Merry Christmas, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 19)

I swallowed, stepped up onto the brick entry. The front door swung all the way open. A dark center hall loomed straight ahead. Then I saw the figure of a fat little boy run through the darkness, sobbing, and disappear toward the right.

The night was so quiet that for one crazy moment I thought I could hear snowflakes landing. I stepped into the front hallway. The door shut, and I immediately heard Fowler behind me, breathing heavily.

“Merry Christmas, Cross,” he said, and turned on the lights, revealing velvet-flocked wallpaper, really expensive stuff, on both sides of the hall.

“Same to you, Mr. Fowler,” I said.

“Hands on the wall,” he said. “You know the drill.” He cackled. “Always have wanted to say that to a cop.”

I said nothing, just put my hands on the wall and spread my legs.

“Hope I didn’t make a mistake letting you into the house,” Fowler said.

“Well, that makes two of us,” I said before I felt the cold steel of a pistol muzzle pressed against the back of my neck.

CHAPTER

17

FOWLER DID A DAMN NEAR PROFESSIONAL JOB OF FRISKING ME. PROBABLY because he himself had been the subject of a body search at least thirty times in the last few years. The gun came away from the back of my neck.

“Fingers laced behind your head,” he said. “Then walk, and turn right at the end of the hall. If I see your fingers slip or get any sense you’re trying to turn on me, I’ll shoot first, Cross, and ask no questions later.”

I took the man at his word, put my hands where he wanted them, and walked to where his son had disappeared.

“There’s an overstuffed chair on your immediate right,” Fowler said. “Sit in it, hands on your lap.”

It looked like someone had fought a small war in the living room. A large Christmas tree was on its side, branches crushed or snapped by buckshot, its ornaments shattered, its lights out. The debris from the earlier shoot-up of the gifts was everywhere, the remnants almost unrecognizable: pieces of metal from the iPad, bits of gold from whatever Nicholson had had wrapped in the Tiffany box.

To my dismay, the window curtains had all been drawn. No one from the outside could see me, Fowler, or the three children and three adults lying on their bellies on the floor beside the ruins of the Christmas tree. I could feel the pleading hope and fear in their eyes, eyes that were red from fatigue and tension and crying.

An extremely attractive, fit, country-club kind of woman, Diana Nicholson wore only jeans and a black jogging bra. I had no idea what that was about. Her new husband was a big handsome guy who looked like he’d just walked off a sailboat. Everything about him screamed wealth and privilege except for his green-and-red Christmas sweater, which was slit down the back, nearly in two pieces.

I had no idea what that was about either.

The congressman’s wife, Melissa Brandywine, was lying next to Nicholson and his wife. A society-page regular, she had copper-colored hair that looked as if it’d just been styled at the salon. Her makeup was flawless too. But she was shaking uncontrollably, as if she were freezing. Why had Fowler involved her? Was it on purpose? Or had she just blundered into the crisis?

The children were an even sorrier sight than the grown-ups, maybe because they were kids in their pajamas and it was Christmas and their innocence had been destroyed. Young Trey was sucking his thumb. Chloe hugged a throw pillow that featured holly, red ribbons, and bells. Her twin, Jeremy, stared at nothing. I saw a dark stain on his pajama pants and realized the poor kid had been so frightened and humiliated by his father t

hat he’d peed his pants.

So I already hated Fowler when he came around in front of me and showed me just how far he’d fallen since his glory days on K Street and in the courtroom. In place of the Italian suits he’d favored, he wore filthy jeans and a torn army-surplus jacket. He’d lost fifty or sixty pounds since those days. His eyes were sunken in his head. Several of his teeth were missing. There were scabs on his face that had been picked at and oozed. He carried a Glock 19 and a Remington shotgun that had been crudely sawed off.

Fowler stared at me for an uncomfortable few seconds, then he smiled, really showing off the rotting gaps where his teeth had been.

“You have time for a joke, Cross?” he asked. “Lighten things up a bit? Holiday spirit and all that?”

CHAPTER

18

I WAS BEGINNING TO FEEL IT, THE TURMOIL FOWLER SEEMED TO SECRETE FROM every pore. I could smell it too. He reeked of that weird sour body odor that follows crazy people who live on the street too long.

“So there’s this ignorant, oblivious man,” Fowler began. “He’s sitting on the veranda of his rented bungalow in St. John’s with his trophy wife. Beautiful sunset. Glowing tans. They’re drinking from a marvelous bottle of burgundy grand cru from the Côte d’Or. His wife says, ‘I love you.’ The man looks over and says, ‘Is that you talking, or is it the wine?’ She looks at him as if he’s a fool and says, ‘Actually, dear, I was talking to the wine.’”

Fowler looked around the room. Nobody was laughing. If anything, they were all even more terrified than before he’d told his joke.

“You remember that, don’t you, Diana?” Fowler asked.