Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 8

Outside, the wind began to pick up, slashing the snow sideways. The lawn in front of the Nicholsons’ house had disappeared beneath the three inches that had already fallen.

“How do we handle this guy, