Roses Are Red (Alex Cross 6)

I looked over at the MRI machine, and it was state-of-the-art. It was more open and less restraining than others I’d seen. I’d had two MRIs, so I knew the drill. Jannie would be lying flat inside. Her head would be immobilized on either side by “sandbags.” The image of Jannie alone inside the imposing machine was disturbing. But so was her third seizure in two days.

“Can she hear us?” I asked.

Nana cupped her hands to her ears. “She’s listening to music in there. But you can hold her hand, Alex. She knows your touch.”

I reached out and took one of Jannie’s hands. I squeezed gently, and she squeezed back. She knew it was me.

“What happened while I was gone?” I asked Nana.

“We were lucky, so lucky,” she said. “Dr. Petito stopped by on his rounds. He was talking to Jannie when she had another grand mal. He ordered the MRI, and they had an opening for her. Actually, they stayed open for her.”

I sat down because I needed to. It had been a long and stressful day and it wasn’t over yet. My heart was still racing; so was my head. The rest of my body was struggling to catch up.

“Don’t start blaming yourself,” Nana told me. “Like I said, we’re very lucky. The best doctor in the hospital was right there in her room.”

“I’m not blaming anybody,” I muttered, knowing it wasn’t true.

Nana frowned. “If you had been there during the seizure, she’d still be here having the MRI. And in case you think it could have been the boxing, Dr. Petito said there’s almost no chance. The contact was too minimal. It’s something else, Alex.”

That was exactly what I was afraid of. We waited for the test to be over, and it was a long, hard wait. Finally, Jannie slowly slid out of the machine. Her little face brightened when she saw me.

“Fugees,” she said, then took off the earphones for me to hear. “Killing me softly with his song,” she sang along with the music. “Hello, Daddy. You said you’d come back. Kept your promise.”

“I did.” I bent down to kiss her. “How are you, sweetie?” I asked. “You feeling okay now?”

“They played some really nice music for me,” she said. “I’m hanging in there, hanging tough. I can’t wait to see the pictures of my brain, though.”

Neither could I, neither could I. Dr. Petito had waited around for the pictures. He never seemed to leave the hospital. I met with him in his office at a little past eleven-thirty. I was beyond tired. We both were.

“Long day for you,” I said. Every day seemed to be like that for Petito. The neurologist had office hours starting at seven-thirty in the morning, and he was still around the hospital at nine and ten o’clock at night, sometimes later. He actually encouraged patients to call him at home if they had a problem or just got scared at night.

“This is my life.” He shrugged. “Helped get me divorced a few years back.” He yawned. “Keeping me single now. That and my fear of attachment. I love it, though.”

I nodded and thought that I understood. Then I asked the question that was burning in my mind. “What did you find? Is she all right?”

He shook his head slowly, then he spoke the words I hadn’t wanted to hear. “I’m afraid there’s a tumor. I’m pretty certain that it’s a pilocytic astrocytoma, a kind of tumor that strikes the very young. We’ll confirm that after the surgery. It’s located in her cerebellum. The tumor is large, and it’s life threatening. I’m sorry to have to give you that news.”

I spent another night at the hospital with Jannie. She fell asleep holding my hand again.

Chapter 31

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING my beeper went off. I made a call and got bad news from Sandy Greenberg, a friend who worked at Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France.

A woman named Lucy Rhys-Cousins had been savagely murdered in a London supermarket. She was killed while her children looked on. Sandy told me the police in London suspected that the killer was her husband, Geoffrey Shafer, a man I knew as the Weasel.

I couldn’t believe it. Not now. Not the Weasel. “Was it Shafer or not?” I asked Sandy. “Do you know for certain?”

“It’s him, Alex, though we won’t confirm it for the press vermin. Scotland Yard is positive. The children recognized him. Their mad-hatter daddy! He killed their mother right before their eyes.”

Geoffrey Shafer had been responsible for Christine’s kidnapping. He had also committed several grisly murders in the Southeast section of Washington. He’d preyed on the poor and defenseless. The news that he might be alive, and killing again, was like a swift, sudden punch below the belt. I knew it would be even worse for Christine to learn about Shafer.

I called her at home from St. Anthony’s but got her answering machine. I talked calmly to the machine. “Christine, pick up if you’re there. It’s Alex. Please, pick up. It’s important that I talk to you.”

Still, no one picked up at Christine’s. I knew that Shafer couldn’t be here in Washington — and yet I worried about the possibility that he could be. His pattern was to do the unexpected. The goddamn Weasel!

I checked my watch. It was 7:00 A.M. Sometimes Christine went to the school on Saturday. I decided to head over to the Sojourner Truth School, anyway. It wasn’t far.

Chapter 32