Hope to Die (Alex Cross 22)

“Yes,” I said, as if I were talking about the paperboy and not a psychopath. But my only hope was to be dispassionate about doing what Mulch wanted, seeing it as a means to an end and nothing more.

After another long silence, Ava asked, “What does he want proof of?”

I glanced over to find her studying me intently. She was intuitive and smart, and I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Alex?”

I swallowed hard and said, “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

She hardened. “I’m your friend in this, you know.”

“I know you are, Ava,” I said, feeling raw emotion get the better of dispassion. “I just can’t talk about it until I figure out a few things. You’re gonna have to trust me until then.”

I could see she wanted to argue, but she bit her lip and did not reply.

We stopped in Charleston around eleven that morning and had an early lunch in a greasy-spoon café on the wrong side of town. Not surprisingly, we got a little scrutiny from the locals, both black and white.

I guess it wasn’t often they saw a big African American male in his forties traveling with a seventeen-year-old white girl sporting tats and multiple piercings, but we had other deadly things on our minds and did our best to ignore the looks.

A waitress put a check in front of me and a piece of apple pie with vanilla ice cream in front of Ava. She’d already demolished a double cheeseburger, a hot dog, and two orders of fries, but she dug into her dessert like a starving woman as the waitress left.

I put down money for the tab along with a generous tip. When Ava finished and the waitress returned, she saw the tip and smiled. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Is there a Verizon store close?”

“Sure,” she said, gesturing over my shoulder. “Mile down the street.”

“How about an electronics store?”

“They’re all right there,” she said. “It’s a strip mall. Can’t miss it.”

“Appreciate it,” I said. I tossed Ava the keys, and we headed for the door.

“Verizon?” Ava asked as we climbed into the car.

“I need a satellite connection and a data plan.”

“Electronics store?”

“A video camera.”

She thought about that, said, “For proof?”

I nodded but said nothing more about it. We left Charleston shortly after noon with a satellite broadband modem and a GoPro high-definition camera. I had the modem plugged into Jannie’s computer and it was working like a dream. Neither my Internet connection at home nor the one at my office had ever worked that fast.

“Keep north,” I said, typing on the keyboard until I found what I was looking for and then dialing the general phone number of the Morgantown Detachment of the West Virginia State Police.

When a female trooper answered, I said I was John Sampson, a DC homicide detective, and I was trying to track down the lead investigator in a twenty-five-year-old case out of Buckhannon.

“Twenty-five years?” she said skeptically. “I don’t know if … who was the investigator?”

“Atticus Jones?” I said.

There was a long pause at the other end of the line before she replied, “Well, if you’re going to talk to him, Detective Sampson, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be quick about it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Last I heard, poor Atticus had terminal cancer.”