Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

He turned into a doorway.

I stepped in after him and found myself in a hospital room.

Chapter

85

Medical equipment filled two stainless-steel racks of shelves. An elaborate wheelchair stood empty in the corner. Glowing monitors were mounted on wall brackets above and to the sides of a hospital bed with high railings.

“Cat?” Pedelini said to the girl sitting up in the bed, straining to open her mouth to get the spoonful of food Tessa was offering. “This is Dr.

Cross. He wanted to meet you.”

The detective’s youngest took the spoonful, closed her mouth, and turned her eyes toward me. In a thick, garbled voice, she said, “Another one?”

Catrina Pedelini was her name, and she reminded me of a baby robin I’d seen once when I was walking with my mother to the linen factory. The newly hatched bird, sparse-feathered and bony and broken, had fallen from its nest. Cat Pedelini was all angles with a pigeon chest, a spine that arched to the left, and crippled hands and arms that curled back toward her torso so that she appeared to be holding something dear. Her face was at once disfigured and attractive.

“I’m not a medical doctor,” I said. “I’m here to see your father, but I’m very glad to meet you.”

“Dad needs a doctor?” she asked, looking to her father.

“He’s here about work, sweetheart,” Pedelini said, coming over to stroke the wispy silver-blond hair on her head. “You’re doing a good job.”

“I watch Criminal Minds after dinner?” she asked.

Tessa looked at me, said, “That’s Cat’s favorite show.”

“You eat everything on your plate, you can watch one episode before bath time,” Pedelini said.

She made a gurgling, pleased sound in her throat and then said, “But I use a bowl.”

“Bowl, then,” Pedelini said gently and kissed her on the head. “I’ll be in soon.”

The detective moved by me, back out into the hall, and I followed him to the kitchen, where his middle daughter said, “Braves up by one, Dad. When’s dinner?”

“There is a God after all,” Pedelini said as he passed. “And twenty-four minutes. Have a pretzel.”

“I’ve eaten almost the whole bag.”

“Another of life’s tragedies.”

He went down a short hall, out the screen door, and onto the deck.

“Tell me about Cat,” I said.

Pedelini shrugged, said, “She had a damaged gene to begin with, or so they tell me. But she was further damaged in the labor that took my Ellen. The official diagnosis is cerebral palsy.”

“She seems sharp,” I said.

“Very. She’s quite a girl. A fighter.”

The sheriff’s detective had tears in his eyes. He wiped at them.

“She why you take money from Finn Davis?” I asked.

“You have any idea what it’s taken to get her this far?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said.