Cross (Alex Cross 12)

I HAD ANOTHER SESSION with Kim Stafford, and when she came in, she was wearing dark sunglasses and looked like someone on the run. My stomach just about dropped to the ground floor of the brownstone. It struck me that my professional worlds were colliding on this case.

Now that I knew who Kim’s fiancé was, it was harder for me to respect her wish to keep him out of this. I wanted to confront this piece of crap in the worst way.

“Kim,” I said at one point, not too far into the session, “does Sam keep any weapons in the apartment?” Sam was the name we had agreed to use in our sessions; Sam was also the name of a bulldog that had bitten Kim when she was a little girl.

“A pistol in the nightstand,” she said.

I tried not to show the concern I was feeling, the alarm sounding loudly inside my head. “Has he ever pointed the gun at you? Threatened to use it?”

“Just once,” she said, and picked at the fabric of her skirt. “It was a while ago. If I’d thought he was serious, I would have left him.”

“Kim, I’d like to talk to you about a safety plan.”

“What do you mean?”

“Identifying some precautionary measures,” I said. “Setting aside money; keeping a packed suitcase somewhere; finding somewhere you could go—if you needed to leave quickly.”

I’m not sure why she took off her sunglasses at that moment, but this is when she chose to show me her black eye. “I can’t, Dr. Cross,” she said. “If I make a plan, I’ll use it. And then I think he truly would kill me.”

After my last session that day, I dialed into my voice mail before heading out. There was only one message. It was from Kay

la.

“Hey, it’s me. Well, hang on to your hat because Nana is letting me cook dinner for all of us tonight. In her kitchen! If I weren’t scared silly, I’d say I can’t wait. So, I’ve got a couple of house calls to make, and then I’m stopping at the store. Then I might shoot myself in the parking lot. If not, I’ll see you at home around six. That’s your house.”

It was already six when I got the message. I tried to put the troubling session with Kim Stafford out of my mind, but only partly succeeded. I hoped she was going to be okay, and I wasn’t sure if I should try to interfere just yet. By the time I got to Fifth Street and hurried inside, Kayla was ensconced in the kitchen. She was wearing Nana’s favorite apron and sliding a rib roast into the oven.

Nana sat erect at the kitchen table with an untouched glass of white wine in front of her. Now this was interesting stuff.

The kids were flitting around in the kitchen too, probably waiting to see how long Nana could sit still.

“How was your day, Daddy?” Jannie asked. “What’s the best thing that happened?” she said.

That brought a big smile from both of us. It was a question we liked to throw around the dinner table sometimes. We’d been doing it for years.

I thought about Kim Stafford, and then I thought about the Georgetown rape case and Nana’s reaction to my working on it. Thinking about Nana brought me right back to the present, to my answer to Jannie’s question.

“So far?” I said. “This is it. Being here with you guys is the best thing.”

Chapter 68

THINGS WERE HEATING UP NOW.

The Butcher hated the beach; he hated the sand, the smell of briny water, the bottlenecked traffic, everything about a visit to the crummy seashore. Caitlin and the boys, with their summertime trips to Cape May—they could have it, keep it, shove it.

So it was business, and business only, that brought him to the shore, much less all the way to South Jersey. It was revenge against John Maggione. The two of them had hated each other since Maggione’s father had permitted this “Irish crazy” to become his killer of choice. Then Sullivan had been ordered to take out one of Junior’s buddies, and the Butcher had done the job with his usual enthusiasm. He’d cut Rico Marinacci into pieces.

John Maggione had been making himself scarce lately—no surprise there—so the Butcher’s plan had changed a little, for now. If he couldn’t cut off the head just yet, he’d start with some other body part.

The part, in this case, was named Dante Ricci. Dante was the youngest made man in the Maggione syndicate, a personal favorite of the don’s. Like a son to him. The inside joke was that John Maggione didn’t let an associate wipe his ass without checking with Dante.

Sullivan got to the shore town of Mantoloking, New Jersey, just before dusk. As he drove across Barnegat Bay, the ocean in the distance looked almost purple—beautiful, if you liked that kind of picture-postcard, Kodak-moment thing. Sullivan rolled up his windows against the salt air. He couldn’t wait to do his business, then get the hell out of here.

The town itself lay on an expensive strip of land less than a mile across. Ricci’s house, on Ocean Avenue, wasn’t real hard to find. He drove past the front gate, parked up the road, and walked back about a fifth of a mile.

It looked like Ricci was doing pretty well for himself. The main house was a big honking Colonial: three stories, brown cedar shakes, all perfectly maintained, and right on the water. Four-bay garage, a guesthouse, hot tub up on the dune. Six million, easy. Just the kind of shiny object modern-day wiseguys dangled in front of their wives to distract them from the day-to-day stealing and killing they did for a living.

And Dante Ricci was a killer; that was what he did best. Hell, he was the new-and-improved Butcher.