Cross Justice by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

54

Palm Beach, Florida

Driven by a hot wind, the flames roared and belched black smoke into the late-morning sky. White egrets circled in the smoke, feasting on clouds of bugs fleeing the fire.

They were harvesting and burning sugarcane on both sides of Florida Route 441 as I headed west toward Lake Okeechobee, and twice I had to slow to a crawl, the smoke was so thick.

Finally I got upwind of the fire and the smoke was gone. I saw the sign welcoming me to Belle Glade. It was where my father had killed himself and as hard luck a place as I’d ever seen. I’d heard about the city, of course. Who in law enforcement hadn’t? As a municipality, Belle Glade used to have a murder rate the equivalent of a big metro area like DC or Chicago. After five minutes in Belle Glade, I could see some of the reasons why.

But I wasn’t there to diagnose and solve social ills, so I ignored the empty buildings and storefronts pocked with bullet holes and relied on Google Maps to lead me to the various churches around town. I wanted to find out how my father came to kill himself behind one of them.

There were a lot of churches in Belle Glade. At the first two, one for Baptists and another for Adventists, I got no helpful information. At St. Christopher’s Catholic Church, I talked with a priest painting the rectory door. Father Richard Lane was in his fifties and had only recently been transferred to Belle Glade.

“Thirty-three years ago?” he said, squinting at me. “I don’t know how you’re going to find someone just on a name.”

“I believe in miracles, Father,” I said.

“Well, I can check and see if a funeral Mass was said for Mr. Brown here, but if the old records are as poorly maintained as the newer ones are, I can’t offer you much hope, Detective Cross.”

I gave the priest my business card, told him to call if he found anything.

Over the next two hours, I knocked on the doors of every other place of worship in town. Someone answered at every church, but no one knew of a Paul Brown committing suicide there years before.

One evangelical minister recommended I try the churches in nearby towns to the north. Another advised me to do a county records search for death certificates. Both were good ideas, and as I left the second minister, I tried to figure out what to do next and how best to do it.

It was beastly hot and humid, and I was eager to climb into my rental car and cool off in the air-conditioning. But then I noticed a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office van parked up and across the street next to one of those shabby apartment complexes with two floors and exterior stairs.

I wandered over, looked into the complex, and saw a small crowd of people watching the upper floor where yellow crime tape had been strung up around the door of one of the apartments.

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