Four Blind Mice (Alex Cross 8)

“Did you take any drugs?” she asked.

Damon looked at me, then at Dr. Coles. “I don’t do drugs. It’s dumb.”

“But your friends do? Do you have dumb friends?”

“I was trying to help him. That’s all.”

Dr. Coles’s look was severe, but then she nodded. “You probably saved your friend’s life.”

Damon and I waited in the bleak, foul-smelling room until we heard the news that Ramon would make it. This time. Kayla Coles stayed there the whole time. She hovered over Ramon like a guardian angel. Damon got to say a few words to Ramon before they took him to a waiting ambulance. I saw him clasp his friend’s hands. It was nearly two in the morning when we finally made our way out of the row house.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded, but then his body started to shake, and he finally began to sob against my arm. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” I consoled him.

I put my arm around Damon’s shoulder, and we headed home.

Chapter 60

THOMAS STARKEY, BROWNLEY Harris, and Warren Griffin took separate flights to New York City, all leaving out of Raleigh-Durham Airport. It was safer and a lot smarter that way, and they always worked under the assumption that they were the best after all. They couldn’t make mistakes, especially now.

Starkey was on the five o’clock out of North Carolina. He planned to meet the others at the Palisade Motel in Highland Falls, New York, just outside the United States Military Academy at West Point. There was going to be a murder there. Two murders, actually.

Then this long mission would be over.

What was it Martin Sheen’s commanding officer had told him in Apocalypse Now? “Remember this, Captain. There is no mission. There never was a mission.” Starkey couldn’t help thinking that this job had been like that for them, a long haul. Each of the murders had been complicated. This was Starkey’s fourth trip to New York in the past two months. He still didn’t even know who he was working for; he’d never met the bastard.

In spite of everything, he felt confident as the Delta flight took off that evening. He talked to the flight attendant but avoided the kind of innocent flirting he might engage in under other circumstances. He didn’t want to be remembered, so he stuck his face in a Tom Clancy thriller he’d picked up at the airport. Starkey identified with Clancy characters like Jack Clark and John Patrick Ryan.

Once the jet leveled off and drinks were served, Starkey went over his plan for the final murders. It was all in his head; nothing was ever written down. It was in Harris’s and Griffin’s head too. He hoped they didn’t get into any trouble before he got to the Point tonight. There was a raunchy strip club in nearby New Windsor called the Bed Room, but they’d promised they’d stay at the hotel.

Finally, Starkey sat back, closed his eyes, and started doing the math again. It was a comforting ritual, especially now that they were close to the end.

$100,000 apiece for the first three hits.

$150,000 for the fourth.

$200,000 for the fifth.

$250,000 for West Point.

$500,000 bonus when the entire job was done.

It was almost over.

And Starkey still didn’t know who was paying for the murders, or why.

Chapter 61

SHARP, STEEP CLIFFS of granite overlooked the Hudson River at West Point. Starkey knew the area well. Later that night he drove down the main drag in Highland Falls, passing cheesy-looking motels, pizza shops, souvenir stands. He went through Thayer Gate with its turreted sentry tower and stone-faced MP on guard. Murder at West Point, he thought. Man, oh man.

Starkey put the job out of his mind for another few moments. He let impressions of West Point wash over him. Impressions and memories. Starkey had been a cadet here, been a plebe like the two youngsters he saw jogging back to barracks now. In his day, he’d shouted the cadet motto, “Always the hard way, sir!” a thousand times if he shouted it once.

God, he loved it here: the attitude, the discipline, the whole physical plant.

The Cadet Chapel stood high on a hillside overlooking the Plain. A cross between a medieval cathedral and a fortress, it still dominated the entire landscape. The campus was filled with mammoth gray-stone buildings, which created a fortress effect. An overwhelming sense of solidarity and permanence. Soon to be shaken badly.

Harris and Griffin were waiting for him on the grounds. For the next hour, they took turns watching the Bennett house on Bartlett Loop, an area of West Point reserved for officers and their families. The house was redbrick with white trim and plenty of ivy creeping up the walls. Smoke curled lazily from the stone chimney. It was a four-bedroom, two-bath unit. On the housing map it was designated as Quarters 130.