THEODORE ROOSEVELT JUMPED UP from his desk and came charging at me with such high spirits I was afraid he might bowl us both over.
“Welcome home, Captain!” he roared. When he pumped my hand I recalled that Roosevelt didn’t consider a handshake successful unless it resulted in physical pain.
“And all congratulations to you, sir, on a difficult job extremely well done,” he exclaimed. “The White Raiders Trial was a smashing success.”
“But Mr. President, we lost the case.”
“Of course you did,” he said. “I knew you would—technically—lose the case. But you won a tremendous victory all the same.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
He sank onto the sofa to the left of his desk and patted the seat cushion next to his, as if I were a faithful dog being summoned. I sat. The president continued.
“I don’t know how much of our press you’ve seen while you’ve been away, Ben, but you’ve become something of a hero up here. The more progressive citizens see you as a kind of abolitionist, a figure of progress in the march of civilization toward full equality. And the coloreds in the South see you as some kind of protector, a hero. It’s damn good!”
“Mr. President, I was just in the South,” I said. “Believe me, I’m nobody’s hero there.”
“I’m meeting the newspaper boys in a few minutes,” he said. “You’ll be with me. I’ll announce that I masterminded your adventure in the South. I’ll disclose to them how I supported your efforts against the White Raiders. I’ll pick up votes in New England, and I’ll have the colored vote from now until the end of time.”
“But you sent me to Eudora to investigate lynchings.”
“Indeed I did. And if you’d reported back to me that lynching was a way of life among the leaders of the white South, I would have had to do something about it. Something that would enrage some white people, no matter how much it endeared me to the Negroes.”
“That’s why you didn’t answer my telegrams?”
“It wasn’t convenient for me to hear from you yet,” he said. “But then we had the most magnificent stroke of luck when the Raiders Trial came along!”
He was bubbling, but I couldn’t keep silent any longer.
“Luck? You call it a magnificent stroke of luck? People died. A town was torn apart.”
He ignored me completely, and he was still grinning at his good fortune.
“I know there was pain, Captain. That’s to be expected. Progress requires a certain amount of suffering. You did well, you worked hard, and eventually you managed to bring it all under control. I certainly chose the right man for the job.” He stood up from the sofa.
I stood as well. “Is that all, Mr. President?” I said.
“The reporters are waiting, Ben. I need you to help me explain what happened.”
“Is that an order, sir?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “Well, no,” he said. “Don’t you want to come?”
“No, sir,” I said. “If I may, I respectfully decline.”
Chapter 140
AS I LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE that day I noticed that my legs felt more limber, my body lighter. There was an actual spring in my step. To my astonishment I felt strangely, incredibly happy.
The White House was bathed in an intensely golden light, and as I walked northwest on the wide avenue, past the tattered rooming houses and saloons, I saw the Washington Monument sparkling in the distance like a gigantic diamond hatpin.
Certainly I was angry that Theodore Roosevelt had used me as a pawn in one of his electoral chess games. And I dreaded even more the moment when I returned home to find my house empty.
But still, there was something hopeful in the light sparkling on the monument, and the delightful smell of woodsmoke on the breeze.
I found myself remembering Abraham Cross a few nights ago, just before he drifted off to sleep.
“You did fine, Ben. You did just fine.”
To have a man like Abraham say that… well, that’s all anyone could ever ask for.
“You did fine, Ben. You did just fine.”
I turned off South Carolina Avenue onto our street. Everything looked so familiar that I might have left home only a day or two ago. No one had taken a paintbrush to our peeling little house. The second-floor shutters still hung tilted and broken, and the brick walkway was still perilously uneven.
As I mounted the front steps, three months’ worth of anxiety was twisting my insides into a hard knot.
I unlocked the door and stepped into the vestibule. All was still.
I walked to the bottom of the stairs and stood there a few moments. And then—
I heard Alice’s little voice.
“I think I heard the front door,” she said.
I knelt down to remove two identical boxes wrapped in brown paper from my valise. I shucked off the paper and opened them.
