Alex Cross 30: Deadly Cross by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson [Patterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 54

Alabama

Two days later

NED MAHONEY WAS AT THE wheel as we drove north of Montgomery in stifling heat and humidity that would have made a DC summer day feel fall-like by comparison. It was August. The crops were tall. The foliage between the fields was a dark gray-green, pines, oaks, and creeping vines alike.

“You think Bree’s changing her mind?” Mahoney asked.

I shrugged. After the Higgins attack, Chief Michaels showed up at our house and convinced her to take two weeks to cool off and see if quitting was really in her long-term best interests. Evidently, the idea for him to come had been Commissioner Dennison’s.

“Dennison was a man about it,” I said. “He admitted he was wrong and said he recognized her clear value once it was no longer there, that he wished to apologize and move on. He also apologized to me for sharing the information about Kay.”

“Odds of her going back?”

I shrugged again. “Fifty-fifty?”

“That’s about what I’m giving this trip of yours not being a wild-goose chase. I mean, we have Elaine Paulson dead to rights.”

This was ground we’d covered before, but I replied, “But we don’t know the truth. Do I wish Higgins had said more before she died on the operating table? Of course. But we have a dying statement from a known peddler of scandal who told me she was beaten and Kay and Christopher were shot to death because of Kay’s time in the asylum. We have to chase this.”

My phone buzzed with a text. I read it, then told Ned, “Rawlins says Higgins’s computers have one of the most sophisticated encryption systems he’s ever seen. He’s days from being inside them.”

“Kay’s asylum it is, then,” Mahoney said, surrendering. “And again, I wish I could have justified bringing Sampson down with us.”

“He figured out he needed to be with his family,” I said.

“I love that guy.”

“Me too.”

We got off the highway and drove six miles on a county road to the entrance of West Briar, the private psychiatric facility where Kay had stayed on several different occasions over the years. A winding drive climbed up through thick woods, and then the trees thinned and ended, revealing an open, campus-like setting dominated by a large white, rambling structure — more like a country inn than an asylum — with well-kept lawns and gardens.

Arriving unannounced can often result in an initial strike-out for investigators, but sometimes when people are shown FBI credentials with no warning, there’s a valuable window of candor before their guards go up and they start posturing and lying to you. The more hardened the criminal or the smarter the sociopath, the narrower the window of candor. The opposite is also true; the more honest the person, the wider the window.

We got out of the car and were met by a temperature of over one hundred degrees and air that was thick with moisture.

“I’m going to need a shower by the time we get inside,” Mahoney grumbled.

“Two showers,” I said, wiping at the sweat rolling off my forehead.

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