Criss Cross

Chapter 96

On the seventh evening after Ali’s kidnapping, I trudged up the stairs to my front porch, feeling lost, heartbroken, and dreading the loneliness inside.

My head was splitting again. At the front door, I was shaking so bad I had to put down the heavy brown paper bag I was carrying and use both hands to get the key in the lock. The door opened and swung inward.

I picked up the bag, but then I stood there, unable to take the first step inside.

The past few nights I’d been unable to detach from the case. I’d gotten so worked up and was so sleep-deprived, I’d had terrible visions of what M might be doing to Ali.

The nightmares had been so real, I’d screamed out several times and then cried myself back to sleep. I didn’t know if I could face another night in my empty home and considered taking the car right then and driving to the Delaware shore to join my family.

But Ali needed me, even if it was the wreckage of me. I stepped inside and closed the door. I felt my way into the kitchen. After setting the bag on the counter, I finally turned on a light and looked around dully before pulling out my phone.

Nothing. No texts. No Wickr messages.

I was about to set the phone down when it rang. Bree. I put her on speaker.

“Anything?” she asked.

“Report came in. DNA seals it. That was Kyle Craig in the box.”

“Kind of makes it worse, you know?”

“I do.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not a word from M in six days,” I said, my stomach in knots. “He’s getting his torture in.”

“Do you have to stay there all by yourself?”

“I ate dinner with Ned, John, and the others.”

“I’m worried about you, Alex,” she said. “You haven’t seemed like yourself at all.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Ali’s counting on you to be strong.”

“And here I am feeling weaker than I’ve ever felt.”

After a beat, she said, “Have you been drinking again?”

“Today? No, and I have no plans to.”

“Do you want me to come home, baby? Keep you company?”

“I’ll come tomorrow, spend the day.”

Bree’s voice came back lighter. “That would be good. For you and for us.”

“Family therapy.”

“I think you need a good dose of it.”

“I do.”

“I love you, baby. Call me before you go to sleep, no matter what time it is. Promise?”

“Promise. And I love you too. Kiss them good night for me.”

“I will,” she said, and she hung up.

After I put the phone down, I stood there at the kitchen counter for a good two minutes, staring at that brown paper bag. Then I got the television remote and turned on the small screen we had mounted for Nana Mama above the refrigerator.

I thumbed through the channels, pausing on the two stations broadcasting local news. There’d been a fire overnight that took the lives of four children.

I shut the television off, muttering bitterly, “Media bastards. How long until the cameras start feeding on us?”

I put my hands on the counter and hung my head, despondent.

And no wonder. We’d made no significant progress in days. Security cameras at the Fort Totten Metro station hadn’t picked up Ali after his friends the Kent twins had seen him walking in that direction.

FBI agents had discreetly canvassed the seven blocks between the school and the subway stop, but no one seemed to remember seeing Ali or anything out of the ordinary the afternoon he vanished.

Other investigative threads had led nowhere. The Willard Hotel, for example, did not keep a security camera in its storage area, and the bellmen had no clear memory of the carry-on bag M had supposedly left for William Nolan two weeks before.

And no word whether my boy was alive or...

We were stuck, and I was left alone in my house to wait M out. As it had every night that week, my anxiety level rose with each passing minute. And as I had every night that week, I pulled a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the bag and opened it.

I poured twice what I’d consider healthy into a tumbler and downed it. I shuddered at the fireball that went down my throat and boiled in my belly. I poured another in anticipation of a third.

In twenty minutes, I knew, I’d be feeling less pain. In an hour, I’d find moments of pleasure where I wouldn’t think of Ali at all and stretches of suffering where all I could see were memories of him.

And sometime after that, I thought, picking up the bottle and tipping it to my lips, my world would go blank and dark again.