And then they were gone, and the caboose of the train soon after that, heading north. The gates lifted. The lights stopped blinking. We drove on across the tracks. The two cars went right, and I had to slow to let the van take a left at a sign that said CAINE FERTILIZER CO.
“Eeeuw,” Ali said. “What’s that smell?”
I caught it too, said, “Urea.”
“You mean like in pee?” Jannie asked, disgusted.
“Animal pee,” I said. “And probably animal poop too.”
“God, what are we doing here?” she said with a groan.
“Where are we staying?” Ali asked.
“Naomi made the arrangements,” Bree said. “I just pray there’s air-conditioning. It’s gotta be ninety, and if we’re downwind of that smell…”
“It’s eighty,” I said, looking at the dash. “We’re up higher now.”
I drove on by instinct, remembering none of the street names but somehow knowing the way to downtown Starksville as if I’d been there the day before and not three and a half decades ago.
The town center had been laid out in the early 1800s around a rectangular common that now featured a statue of Colonel Francis Stark, a local hero of the Confederacy and the son of the town’s founder and namesake. Starksville should have been a place you’d describe as quaint. Many of the buildings were older, some antebellum, some brick-faced like the factories at the edge of town.
But hard economic times had hit Starksville. For every business open that Thursday—a clothing emporium, a bookstore, a pawnbroker, a gun shop, and two liquor stores—there were two more that stood empty with their front windows soaped over. For Sale signs hung everywhere.
“I can remember when Starksville was not a bad place to live even with the Jim Crow laws,” Nana Mama said wistfully.
“What are Crow laws?” Ali asked, scrunching his nose.
“They were laws against people like us,” she said, and then she pointed a bony finger at a defunct pharmacy and soda fountain called Lords. “Right there, I remember there were signs that said ‘No Coloreds Allowed.’”
“Did Dr. King take those down?” my son asked.
“He was responsible, ultimately,” I said. “But to my knowledge, he never actually came to—”
Jannie cried, “Hey, there’s Scootchie!”
Chapter
3
My niece was on the sidewalk in front of the county courthouse arguing with an earnest-looking African American man in a well-cut gray suit. Naomi wore a navy blue skirt and blazer and clutched a brown legal-size accordion file to her chest, and she was shaking her head firmly.
I pulled over and parked, said, “She looks busy. Why doesn’t everyone wait here? I’ll get directions to where we’re staying.”
I climbed out into what was, by Washington, DC, standards, a banner summer day. The humidity was surprisingly low and there was a breeze blowing that carried with it the sound of my niece’s voice.
“Matt, are you going to fight every one of my motions?” Naomi demanded.
“Course I am,” he said. “It’s my job, remember?”
“Your job should be to find the truth,” she shot back.
“I think we all know the truth,” he replied, and then he looked over her shoulder at me.
“Naomi?” I called.
She turned and saw me, and her posture relaxed. “Alex!”
Grinning, she trotted over, threw her arms around me, and said quietly, “Thank God you’re here. This town is enough to drive me mad.”
“I came as soon as I could,” I said. “Where’s Stefan?”
“Still in jail,” she said. “Judge’s refusing to set any kind of bail.”
Matt was studying us—or, rather, me—intently.
“Is your friend the DA?” I asked quietly.
“Let me introduce you,” she said, “rattle his chain.”
“Rattle away,” I said.
Naomi walked me over to him, said, “Assistant district attorney Matthew Brady, this is my uncle and Stefan’s cousin Dr. Alex Cross, formerly of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and currently a special investigator with the Washington, DC, Metro Police.”
If Brady was impressed, he didn’t show it, and he shook my hand with little enthusiasm. “You’re here why, exactly?”
“My family and I have been through a rough time lately, so we’re on a little R and R to visit my roots and provide my cousin with some moral support,” I said.
“Well.” He sniffed and looked at Naomi. “I think you should be thinking plea bargain if you want to give Mr. Tate moral support.”
Naomi smiled. “You can stick that idea where the sun don’t shine.”
Brady grinned pleasantly and held up his hands, palms out. “Your call, but the way I see it, Naomi, you plead, and your client lives a life behind bars. You go to trial, and he most certainly gets the death penalty.”
“Good-bye,” she said sweetly as she took my arm. “We’ve got to be going.”
“Nice meeting you,” I said.
“Likewise, Dr. Cross,” he said and walked away.
“Kind of a cold fish,” I said when he was out of earshot and we were heading back to my car.
“He’s gotten that way since law school,” she said.
“So you’ve got history?”
“Just old classmates,” Naomi said, then broke into a squeal of delight when Jannie opened the Explorer’s door and climbed out.
In a few moments everyone was out on the sidewalk hugging Naomi, who couldn’t get over how tall and strong Jannie had become and got tears in her eyes when my grandmother kissed her.
“You don’t age, Nana,” Naomi said in wonder. “Is there a painting in an attic somewhere that shows your real age?”
“The Picture of Regina Cross.” Nana Mama chortled.
“It’s just so good to see you all,” Naomi said, and then her face fell slightly. “I just wish it were under different circumstances.”
