Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

Bree looked at us skeptically. “So how does he explain it?”

“He doesn’t,” Naomi said. “Stefan says he bought the saw, took it out of the packaging at home, and put it in the basement with the rest of the gear he’d bought to go hunting.”

“How many ways into that basement?” Bree asked.

“Three,” Naomi replied. “From Stefan’s place, from Sydney Fox’s place, and through a bulkhead door out back. No sign of forced entry there.”

I lifted the binoculars and aimed them into the old quarry again, at that spot on the rocks where a thirteen-year-old boy had suffered and died.

“I want to go down there,” I said. “See it up close.”

“They’ve got the old road across from the church chained off, and it’s a fair walk in,” Naomi said. “At least twenty minutes off the main road. You’ll want bug spray, long pants, and long sleeves because of the chiggers. There’s poison sumac too.”

“We can’t leave a ninety-year-old in a car that long in this heat,” Bree said. “We’ll take Nana Mama home, get what we need, and come back.”

For the second time that morning, I saluted my wife.

Chapter

25

We reached Loupe Street fifteen minutes later. Ali was still watching television, an adventure-hunting show featuring a big affable guy in a black cowboy hat.

“You ever heard of Jim Shockey?” Ali asked.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“He goes to all these, like, uncharted places and he hunts, like, ibex in Turkey and sheep in Outer Mongolia.”

“Outer Mongolia?” I said, looking closer at the screen and seeing a line of what I guessed were Mongolians with packs climbing some remote mountain with Shockey, the big guy in the black cowboy hat.

“Yeah, it’s dope,” Ali said, eyes fixed on the screen. “I didn’t know you could do things like this.”

“Outer Mongolia interest you?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“That’s right, why not?” I said, and I went upstairs to change.

Naomi decided to stay behind and work on her opening statement. Nana Mama was making herself and Ali grilled cheese and green tomato sandwiches when Bree and I left.

We had the crime scene files and photographs with us as we approached the church again. The groundskeeper was finished and loading his mower onto a trailer. I looked for the chained-off and overgrown road that Naomi had shown us on the way out.

“Nana Mama’s right,” Bree said. “That is a beautiful cemetery.”

I looked up the rolling hill beyond the church, saw rows of tombstones and monuments. I remembered something my uncle Clifford had said two nights ago and something else my grandmother had said earlier this morning.

I pulled over, threw the Explorer in park, and said, “Wait here a second.”

I went to the groundskeeper, introduced myself, and asked him a few questions. His answers gave me chills up and down my spine.

Back in the car, I said, “Short detour before we go to the quarry.”

“Where are we going?”

“The cemetery,” I said, swallowing my emotions and putting the car in gear. “I think my parents are buried up there.”

Bree thought that over quietly for a few beats and then said, “You think?”