Criss Cross

Chapter 28

“What the heck’s a pile of gummy bears doing there?” Sampson asked.

“Exactly,” I said, squeezing one. “And they’re fresh.”

“I don’t get this.”

“Arlene Duffy always kept a jar of these on her desk, remember?” I said, gazing down the game trail. “There are more of them up there.”

Sampson and I stepped off the trail and walked parallel to it through the thorns and vines, seeing a gummy bear or two every few feet. We soon left the clearing and entered a thicket.

The light was dimmer, but I could see a crow on its side, quivering, on the trail ahead of me. There were gummy bears all around the bird, which seemed to be suffering some kind of seizure.

“Those candies are poisoned,” I said, gesturing at the crow. “Some of them, anyway.”

We found another dead bird and then a third before we reached a second, smaller clearing in the forest. A single decrepit cabin slouched there, overgrown by climbing vines, moss, and saplings.

The gummy bears led us toward the cabin, but when the breeze picked up and changed direction, the candies no longer mattered.

“Jesus,” Sampson said, pulling out a handkerchief and covering his mouth and nose. “I think there’s camphor in the car if we need it,” he said.

I mouth-breathed as I walked up onto the ramshackle porch, already hearing the blowflies. I got out the small flashlight I always carry and flicked it on.

The plank floor was buckled and covered in dead leaves, trash, and the odd gummy bear or two. I stepped gingerly inside, hoping to God the floor didn’t give way.

The boards grumbled but held as I took another step, then a third.

I swung the flashlight toward the buzzing flies. The beam passed over an old woodstove and the ruins of a couch before illuminating a headless corpse lashed to a chair. The head rested on a table beside her.

“It’s her,” I called out, feeling depressed and angry. “Arlene Duffy.”

“Shit,” Sampson said. “You’re sure?”

“She’s wearing the merry widow,” I said, playing the light over her. “And he cut off her head, Meat Man — style.”

“You’re kidding,” Sampson said, no doubt remembering the gruesome details of a case we had worked a decade before.

“I wish I were,” I said, taking a step toward her. She’d been dead for at least two days and was putrefying in the heat.

Despite the cloud of flies, I could see the gummy bears stuffed in her mouth. A note written in lipstick was pinned to her chest.

I’ve done the world a favor, Alex Cross, it read. This bitch was a molester and pornographer. She used drug-laced gummy bears to subdue her victims. Check the jar on her desk. And arrest her assistant. If she didn’t know, she suspected. — M