My wife said, “We’ll figure out the real story, get Stefan released, and have a nice vacation.”
Naomi’s face fell a little further. “That’s easier said than done, Bree. But I know the aunties are waiting for us. Why don’t you follow me?”
“Can I drive with you, Scootchie?” Jannie asked.
“Of course you can,” Naomi said, and she pointed across the street. “I’m the little red Chevy there.”
We left downtown and entered more residential neighborhoods, which were full of sharp contrasts. The houses were either run-down or freshly painted. The cars were either brand-new or about to fall apart. And the people we saw on the streets were either shabbily dressed or turned out in the latest urban attire.
We drove onto the old arched bridge that spanned the Stark River Gorge. The granite walls of the gorge were six stories high and flanked the river, which was running fast and churning over huge boulders. Ali spotted kayakers down in the whitewater.
“Can I do that?” he cried.
“Not on your life,” Nana Mama said firmly.
“Why not?”
“Because that gorge is a deadly place,” she said. “There’s all sorts of phantom currents, and there’re shelves and logs under that water. They’ll trap you and never let you out. Growing up, I knew at least five kids who died down there, including my little brother. Their bodies were never found.”
“Really?” Ali said.
“Really,” Nana Mama said.
Naomi kept on straight across the bridge. We bounced back over the railroad tracks into Birney, a very run-down section of town. The vast majority of the bungalows along the streets of Birney were desperately in need of TLC. Kids played in the red-clay front yards. Hounds bayed at our passing. Chickens and goats scattered off the roads. And the adults sitting on the front stoops looked at us suspiciously, as if they were familiar with everyone who came to the starkest part of Starksville and knew we were strangers.
That oppressive sense I’d suffered when I’d seen th
e sign to town returned. It became almost overpowering when Naomi turned onto Loupe Street, a cracked and potholed road that ended in a cul-de-sac in front of the only three homes in the neighborhood that seemed well maintained. The three bungalows were identical and the paint looked recent. Each home boasted a low green picket fence around a watered lawn and flowers growing in beds by a screened-in front porch.
I parked behind Naomi and hesitated in my seat when my wife and son got out. Nana Mama wasn’t in any hurry either, and I caught the grim expression on her face in the mirror.
“Alex?” Bree said, looking back in the passenger door.
“Coming,” I said. I got out and helped my grandmother down.
We went around the car slowly and then stopped, looking at the closest of the bungalows as if it held ghosts, which for us it did.
“You been here before, Dad?” Ali asked.
I let my breath out slow, nodded, and said, “This is the house where Daddy grew up, son.”
Chapter
4
“Land sakes, is that you here already, Aunt Regina?” a woman cried before Ali or any other member of my family could say anything.
I took my eyes off the house where I’d lived as a boy and saw an old locomotive of a woman wearing a red floral-print muumuu and bright green beach sandals charging off the porch next door. She had a toothy smile and was shaking her hands overhead as if she were bound for a revival tent and some of that old-time religion.
“Connie Lou?” Nana Mama cried. “Young lady, I believe you’ve lost weight since you came to see me summer before last!”
Connie Lou Parks was my mother’s brother’s widow. Aunt Connie had lost weight since we’d last seen her, but she was still built like a linebacker. When she heard my grandmother’s praise, however, her ample body trembled with pleasure, and she wrapped Nana Mama in her arms and kissed her noisily on the cheek.
“My God, Connie,” Nana Mama said. “There’s no need to slobber.”
My aunt thought that was hilarious and kissed her again.
My grandmother got her to stop by asking, “How’d you lose the weight?”
“I went on a cavewoman diet and started walking every day,” Aunt Connie declared proudly, and she laughed again. “Lost forty-seven pounds, and my diabetes numbers are better. Alex Cross, you come here now! Give me some sugar.”
She threw open her arms and bear-hugged me. Then she looked up at me with misted eyes. “Thank you for coming to help Stefan. It means the world to us.”
“Of course. I didn’t think twice about it,” I said.
“Sure you did, and that’s understandable,” she said matter-of-factly, and then she went to embrace Bree and the children, gushing over each of them in turn. Nana Mama always said my aunt Connie had never met a stranger. My grandmother was right. All my memories of her were filled with smiles and infectious laughter.
When the greetings were done, Aunt Connie looked at me and then nodded at the bungalow. “You okay with staying in there? It’s all been redone. You won’t recognize a bit of it.”
Dubious, I said, “Nobody lives here now?”
“My Karen and her family, but they’re down to the Gulf Coast least through the rest of the summer, caring for Pete’s mother, who’s in an awful poor way. I’ve talked to them. They want you to stay if you feel comfortable.”
I glanced at Bree, who I could tell was weighing weeks of hotel costs against a free place to stay, and said, “I’m comfortable with it.”
Aunt Connie smiled and hugged me. “Good; we’ll get you moved in soon as we get you fed. Who’s hungry?”
“I am,” Ali said.
“Hattie’s laying out a spread over to her house,” Connie Lou said. “Let’s get you somewhere you can wash up and we’ll have us a grand time and catch up proper-like.”
