Alex Cross 21: Cross My Heart by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson [Patterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2013-11-24T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 55

HAROLD BARNES WAS A successful and influential patent lawyer with an impeccable pedigree. Dartmouth. Georgetown Law. Editor of the law review. Clerked at the US District Court. Became a partner in a prestigious firm. Husband of twenty-seven years. Father of three girls.

“Thank God they’re all off at school,” Abigail moaned as I turned the corner back into the living room and found her slumped in the chair.

I raised an eyebrow at Sampson. “See if you can find her some coffee.”

Behind me I could hear the door of the powder room opening. Barnes’s wife looked toward the hall, said, “No, I want to hear everything about his filthy life.”

“I’ll let you two deal with that in private,” I said firmly. “Right now we’re hoping he can help us solve a mass murder and maybe save three lives.”

Mrs. Barnes looked appalled and then incredulous, as if I’d somehow challenged the idea that the planets revolved around her and not the sun.

“Let’s take a walk, Mrs. B,” Sampson said, and held out his hand.

She balked and then, reluctant and wobbly, got to her feet. Barnes must have heard me talking, because he’d stalled back there in the hallway. Sampson supported the crushed socialite as they left the room by another door.

As it shut behind them, I heard her sniffle, “I never thought my life would become a cliché. Was I naïve, Detective?”

Her husband came back into the room, looking like a husk of what he’d been not ten minutes before. Broken glass crunched beneath his wingtips, but he seemed not to notice.

“My name’s Alex Cross,” I began.

“I know who you are, Dr. Cross,” Barnes said weakly before sinking into the chair his wife had just occupied. “I read the papers.”

“I’m sorry about all this, but we had no other way of finding you,” I said.

Barnes made a flick of his fingers, replied, “I debated coming forward days ago. But I kept thinking maybe it wasn’t necessary.”

He fell silent and then gazed at me intently. “I want you to know that I wasn’t like Francones. Sex is not an addiction for me. Nor an obsession.”

“Okay.”

The attorney moved uncomfortably. “The truth is that my wife is more interested in her status than in sex. Or at least since she turned fifty and—”

“No offense, Mr. Barnes,” I said. “I’m not particularly interested in the motivations that led you to the Superior Spa.”

He knitted his brows, said, “Oh.”

“Just to confirm: You did actually go into the spa?”

Barnes blinked, thought like a lawyer, and said, “So you don’t actually have me on tape entering or leaving?”

“Does it matter?”

“It would in court.”

“If you were on trial here, and you’re not. But if you don’t talk and it turns out we can gather evidence that places you in that massage parlor before the murders, I can and will arrest you on obstruction charges, Counselor.”

Barnes rolled his lips back from his teeth, thinking, but then sighed and said, “Okay. I was there.”

Once the attorney started talking, he did not hold back.

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