Cross My Heart (Alex Cross 21)

“No,” she replied. “He says it’s on us.”

“We could ask his advice, right?”

“Not until Monday,” she said. “He told Nana he’s taking his family to Delaware for the holiday because there’s nothing more for his crew to do until the electrician’s finished.”

I took her in my arms, holding her gingerly because of the ribs, and said, “I love it when you talk construction.”

Bree snickered, rolled her head around, and said, “Well, then, once Ali has finished his show and gone to bed, why don’t we take Nana’s advice?”

“Really? With your ribs like that?”

“We’ll try, okay?”

“As long as you promise to use words like hammer and nail and saw.”

“You have so little imagination, love of my life,” my wife said, very amused. “I was thinking maybe a little plumbing and stud work?”

“Ooooh,” I said before my cell phone rang.

“Don’t,” Bree said.

“Got to,” I said, and answered. “Alex Cross.”

“This is Evelyn Owens at Balboa Naval Medical Center. Am I calling at a good time?”

I looked mournfully at my wife, thought fleetingly of plumbing and stud work, but then said, “Yes, Dr. Owens. It’s a very good time.”

Chapter

89

I showed up at St. Elizabeths around eight in the morning on Good Friday. Bree had decided to take the day off so she wouldn’t miss Jannie’s track meet. Sampson had a dentist appointment. And I hadn’t bothered to contact DA Brown. I wanted Carney all to myself and to Dr. Nelson, who would tape and observe from his office.

When I entered the young patrolman’s room, the head of his bed was raised. He wore hospital scrubs instead of a johnny, but his ankles were still lashed down. Even though Nelson said he had backed off on the painkillers, Carney looked like he’d just woken up after a night of very hard drinking, a night when he might have blacked out and gone on a rampage.

“Tell me about your mother,” I said after I’d taken the chair opposite him.

Carney gazed over at me with zero affect for a beat before I caught the slightest ripple of hairless skin at his temples.

“She died when I was a baby,” he said at last. “I never really knew her. Or my dad. He died in prison. I was an orphan. Ward of the State of Florida.”

“Tough being cut off like that, no parents. Happened to me when I was ten. They put me in an orphanage until my grandmother came for me.”

The young patrolman chewed on that, nodded. “I don’t remember much of the orphanage. An older couple, the Carneys—Tim and Judy—adopted me when I was two. I grew up with them in Pensacola, joined the marines right out of high school. My adoptive parents died in a car crash around the same time I survived the bombing in Afghanistan. I didn’t even find out they were gone until I got stateside.”

“So you were orphaned twice?”

“Guess you could say that,” Carney replied, and then pursed his lips. “Why are

you asking me these things?”

Clearing my throat, I said, “I’m trying to see if what you believe is real jibes with what I know to be real.”

Carney turned defensive. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re lying to me. Or at least that you’ve suppressed the facts so deep that your lies seem absolutely like the truth to you.”

“No, I…” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective. What do you think I’m lying about?”