Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

“Pregnant?” Drummond said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Still early, Sarge,” Johnson said, digging out his phone and walking away. “End of the first trimester. Twins.”

The sergeant frowned, looked at me. “I would have liked to have learned that sooner.”

“It matter?” I asked.

“Course it matters,” Drummond grumbled. “As it stands now, I will do everything I can to keep Detective Johnson from screwing himself into harm’s way and depriving those babies of their father.”

“You’re a man of hidden virtues, Sergeant,” I said.

He looked at me with that slack, scarred face, said, “That’s not virtue, just common sense. It’s just me and my wife, and she’s got a good job that pays better than mine. But Johnson’s got three people depending on him now. Do the math. Tell me where my priorities should be when the shit hits the fan.”

Crusty as he was, Sergeant Drummond was beginning to grow on me.

Chapter

56

Pleasant Lake, North Carolina

Pinkie Parks gestured through the windshield to a gravel lane ahead that cut off the highway and dropped steeply to the lake. “There it is.”

Bree pulled the blue Ford Taurus she’d rented that morning over onto the shoulder and put it in park.

“Not much to see from here,” Pinkie said. “You’d want to be in the woods.”

Bree picked up a pair of binoculars and said, “Then let’s go into the woods.”

Once Pinkie learned that Alex had gone to Florida and that Bree was focusing on Marvin Bell and Finn Davis, he’d insisted on helping her. But now he raised his eyebrow, said, “You looking to kick a hornet’s nest?”

She frowned. “These woods are known for hornets?”

“These woods are known for Marvin Bell and Finn Davis, which is the same thing, way I see it.”

“Suit yourself,” Bree said, opening the door. “I’ll be back.”

Pinkie groaned but got out as well. It was hazy, hot, and humid. They waited until traffic died and then cut down the steep embankment and entered a thorny raspberry thicket. Pinkie led the way, clawing through it until they emerged into piney woods where crickets were sawing.

Below them and out several hundred yards, Bree could see the clean waters of Pleasant Lake. She heard outboard motors and kids laughing.

Pinkie went down a game path that led through the trees growing on the slope above the lake’s eastern shore. Bree followed, her brain going back to everything they’d learned that morning about Marvin Bell and Finn Davis.

After renting the car, she and Pinkie had gone to the Stark County Recorder’s Office and gotten online with the North Carolina secretary of state’s office, looking into the two men’s business interests. Together and individually, Bell and Davis owned five businesses in and around Starksville: a liquor store, a dry-cleaning shop, two automated car washes, and a pawn-and-loan operation.

Pinkie smartly noted that all five businesses would generate and bring in a lot of cash. Convenient if you’re also involved in some sort of illegal cash-intensive business.

But Bree had zero jurisdiction here. She couldn’t get to databases that might give her a look at the businesses’ bank accounts.

On a whim, Bree accessed public databases in Nevada and Delaware because both states had incorporation and tax laws that made them attractive for people interested in creating shell companies. Though there was nothing in Nevada, she was pleased to find that Marvin Bell and Finn Davis were listed as registered agents of six Delaware companies, three apiece. All six corporations had been organized for the purpose of “real estate acquisition and development.”

Which, in a roundabout way, led Bree to look up their real estate holdings in Stark County. To her and Pinkie’s surprise, neither man appeared to own any property in the area.

Pinkie said that simply wasn’t true, that Bell owned all sorts of property in Stark County, beginning with an estate on Pleasant Lake. When they looked up the lakefront property, they found it was owned by one of Marvin Bell’s Delaware companies and carried an assessed value of $3.1 million, which made Bree want to see the place.

Alex had told her to hang back, to stay to the outside, but Bree wasn’t planning to climb over the fence Marvin Bell had around his compound. She just wanted to look over it, get a sense of how the man lived.

Pinkie motioned to Bree to stop. She did, next to a young, fat pine tree that smelled of sap and blocked her view of the lake.