“Do you think it could be Papa?” Amelia asked.
Then—I heard Meg’s voice.
“I certainly hope so,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
I ran up those stairs clutching the gifts for my girls—identical brown, fuzzy teddy bears, the most popular dolls of the day, inspired by President Roosevelt himself.
“Daddy!” screamed my girls, all three of them.
I took the little ones into my arms. “Now, which of you is Alice, and which is Amelia?” I asked as they giggled and snuggled into my chest.
Then I reached out my free arm. “And you—you must be Meg. I’ve missed you so much.” Then Meg came into my arms too. “I’ll never leave you again,” I whispered.
True to my word, I never did.
THE WORLD ALL AROUND YOU.
LIFE AS YOU KNOW IT.
EVERYTHING YOU LOVE.
IT ALL CHANGES—NOW.
WITCH & WIZARD
This is the story I was born to tell.
Read on, while you still can.
—JAMES PATTERSON
COMING IN DECEMBER 2009
Prologue
WISTY
IT’S OVERWHELMING. A city’s worth of angry faces staring at me like I’m a wicked criminal—which, I promise you, I’m not. The stadium is filled to capacity—past capacity. People are standing in the aisles, the stairwells, on the concrete ramparts, and a few extra thousand are camped out on the playing field. There are no football teams here today. They wouldn’t be able to get out of the locker-room tunnels if they tried.
This total abomination is being broadcast on TV and on the Internet too. All the useless magazines are here, and the useless newspapers. Yep, I see cameramen in elevated roosts at intervals around the stadium.
There’s even one of those remote-controlled cameras that runs around on wires above the field. There it is—hovering just in front of the stage, bobbing slightly in the breeze.
So, there are undoubtedly millions more eyes watching than I can see. But it’s the ones here in the stadium that are breaking my heart. To be confronted with tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of curious, uncaring, or at least indifferent, faces… talk about frightening.
And there are no moist eyes, never mind tears.
No words of protest.
No stomping feet.
No fists raised in solidarity.
No inkling that anybody’s even thinking of surging forward, breaking through the security cordon, and carrying my family to safety.
Clearly, this is not a good day for us Allgoods.
In fact, as the countdown ticker flashes on the giant video screens at either end of the stadium, it’s looking like this will be our last day.
It’s a point driven home by the very tall, bald man up in the tower they’ve erected midfield—he looks like a cross between a Supreme Court chief justice and Ming the Merciless. I know who he is. I’ve actually met him. He’s The One Who Is The One.
Directly behind his Oneness is a huge N.O. banner—the New Order.
And then the crowd begins to chant, almost sing, “The One Who
Is The One! The One Who Is The One!”
Imperiously, The One raises his hand, and his hooded lackeys on the stage push us forward, at least as far as the ropes around our necks will allow.
I see my brother, Whit, handsome and brave, looking down at the platform mechanism. Calculating if there’s any way to jam it, some way to keep it from unlatching and dropping us to our neck-snapping deaths. Wondering if there’s some last-minute way out of this.
I see my mother crying quietly. Not for herself, of course, but for Whit and me.
I see my father, his tall frame stooped with resignation, but smiling at me and my brother—trying to keep our spirits up, reminding us that there’s no point in being miserable in our last moments on this planet.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m supposed to be providing an introduction here, not the details of our public execution.
So let’s go back a bit.…
One
WHIT
SOMETIMES YOU WAKE up and the world is just plain different.
The noise of a circling helicopter is what made me open my eyes. A cold, blue-white light forced its way through the blinds and flooded the living room. Almost like it was day.
But it wasn’t.
I peered at the clock on the DVD player through blurry eyes: 2:10 a.m.
I became aware of a steady drub, drub, drub—like the sound of a heavy heartbeat. Throbbing. Pressing in. Getting closer.
What’s going on?
I staggered to the window, forcing my body back to life after two hours passed out on the sofa, and peeked through the slats.
And then I stepped back and rubbed my eyes. Hard.