My aunt was such a force of nature that Ali, Jannie, and Naomi fell right in behind her when she rumbled off. Bree held out her hand to help Nana Mama and looked at me expectantly.
“I’ll be right along,” I said. “I think I need to go in there alone the first time.”
I could tell my wife didn’t quite understand. Of course, I’d told her very little about my boyhood, because, really, my life began the day Nana Mama took me and my brothers in.
“You do what you have to do,” Bree said.
My grandmother gazed at me evenly, said, “You did nothing to cause any of it. You hear? That was out of your control, Alex Cross.”
Nana Mama used to talk to me like this all the time in the first few years after I went to live with her, teaching me to divorce myself from the self-destruction of others, showing me there could be a better way forward.
“I know, Nana,” I said, and I pushed open the gate.
Walking up to the screened porch, however, I felt as strange and disconnected as I had ever been in my entire life. It was as if I were two people: a man who was a capable detective, a loving husband, and a devoted father who was heading toward a quiet little house in the South, and an unsure and fearful boy of eight trudging toward a home that might be filled with music, love, and joy or, just as easily, screaming, turmoil, and madness.
Chapter
5
Aunt Connie was right. I didn’t recognize the place.
At some point in the past decades, it had been gutted and the configuration of the bungalow totally changed. The porch was the only part I completely recognized. The entryway where we’d leave our shoes was gone. So was a half wall that used to divide the kitchen from the living area, where me and my brothers, Charlie, Blake, and Aaron, used to play and watch television on those occasions when we had one that actually worked.
The new furniture was nice and the flat-screen television large. The kitchen had new cabinets and a new stove, fridge, and dishwasher. There were more windows in there too, and the dim place where we’d eaten our meals at a dreary Formica-top table was now a bright and cheery spot with a built-in breakfast nook.
Standing there, I could almost see my mother on one of her better mornings, dressed in her threadbare robe but glowing like a beauty queen, smoking a filtered Kent cigarette, making us waffles with sunny-side-up eggs on them, and singing along to Sam Cooke on WAAA 980 AM out of Winston-Salem.
…been a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come…
It was her favorite song, and she had an amazing raspy gospel voice developed in her father’s Baptist church. Hearing my mom sing in my head while I stood in the kitchen where she used to sing to us, I choked and then broke down crying.
I never expected it.
I suppose I’d put my mother away for so long in one of those boxes I keep locked in my mind that I thought I was long over the tragedy of her life. But obviously I wasn’t. She’d been smart, sensitive, and very funny. She’d been gifted with words and music. She could make up songs right off the top of her head, and on those rare occasions when I witnessed her singing in church, I swear to you, it was as if an angel possessed her.
But there were other times, too many times, when demons took her. She saw her own father commit suicide in front of her when she was twelve and she was emotionally crippled by it her entire short life. She found relief in vodka and heroin, and in the last few years of her life, I rarely remember her stone-cold sober.
I said that demons took her, but really, it was the memories festering in her drug-and-booze-addled mind that created the monster that she sometimes was late at night. From our beds, we’d hear her crying for her dead father, or screaming at him. On those nights, she’d get violent, break things, and curse God and all of us too.
All the children in an addict’s family play different roles and have different ways of coping. My brothers retreated into themselves when my mother was using and a danger to us. My job was to stop her from hurting herself and, later, to pick her up off the floor and put her to bed. In the language of recovery, I played the roles of hero and caregiver.
Standing there, recalling all those times I’d tri
ed to forget, I suddenly saw plainly that my mother had created me in more ways than the physical. From an early age, I’d dealt with chaos and chaotic people, and to survive, I’d had to swallow my fears and force myself to understand and deal with sick minds. Those hard-won skills had inevitably led to my calling in life, to Johns Hopkins for my doctorate in psychology, and then to police work. And for those reasons and others, I realized that despite all the craziness and the loss, I was grateful to my mother and blessed to be her son.
Wiping my tears away, I left the kitchen and went into the hallway that led to the bedrooms. When I was a boy, there were just two in the house, and we had a single sorry excuse for a bathroom. Recently, another bath had been added. The large room where my brothers and I slept had been split in two. There were bunk beds in both of them now.
Staring into my distant past, oblivious to any noises in the house around me, I remembered my father on one of his better evenings, sober and funny, telling me and my brothers about some trip he was going to take us on to hear jazz on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
Gotta have dreams, boys, he’d always say before he turned out the lights. Gotta have dreams and you’ve got to—
“Freeze!” a man shouted. “Hands up high where we can see them!”
I startled but raised my hands, looking over my shoulder and back down the hall into the kitchen. Two men in civilian clothes with police badges on lanyards around their necks were aiming pistols at me.
Chapter
6
“On your knees,” barked the taller and younger of the two, a lean, ropy African American in his early thirties.
The other plainclothes cop was Caucasian, fifties, a pasty, pock-faced man with a hank of dyed brown hair and a mopey face.
“What’s going on?” I said, not moving. “Detectives?”
“You are breaking and entering a good friend of mine’s house,” the African American cop said.