Four Blind Mice

Chapter Seventy-One

The following morning the New York papers were filled with a story about the murder of four call girls, a madam and a bouncer on the East Side of Manhattan. The women were Vietnamese and Thai, and because of that I talked to the detective in charge of the investigation in Manhattan. So far, the NYPD was nowhere on the grisly case. I thought about going to New York, but there were other pressing things on my mind.

There was an important lead I hadn't even begun to satisfactorily check out. The Foot Soldier. Who the hell was he? Or she? And why had Foot Soldier contacted me by e-mail? What was the mystery person trying to tell me?

Owen Handler had given me a few names, and once I returned to Washington, I dug around until I tracked a few of them down. The most interesting to me was Tran Van Luu, a former Kit Carson scout who was now living in the United States.

There was a catch, a big one. Tran Van Luu was on death row in Florence, Colorado. He'd been found guilty of murdering nine people in Newark and New York City. I knew a little about the federal prison at Florence and had even been there once. That was the second catch. Kyle Craig was imprisoned there, my old nemesis. Kyle was also on death row.

The Florence ADX was one of the so-called super max prison facilities. Thirty-six states now had them. Death row was located in the Security Housing Unit, a kind of prison within a prison. It turned out to be a bland, sand-colored building with extraordinarily heavy security inside and out. That was comforting, since Kyle Craig was being held inside, and Kyle had nothing but disdain for prison security.

Two heavily armed guards accompanied me to death row. As we walked down the otherwise empty, fluorescent-lit hallways, I heard none of the usual chaotic noise of a prison. My mind was somewhere else anyway.

I had arrived in Colorado around noon. Everything was running smoothly on the home front, and hopefully I'd be back in DC that night. Nana wasn't missing any opportunities, though. Before I left the house she sat me down and told me one of her story-parables. She called it The story of the thousand marbles. “I heard this on NPR, Alex. It's a true story, and I'm passing it along to you for what it's worth. Seems there was this man who lived in Southern California, around San Diego I believe it was. He had a family, nice family, and he worked very hard, long hours, lots of weekends. Sound familiar?”

“Probably familiar to a lot of people,” I said. “Men and women. Go ahead, though, Nana. This hardworking man with the extraordinarily nice family living outside San Diego. What happened to him?”

“Well anyway, this man had a kindly grandfather who adored both him and his family. He'd noticed that his grandson was working too hard, and he was the one who told him about the marbles. He told it this way. He said that the average life span for men was around seventy-five years. That meant thirty-nine hundred Saturdays to play when you were a kid, and to be with your family when you got older and wiser.”

“I see,” I said. “Or to play once you got older. Or even to give lectures to anyone who'll listen.”

“Shush, Alex. Now, listen. So the grandfather figured out that his grandson, who was forty-three, had about sixteen hundred and sixty Saturdays left in his life. Statistically speaking. So what he did was he bought two large jars and filled them with beautiful cat's-eye marbles. He gave them to his grandson. And he told him that every Saturday, he should take one marble out of the jar. Just one, and just as a reminder that he only had so many Saturdays left, and that they were precious beyond belief. Think about that, Alex. If you have the time,” said Nana.

So here I was at a super max prison on a Saturday. I didn't think I was wasting the day, not at all. But Nana's message had sunk in anyway.

This was my last murder case. It had to be. This was the end of the road for Detective Alex Cross.

I focused my mind on the baffling case as I walked toward the cell of Tran Van Luu. He would make my trip worth at least one marble.

Or so I had to hope.