Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(8)

“Cameraman from CNN,” Tilden said. “He shot the front of the house and stayed about two minutes.”

“She lived alone,” I said, putting on latex gloves. I reached over the iron railing left of the door to the brick face of the house, counted two bricks in and two down, then pressed on that brick. A small door levered open, revealing a shallow slot and the key.

“That’s neat.”

“Her idea, evidently,” I said and unlocked the door.

“Do you need help, sir?”

“I’m sure I will, Special Agent Tilden,” I said as a hollowness formed in my stomach. “But I’d like to take the first look around alone.”

“Of course,” Tilden said.

The door opened on oiled hinges and shut behind me just as quietly. I had not been in Kay’s two-hundred-year-old Georgian townhome since that night long ago when she’d tripped and I’d caught her and she’d invited me in for a nightcap.

But standing there in the foyer that met the long center hallway of her home, I felt like it could have been yesterday. I could smell her scent. I could hear the echoes of her laughter in the air.

I walked down the hall, passing the various paintings on the walls, and stopped at the entrance to what had been Kay’s grand salon. Then I stepped inside the long rectangular room and took it all in with a sweeping glance.

The floors were two-hundred-year-old plankboard interrupted by tasteful squares of cream-colored carpet. The furniture was early sixties glamour, from the Kennedy era; “pieces of restored Camelot,” Kay had called them. The couches were upholstered in wide stripes of indigo blue and mouse gray. Some of the overstuffed wingback chairs were blue, and others were gray. All so familiar I could not help replaying that night in my mind.

We had met at a fundraiser for victims’ rights. This was years ago, when her husband was the governor of Alabama and they were separated and contemplating divorce. The car service that normally picked Kay up was late; she’d had a few drinks, and I’d offered her a ride home in my car.

I’d be lying if I said there was not a genuine spark between us after I’d caught her when she fell. That sense had continued inside the house.

I accepted a brandy. I couldn’t remember what music she’d put on, but it was perfect. She’d danced away from me, twirling across the floor and the carpet, barefoot, totally free, and laughing.

“God, she was something,” I said to myself and walked over to a built-in shelf in the corner that was crammed with pictures of moments in Kay’s remarkable life.

I found one that she’d shown me that night, a framed snapshot of an eleven-year-old Kay cheek to cheek with an African-American girl, both of them wet from swimming, both of them grinning with love.

“That’s Althea,” Kay had said softly. “Best friend I’ve ever had. Only person I’ve trusted completely in my entire life.”

“Where does she live?”

“Here and there,” she’d said. Her phone rang. She picked it up, listened, and said, “Walter, I’m home before curfew, and yes, I’ve had a few drinks, but I’m going to bed now. Does that work for you?”

She listened again, her brows tightening. “Good night.”

Kay hung up the phone and stood there a long moment as if in a trance. When it broke, she looked at me sadly. “It’s time for me to say good night, Alex.”

Whatever spark there was between us out on the sidewalk had died. I set my untouched brandy on the coffee table, said her house was beautiful, and got ready to leave.

“Could you check around the house? That’s what my driver usually does before I set the alarm and go to bed. Thank you for not letting me fall out there,” she said. “I’d have probably broken something irreparably.”





CHAPTER 10





THE BIG APARTMENT BUILDING ACROSS the street from Harrison Charter High School was being totally renovated, so no one lived there at the moment. It was surrounded by a high chain-link fence to keep people out of the construction site. John Sampson noticed two security cameras mounted on the fence posts and aimed at the street.

He went to the supervisor at the site and asked for copies of the feeds from midnight on the evening before but was told the cameras had been down since the big lightning storm a few days earlier. Frustrated, he walked up the street, looking for more security cameras. His cell phone rang. His wife, Billie.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “How you feeling?”

“Better every day,” she said.

“What we love to hear. What’s up?”

“I didn’t get a chance to see you this morning and I wanted to tell you I love you before I go get Willow from camp.”

Sampson softened and slowed down. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. I love you too, baby.”

“Big case?”

“Big as they come,” Sampson said, quickening his pace. “I’ll tell you what I can when I get home. Make sure you get your rest, hear?”

“I hear you,” she said and clicked off.

Beyond a vacant lot to the north of the apartment building, on the northeast corner of the block, there was a two-story white structure that housed a small bodega and a laundromat at street level. Two cameras were mounted below the second floor and aimed out at the street and school grounds, but because they were painted the same color as the building, Sampson almost didn’t see them.