“Why kill me?” I asked. “I don’t fit your pattern. The mommy complex. Did you even have a father?”
“Shut up,” Mize said.
“It’s not difficult to understand you hating your mother and taking it out on these women,” I said. “Miranda, your mother, humiliated you right from the beginning, dressed you up like a girl until age…what?”
Mize glared at me, said nothing.
“I figure it had to be one of the few things that got you attention from her,” I said. “Women’s fashion and style were what you had in common. Maybe fashion was the only way you could tear Miranda away from all those men.”
“You don’t know anything about her,” Mize snarled.
“I know she spent a lot of money. I figure you barely inherited enough to keep up the house she left you. Or maybe, between your trust and the portrait commissions and your shop, you had enough money for a while. But recently the trust ran out, or the commissions stopped, or your shop began floundering. And it all got to be too much for you, didn’t it, Jeffrey?”
Mize seemed to be staring right through me now.
“So you went to the women who knew you, the women you’d painted before, the ones who reminded you of your mother, and you decided to let off a little steam.”
“Shut up, I said!” Mize shouted and he shook the gun at me.
“And maybe you stole money, jewels, and clothes from your victims, evened the score a little. All of them except Francie Letourneau; you took care of your maid because she was stealing from you, isn’t that right? Or, no, because she discovered your secret life as Coco, and—”
“Enough!” Mize screamed. He took a step closer and aimed the pistol at my face from less than a foot away. “Mother always said to get rid of pests fast!”
Chapter
73
I looked down the barrel of the Ruger, saw Mize’s slender feminine hand squeezing on the trigger.
“Freeze, Coco!” Detective Johnson yelled. “Drop the gun or I’ll shoot!”
“Don’t worry, Detective,” I said. “It’s not loaded.”
Mize’s flawless porcelain skin tightened over his exquisite cheekbones, and disbelief gave way to rage. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He tried again—nothing.
He pulled the gun back as if he meant to chop me with it. Before he could, I slapped him silly, dazed him, and knocked him to the ground. Johnson was putting cuffs on him when Sergeant Drummond appeared, gasping for breath.
“Tough trip over the gate?” I asked.
“You have no idea,” Drummond said, wheezing. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
“You heard everything?” I asked, going past Mrs. Striker, who was still bleeding and looking confused. I crouched down to the carpet and picked up my cell phone and the magazine from the Ruger.
“Loud and clear,” the sergeant said, waving his cell at me. “Enough probable cause in anyone’s book.”
“This is entrapment,” Mize said. “I want a lawyer. I’m being persecuted.”
“For what?” Johnson demanded as he hauled him to his feet.
“Cross-dressing,” he said. “Getting into a little weird sex. Right, Pauline?”
Mrs. Striker raised her bleeding head and glared at him. “He’d been a friend since he’d painted my portrait, and he just tried to kill me. He put on my lingerie, said I was his mother tonight, and tried to kill me. And I’ll testify to it in court, Edwin’s new deal be damned.”
“Can we call an ambulance for you?” I asked, smiling.
“Please,” she said. “And could you get me some clothes? I don’t want to be seen this way.”
“Tell me what you need,” I said as Johnson hauled Mize from the room.
She asked for the clothes Mize had stripped her of and held them and the robe against her when she stood unsteadily and walked to the bathroom. Before she closed the door completely, she peered out at me.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Drummond said, “That’s Alex Cross, don’t you know?”
She shook her head and shut the door.
“That was something,” the sergeant said as he scratched at his slack chin.
“We good?” I asked.
“Oh, you and me, we’re fine,” Drummond said. “Me and my boss and the DA? That may be another story.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the way I came in here gets some of it excluded in court. But so what? You know who killed the four now. Just have to rebuild the case based on what you know and prove it outside of here. And I’ll testify however I’m allowed.”
Drummond thought about that, nodded, said, “I suppose the most important thing was saving Mrs. Striker and getting a lunatic cross-dresser off the streets of Palm Beach.”
“Or out of the bedrooms, anyway.”
The sergeant seemed to chew on something, and then he said, “This how a lot of your cases go?”
“Actually, every single one of them is different.”
“After you make your statement, you’ll go back to North Carolina?”
“Tomorrow sometime, I hope.”
“Get that guy Melvin Bell?”
“Marvin Bell. He’s one of our suspects, but I haven’t excluded anyone.”
“Sounds to me like he’s your man.”
Sirens wailed, coming closer.
“My gut says he is too, but we’ll see,” I said.
Drummond stuck his hand out, said, “A pleasure to meet you, and thank you for your help here.”
I shook it, said, “The feeling’s mutual, Sergeant. I hope we see each other again someday.”
He smiled that crooked smile of his, said, “I’d like that.”
The bathroom door opened. Mrs. Striker came out in a beautiful nightgown and a new robe. She held a washcloth to her head.
“Can you help me downstairs?” she asked weakly. “I don’t want to receive visitors in my bedroom.”
“Of course,” I said, coming over and giving her my elbow.
