Hope to Die (Alex Cross 22)

“It’s a date,” she said, and she smiled wistfully.

Then she realized it had been months since she’d had a proper date.

But rather than dwell on the state of her own nonexistent love life, Aaliyah got back on 95 and drove, once again going through the facts of the case as she knew them. As she passed the exit for Greenbelt, her phone rang. John Sampson.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“On my way in,” she said.

“Just talked to Mahoney. FBI lab made a preliminary match on the skin samples,” he said. “They came from the same bodies.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But better to know.”

“I’ll be there in forty minutes, tops.”

“See you then.”

“Wait a second,” she blurted. “Could you transfer me to the ME’s office? Rodriguez? She did the autopsies.”

He grunted and she heard him punching in numbers and then a ringing. Aaliyah had expected the pathologist’s voice mail, but there was a click.

“Amy Rodriguez.”

“This is Tess Aaliyah.”

“Detective,” Rodriguez said. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Aaliyah said. “But I was just wondering what the odds were of Bree Stone getting pregnant despite the uterine scarring?”

There was a long pause before the pathologist replied and flipped everything about the case right on its head.

CHAPTER

48

I REACHED THE KRAFT SCHOOL in the Berkshires around eight thirty that evening, pulled up to the gate and showed my ID to a security guard, who recognized my name.

“Everyone’s in shock over your son’s murder,” she said sadly. “I didn’t know him, but I knew who he was, always happy, always smiling. I’m so very sorry for your loss, sir, and I’m praying for Damon’s soul. And your wife’s.”

Every word burned into my heart and brought new stinging to my eyes. “Thank you, I appreciate that. I really do. Can you tell me where I can find the new headmaster, Mr. Pelham?”

“I’d try his office in the administration building, Wiggs Hall,” the guard said. “If he’s not there, he’s in the chapel.”

I thanked her again, wiped my eyes with my sleeve, and drove into the campus, dreading the fact that I would have to go into Damon’s room before the night was over. Steeling myself, I parked in the visitors’ lot, got out of the car I’d rented at the Albany Airport, and headed up the walkway, past the admissions building, where Damon had worked as a tour guide. More than two hundred kids attended Kraft, and it was an unseasonably warm spring night, but I didn’t see a single student around.

Wiggs Hall was beyond admissions, a big stone building covered in ivy. The front door was unlocked, and I went inside, smelled wood polish and then cigarette smoke. The door to the headmaster’s suite was ajar. I knocked lightly and pushed it open, finding the outer office lit but empty.

Then I heard a man’s refined New England–accented voice coming through an open doorway on the other side of the headmaster’s secretary’s desk.

“I’ve only just returned from St. Kitts, Mr. Baldwin, and I’m still getting up to speed on the circumstances, but I can state unequivocally that if that was Damon Cross, his murder had nothing to do with Kraft,” he said. “He evidently lived in a very rough part of DC, where these senseless tragedies are commonplace.”

I stood there forcing myself to take deeper and deeper breaths while he paused to listen.

Then he went on, said, “I understand it’s a potential public-relations nightmare, Mr. Baldwin, but again, I can’t control the home lives of students, especially those who come up here on athletic scholarships from

crime-ridden ghettos. Kraft’s reputation will be fine, I assure you, and I’ll be sending a personal letter about the situation to all the parents in the next hour.”