The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross 25)

Tears welled in my eyes as I kissed Anita and Naomi. Then I went around, picked up Ali, and hugged my boy like he was life itself.

CHAPTER

87

TO BE HONEST, despite the verdict, I was feeling mixed emotions sitting in a chair outside Chief Michaels’s office the following Monday.

My arrest, the trial, and even the verdict had forced me to do a lot of reevaluating about my priorities and my purpose in life.

I had always seen homicide investigation as a way to represent the slain and help the friends and family of the victims find not only closure, but justice. I think of it as an honorable profession, one that, until I was arrested, gave me a great degree of fulfillment.

But turning back to clinical psychology and counseling, my first loves, had reminded me why I enjoyed that work so much. Ultimately, my job was to help people trying to understand and improve themselves and their lives. Being a psychotherapist was as noble a calling as being a homicide detective, and fulfilling in an entirely different way. And yet here I was, ready to put an end to the counselor part of me again.

“Dr. Cross?” Michaels’s secretary said. “He’ll see you now.”

I went into the chief ’s office. Crossing the room to his desk, I watched Metro’s leader closely, trying to read his body language. The chief had played it political during the months I’d spent on suspension pending trial. In private, he’d expressed support. In public, he’d covered his ass.

So it was a bittersweet experience when Michaels summoned his politician’s smile, reached out his hand, and said, “I knew you’d be back, Alex. What would Metro do without you?”

I swallowed whatever uncomfortable feelings I’d had and thanked him for reinstating me on the Major Case Unit. In the squad room, Bree ended Sampson’s suffering by reassigning Detective Ainsley Fox to another partner and putting the two of us back together. That was good, really good, maybe even better than the verdict. No bittersweet feelings at all.

I spent the rest of that first day filling out forms that sought back pay in light of the verdict and doing a pile of other administrative nonsense. But on Tuesday, Sampson and I were back on the job, with the missing blondes the first order of business. We started early, leaving DC long before dawn and driving north.

Four and a half hours later, we left Interstate 180 for State Route 220 toward Muncy Valley, Sonestown, and Laporte, Pennsylvania. It was timber country. The road was narrow, winding, and flanked on both sides by state game lands and big leafless forest tracts.

We got coffee in Laporte before stopping in at the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office to talk with Detective Everett Morse, who was working with the Pennsylvania State Police on the murder of twelve-year-old Timmy Walker Jr. and the disappearance of Ginny Krauss and Alison Dane.

Morse was collegial enough and showed us the murder book, but it had been months since Ginny and Alison had disappeared and Timmy’s body had been found. The trail had gone cold. Morse told us not to bother trying to talk to the girls’ parents. They’d barely spoken with Morse or the state police.

When we stopped at the Pennsylvania State Police barracks on the north side of Laporte, Investigator Nina Ford largely confirmed Morse’s take on the case. She allowed us to look through her files as well, and, like Morse, discouraged us from trying to talk to the missing girls’ parents.

“What about Timmy’s parents?” Sampson asked.

“Big T’s out of the picture,” Detective Ford said. “Lenore’s at the house. You could stop at Worlds End State Park, where Timmy’s body was found. By the time you have a look around and get to Hillsgrove, Lenore should be up and almost coherent.”

From GPS coordinates Ford gave us, we were able to pinpoint the exact location where Timmy Walker’s corpse had been discovered—roughly a mile east of the parking lot at Worlds End State Park and several miles from where the missing girls’ car was found.

But for an older model white Chevy pickup truck with a toolbox in the back and decals on the window from the National Wild Turkey Federation, the park’s lot was deserted when we pulled in twenty minutes later.

A cold, raw wind blew while we hiked the trail and followed the GPS navigator to the rugged ground where a hiker had come across Timmy’s arm sticking out from under a pile of branches and leaves.

“That’s a workout, getting up here,” Sampson said, chest heaving. “Trail was steep.”

I nodded, my heart still hammering. “Timmy weighed ninety-two pounds, so it was someone very strong.”

“And someone who knew how to get to this particular stretch of nowhere,” Sampson said about two seconds before the shooting started.

CHAPTER

88

BOOM! CA-CHING. BOOM!

Sampson and I whipped around and dived for cover behind a downed log.

Boom!

“Where the hell is he?” Sampson hissed.