She held on to it. Drummond stepped aside. We walked slowly out into the hallway. At the far end, beyond the stairs, hung a portrait in oil.
I had to hand it to Mize. As Coco, he had captured Pauline Striker at what must have been the pinnacle of her beauty and charm.
Chapter
74
Starksville, North Carolina
In the remodeled kitchen of the house where I grew up, Nana Mama stared at me blankly and said quietly, “Your father lived another two years?”
I nodded and gave her the rest of it, including the suicide, including a description of her son’s small tombstone.
My grandmother held a trembling fist to her mouth. With her other hand, she plucked off her glasses and wiped at tears.
“Why’d he kill himself?” she asked.
“Guilt? Grief? The aloneness?” I said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
“He must have been the one.”
“What one?”
“The caller,” Nana Mama said. “For the first year or two that you lived with me, always around a holiday or, come to think of it, one of you boys’ birthdays, I’d get a call with no one on the other end. At first I thought it was just a mistake, but I’d hear things in the background, a television or music playing. And then the line would click dead.”
“When did that stop?” I asked.
“Around two years after you came to DC?”
The timeline fit, but before I could say so, Jannie rapped on the frame of the kitchen entrance. “We have to go. I want a chance to warm up on my own.”
I checked my watch. We did have to go.
“You all right?” I asked Nana Mama as I stood up from the table.
She hesitated and then said, “I suppose I am. Better than before.”
“He was punished for his sins, and then he died,” I said.
My grandmother said, “There’s balance there. Should we go?”
“You’re up to the ride?”
?
??Wouldn’t miss it,” she said, and she got to her feet. She put her hand on my arm. “Thank you, Alex.”
“For what?”
“Clearing things up.”
“Wish it had turned out some other way for him.”
“I do too. I always will.”
I helped Nana Mama out onto the porch, where Jannie, Bree, Ali, and Pinkie were waiting. We trooped out to the car and my cousin’s truck. Ali and Jannie wanted to ride with Pinkie. To my surprise, so did my little grandmother, who looked cute and ridiculous in the front seat of the one-ton pickup.
“I’ve never ridden in one of these,” she called out the window, and she waved with such enthusiasm that Bree and I had to grin.
“She’s one of a kind,” Bree said, climbing into the Explorer.
“Could you imagine if there were two?” I said, starting the car.
“I don’t think the world would be big enough.” Bree chuckled, leaned over, and kissed me. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me too. And by the way, I loved the welcome-back celebration last night.”
She laughed contentedly, said, “Mmm. That was nice, wasn’t it?”
We held hands as we followed Pinkie through town. Nearing the railroad tracks, Bree said, “Think we have time to stop?”
“Probably, but I don’t know the way. Can we do it coming back?”
Bree looked longingly at the tree line beyond the tracks. “It’s funny how you want to check every couple of hours. It’s like gambling.”
“I can see that,” I said, and we drove on.
The road soon became steep and windy, and it dropped off the plateau in a series of lazy S turns. I noticed play in the Explorer’s wheel that hadn’t been there before. And the brakes were slightly sluggish.
“Remind me to check the fluid levels in Raleigh,” I said.
“Didn’t we do everything before our drive down here?” Bree asked.
“Yes, but something doesn’t feel quite—”
There was a slight clanking noise. The car shuddered.
“That can’t be good,” Bree said. “You better pull over, take a look.”
We were on a 10 percent, maybe 12 percent grade at that point, with low guardrails giving way to sheer banks and trees. Ahead, there was a scenic lookout. I put on my blinker, tapped the brakes. Nothing. I pumped the brakes. The car slowed only slightly, then gave another clank and shudder.
Then the vehicle seemed to break free of all restraint and we went into an accelerating, pell-mell, runaway descent.
Chapter
75
We hurtled down the road. Ahead of us, it veered sharply left, and all you could see beyond it was pale blue sky.
“Alex!” Bree screamed as I clawed at the wheel and stomped vainly on the brake pedal.
I grabbed the shifter, tried to slam it into low. The arm wouldn’t budge.
“Jesus, Alex, we’re—”
With my left foot, I stabbed at the emergency brake pedal but did not put it to the floor for fear we’d be thrown into a spin. There was a screeching noise as the tires caught, leaving smoke rising off the rubber-blackened road.
The Explorer lurched to one side and then another, but I managed to keep it from going sideways and then, just before that hard left turn, I slammed the shifter arm down, and the engine braked us some more.
I spun the wheel hard and got the front end around. The rear quarter panel of the car slammed into the guardrail, which tore off the bumper and flung it into the other lane and behind us.
The rest of the ride down the plateau was marred only by the smell of burning brake pads, the roar of a straining engine, and the sweat pouring off both our foreheads. When we reached flatter land, I threw the shifter in neutral and turned the car off. We coasted to a stop on the shoulder, and I put on the hazard lights, laid my head back.
“You should call Pinkie,” I said. “Tell him to make room in the truck.”
“Aren’t you going to see what happened?” Bree asked.
“I’m not a car guy,” I said. “We’re going to have to have it towed somewhere and looked at.”