Because there’s no way I had seen what I’d seen. And there was no way I had heard what I’d heard.
Was it really the steady, relentless footfall of hundreds of soldiers? Marching on my street in perfect unison?
My street wasn’t close enough to the center of town to be on any holiday parade routes, much less to have armed men in combat fatigues coursing down it in the dead of night.
I shook my head and bounced up and down a few times kind of like I do in my warm-ups. Wake up, Whit. I slapped myself a couple of times for good measure. And then I looked again.
There they were. Soldiers marching down our street. Hundreds of them as clear as day, made visible by a half-dozen truck-mounted spotlights.
Just one thought was running laps inside my head: This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.
Then I remembered the elections, the new government, the ravings of my parents about the trouble the country was in, the special broadcasts on TV, the political petitions my classmates were circulating online, the heated debates between teachers at school. None of it meant anything to me until that second.
And before I could piece it all together, the vanguard of the formation stopped in front of my house.
Almost faster than I could comprehend, two armed squads detached themselves from the phalanx and sprinted across the lawn like commandos, one running around the back of the house, the other taking position in front.
I jumped back from the window. I could tell they weren’t here to protect me and my family. I had to warn Mom, Dad, Wisty—
But just as I started to yell, the front door was knocked off its hinges.
* * *
Witch & Wizard.
In stores December 2009.
Books by James Patterson
FEATURING ALEX CROSS
Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)
Cross Country
Double Cross
Cross
Mary, Mary
London Bridges
The Big Bad Wolf
Four Blind Mice
Violets Are Blue
Roses Are Red
Pop Goes the Weasel
Cat & Mouse
Jack & Jill
Kiss the Girls
Along Came a Spider
THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB
The 8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)
7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)
4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)
3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
1st to Die
FEATURING MICHAEL BENNETT
Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)
THE JAMES PATTERSON PAGETURNERS
Daniel X: Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)
MAX: A Maximum Ride Novel
Maximun Ride: The Manga I (with NaRae Lee)
Daniel X: Alien Hunter (graphic novel; with Leopoldo Gout)
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)
The Final Warning: A Maximum Ride Novel
Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
Maximum Ride: School’s Out—Forever
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
OTHER BOOKS
Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)
Against Medical Advice: One Family’s Struggle with an Agonizing Medical Mystery (with Hal Friedman)
Sail (with Howard Roughan)
Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
You’ve Been Warned (with Howard Roughan)
The Quickie (with Michael Ledwidge)
Judge & Jury (with Andrew Gross)
Beach Road (with Peter de Jonge)
Lifeguard (with Andrew Gross)
Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
SantaKid
Sam’s Letters to Jennifer
The Lake House
The Jester (with Andrew Gross)
The Beach House (with Peter de Jonge)
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas
Cradle and All
When the Wind Blows
Miracle on the 17th Green (with Peter de Jonge)
Hide & Seek
The Midnight Club
Black Friday (originally published as Black Market)
See How They Run (originally published as The Jericho Commandment)
Season of the Machete
The Thomas Berryman Number
For previews of upcoming books by James Patterson and more information about the author, visit www.JamesPatterson.com.
About the Authors
James Patterson is one of the best selling writers of all time, with more than 170 million books sold worldwide. He is the author of the top-selling detective series of the past twenty years—the Alex Cross novels, including Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, both of which were made into hit movies. Mr. Patterson also writes the best selling Women’s Murder Club novels, set in San Francisco, and the new series of New York Times #1 bestsellers featuring Detective Michael Bennett of the NYPD. He won an Edgar Award, the mystery world’s highest honor, for his first novel. He lives in Florida.
James Patterson’s lifelong passion for books and reading led him to launch a new website, ReadKiddoRead.com, which helps parents, grandparents, teachers, and librarians find the very best children’s books for their kids.
Richard DiLallo is a former advertising creative director. He has had numerous articles published in major magazines. He lives in Manhattan with his wife.
James Patterson, Alex Cross's Trial
(Series: Alex Cross # 15)
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