Merry Christmas, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 19)

CHAPTER

35

SWEAT BROKE OUT ON FOWLER’S BROW, MAKING HIM LOOK GREASY. “WHAT IS that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

I tossed the shirt to the wounded doctor’s wife. “Get the straight pins out of this thing. We’ll use it as a clean dressing.”

“What the hell are you doing, Cross?” he said, jittery. “Just—just what the hell are you doing?”

I turned back to Fowler. “However this turns out, it’ll be better for you without a murder charge on your hands. I want to help Barry make it through so that you can atone for what you’ve done already.”

Fowler narrowed eyes that had turned black and beady. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s your only hope of redemption,” I said, opening the vodka bottle. “The only thing that you can do that will make this all seem, hell, justifiable.”

“All the pins are out of the shirt, Mr. Cross,” Diana said. “What now?”

I ignored Fowler and knelt beside her wounded husband. I poured about a cup of the Absolut over and into the entry wound. The sting and burn of the vodka contacting the traumatized area startled the doctor, causing him to groan and come awake for a few seconds.

Nicholson’s eyes opened but didn’t focus. Diana leaned in closer to him and whispered, “I love you, Barry,” before his eyes closed again.

She didn’t whisper softly enough. Fowler heard it too, and it destroyed whatever doubt and whatever hope I might have sown in his disturbed mind.

Fowler lifted the shotgun, and fired…right through the ceiling, almost directly over his head. It was deafening, and it made a gaping hole.

“Get away from him right now, Cross, or you’re going to have a hole in you.”

The phone rang. I grabbed it and shouted: “No one is hurt! This is Cross.”

I tossed the phone and returned to Nicholson, hearing Fowler run the pump action on the shotgun. “Who said you could answer the phone?” he said.

“Give me a minute with him, Henry, and then the attention will be right back where you want it. Please?”

I don’t know if it was the word please or the promise of undivided attention, but something brought Fowler back to a few seconds of sanity.

“Do what you want,” he said, returning to the coffee table and the remaining lines of meth. “Take the bullet out with a steak knife and a fork, for all I care.”

I poured vodka on my hands, took the shirt from Diana, and ripped it in half. I unbuckled the belt that held the throw pillow to Nicholson’s back, and his wife and I rolled him up onto his side so I could pour vodka into the exit wound; I prayed that the alcohol would kill some of the bacteria that had to be spreading in the doctor’s abdomen. The pillow was wet with blood as well as a yellowish fluid, which couldn’t be good. I hit the area with an extra dose of vodka. Then I drenched the rag, folded it, and pressed it to the wound.

As I did, I heard Fowler snorting the last of his meth. Good, I thought. He’ll be about as unbalanced chemically as he can be when I try to really unbalance him. We set Nicholson down gently and then dressed the entry wound with the second vodka-soaked piece of the shirt.

“You think your Boy Scout first aid is going to help him?” Fowler jeered. “You just wasted perfectly good vodka on him.”

He was probably right. What I’d done was Civil War–era medicine.

“Why, hello, offspring,” Fowler said, and then started to sing. “‘Welcome, welcome, Christmas Day.’”

I turned and saw him standing a few feet from the twins, holding the shotgun and one of the semiautomatic rifles. His children cowered, crouched against the fireplace.

“Don’t be scared, boys and girls,” he said. “We’re all in Whoville. And we need everyone to sing and greet Christmas.”

“Henry,” I said.

He ignored me and shouted, “On your feet! We’ve got to sing so the Grinch comes down from the mountain!”

Crying, the twins stood up. So did Trey, who turned as pale as a ghost when his father fired the rifle toward the drapes and screamed: “Sing!”

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