of a dilemma, Father.”

“It’s torn me apart,” Fiore said, tears welling. “I want what I can’t have.”

I didn’t know what to say; not at first, anyway.

But then I asked, “Do you think God lays out a path for all of us?”

“I do,” he said without hesitation.

“So you think you were meant to meet Penny and her sons?”

“I believe that’s true. But why? As a test of my faith?”

“I don’t think anyone could ever question your faith, Father. And I don’t think this is a lesser-of-two-evils situation. More like the greater of two goods.”

“I don’t follow,” Fiore said.

I set my notepad aside. “If you stay a priest, you’ll sacrifice personal happiness to continue to help the poor and the members of your congregation. But if you leave, you could find similar, rewarding work, marry Penny, and raise her sons with as much love as possible, which is a noble thing too.”

He thought about that. A sharp knock came at my outer door.

“I should go,” Fiore said, looking at the time.