“You’re going to have to file an accident report,” she said, digging out her phone and punching in Pinkie’s number.
“I’d miss Jannie,” I said. “I’ll leave a note with my name and number.”
“That’s called leaving the scene of—”
“I don’t care,” I said. “Just call him before he gets too far down the road.”
When they came back, we intentionally understated the situation, saying only that it seemed something was wrong with the brakes, but we were fine. I used my phone to find a towing company that agreed to get the car and take it to a dealership in Winston-Salem, and then I sat back, put my arm around Bree, and closed my eyes.
I fell into one of those strange, buzzing sleeps that follow stressful experiences. I didn’t remember a minute of the hour-and-a-half drive to Duke.
We blundered around before we found the track. Even with the close call, we were early enough that Jannie was able to start jogging before any of the other athletes arrived. They were all there by eleven, however, along with Coach Greene, who smiled as she came over to me.
“Glad you made it,” she said, shaking my and Bree’s hands.
“Jannie was so excited she was up before dawn,” I said.
“No way we weren’t making it,” Bree said.
The coach’s grin disappeared. “Just to follow up. Those blood and urine tests?”
“Haven’t heard yet,” I said. “But again, innocent until…”
“Of course,” she said, and then she handed me another waiver and apologized for my having to fill another one out. “This will be interesting, though.”
“How’s that?” Nana Mama asked.
The coach gestured to three women doing ballistic jumps and skips along the track to warm up. “Alice and Trisha are here at Duke. Dawn’s over at Chapel Hill. All three were second-team all-Americans this past season.”
“Jannie know that?” Bree asked.
“I kind of hope not,” Coach Greene said, and she trotted off.
“What’s an all-American?” Ali asked.
“They’re among the best in the whole country,” I said.
“Is Jannie?”
“Course not,” Nana Mama said. “Your sister’s only fifteen, but it will be a good experience for her.”
As I’d seen her do twice before, Coach Greene led the girls through a series of exercises designed to get their quick-twitch muscles warmed up, loose, and firing. When they were ready, she broke them into squads of five and ran them through an Indian drill, where they ran at 40 percent unless they were at the rear of the pack. Then they had to sprint to the front.
They did this twice at four hundred meters. Jannie seemed to have no problem coming from behind in those long, fluid strides and then taking her place at the lead. After a five-minute break for water and more stretching, Greene made some switches, bringing my daughter over with the all-Americans in their early twenties and another girl who was at least four years older than Jannie.
They were watching my daughter out of the corners of their eyes. As I’d seen again and again since earlier that year, Jannie seemed unfazed by the age and experience differences.
“They gonna race now?” Ali asked, standing on the bleacher next to me.
“It’s just practice,” Bree said.
“Not for Jannie,” I said.
“Let’s take it to seventy-five percent, ladies,” Greene said when they were lined up shoulder to shoulder. “Three, two, one, go.”
The older girls took off in short, choppy strides that soon opened into longer bounds and a less frenzied rhythm. Jannie seemed to come up to speed effortlessly but lagged a few feet behind the nineteen-year-old and was two yards behind the all-American trio entering the backstretch.
Jannie stayed right there until she’d rounded the near turn, picked up her pace slightly coming down the stretch,
and finished just off the shoulder of the nineteen-year-old. She was four paces off the older girls, who were breathing hard. Two of them looked at Jannie and nodded.
No smile from my daughter, just a nod back.
The second quarter mile, at 85 percent, finished much the same way. Then Greene called for 90 percent effort.
Something about the way Jannie rolled her shoulders back and down let me know that it had become serious now, and even though there were fewer than fifteen people scattered across the bleachers watching, I couldn’t help but stand.
For the first time, Jannie adopted that same chopping fast gait off the line and stayed right with the elite bunch as they rounded the first turn. The older girls picked up the pace down the backstretch. Jannie stayed just off the shoulders of the all-Americans. The nineteen-year-old faded.
My daughter made her move coming into the second turn. She accelerated right by the three and was leading as they entered the stretch.
Even without binoculars, you could see the disbelief on the faces of the older girls, followed by the grit and determination that had gotten them close to the pinnacle of their sport. They poured it on, and two of them ran Jannie down and passed her before the finish. But my girl was a stride behind them and a stride ahead of one of the national-class athletes coming across the line.
Chapter
76
“That was a race!” Ali said.
“Jannie made it a race,” Pinkie said, smiling. “Oh my God, she’s good.”
“Dr. Cross?” a man said, coming across the grandstand toward us. Clad in unmarked gray sweats and a blue hoodie, he was in his fifties, a welterweight redhead with a rooster’s confident manner. “I’m Ted McDonald. To be honest, I came here to watch one of the other girls, but I’d very much like to talk to you about Jannie.”
“What about Jannie?” Nana Mama asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
McDonald glanced at the track where Greene and another, older woman in warm-ups were talking to the girls. “I’m a track coach, and a scout of sorts. I’d like to share something with you and Jannie, but let’s do it after Coach Greene and Coach Fall have had a chance to talk with you. Would that work out?”