Cross (Alex Cross 12)

“I live in the neighborhood. Brooklyn’s like being in a small town sometimes. Always been that way. Besides, Sully called me when it was done. He wanted to share.”

Sampson shifted all the way around to face him. “So Sullivan’s not coming here to collect his family. Isn’t he afraid for them?”

I was still watching Tony Mullino in the rearview. I thought maybe I knew what he was going to say next.

“This isn’t his family,” he said. “He doesn’t even know who they are.”

“Who’s in the house then?”

“I don’t know who they are. Central casting. A family that might look like Sully’s.”

“You work for him?” I asked Mullino.

“No. But he’s been a good friend. I was the one afraid of getting my face messed up in school, not him. Sully always protected me. So I helped him. I’d do it again. Hell, I helped him kill his crazy old man.”

“Why’d you come out here?” I asked him next.

“That one’s easy. He told me to.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You’ll have to ask him. Maybe because he likes to take a bow after a job well done. He does that, y’know. Takes a bow. You don’t want to see it.”

“I already have,” I told him.

Mullino opened the back door of the car, nodded his head to us, and then he was gone into the night.

And so, I knew, was the Butcher.

Chapter 103

WHAT’S THAT OLD LINE, new line, whatever it is—life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans?

I went back to Washington that night because I wanted to see the kids, and because of Nana Mama, and because I had patients who depended on me and were scheduled for the next day. Nana has always preached that it’s important for me to be helping people; She calls it my curse. She’s probably right.

I could clearly see Michael Sullivan’s face, his little bow, and it killed me that he was still out there somewhere. According to the FBI, the mob had already put a million-dollar price tag on his head, and another million on his family. I still had a suspicion that he might be an FBI or police informant, and that one or the other was helping to protect him, but I didn’t know that for sure, and maybe I never would.

On one of the nights after Sullivan escaped, a school night for the kids, I sat out on the sunporch and played rock and roll on the piano for Jannie and Damon. I played until it was almost ten. Then I talked to the kids about their mother. It was time.

Chapter 104

I’M NOT SURE why I needed to tell them about Maria now, but I wanted the kids to have some more of the truth about her.

Maybe I wanted them to have the closure that I couldn’t get myself. I had never lied about Maria to the kids, but I had held back, and . . . no, I had lied about one thing. I’d told Damon and Jannie that I wasn’t with Maria when she was shot, but that I got to St. Anthony’s before she died, and we’d had a few last words. The reason was that I didn’t want to have to tell them details that I could never get out of my own head: the sound of the gunshots that felled Maria; the sharp intake of her breath the instant she was hit; the way she slid from my arms to the sidewalk. Then the unforgettable sight of blood pouring from Maria’s chest, and my realization that the wounds were fatal. I still could remember it with nightmare clarity more than ten years later.

“I’ve been thinking about your mom lately,” I said that night on the porch. “I’ve been thinking about her a lot. You guys probably know that already.”

The kids were gathered around close, suspecting this wasn’t one of our usual talks. “She was a special person in so many ways. So many ways, Damon and Jannie. Her eyes were alive and always honest. She was a listener. And that’s usually a sign of a good person. I think it is anyway. She loved to smile and to make other people smile if she possibly could. She used to say, ‘Here’s a cup of sadness, and here’s a cup of joy, which do you choose?’ She almost always chose the cup of joy.”

“Almost always?” asked Jannie.

“Almost always. Think about it, Janelle. You’re smart. She chose me, didn’t she? All the cute boys she could have had, she chose this puss, this dour personality.”

Janelle and Damon smiled; then Damon said, “This is because the one who killed her is back? Why we’re talking about our mother now?”

“That’s part of it, Day. But lately I realized I had unfinished business with her. And with the two of you. That’s why we’re talking, okay?”

Damon and Janelle listened in silence, and I talked for a long while. Eventually, I choked up. I think it was the first time I’d let them see me cry about Maria. “I loved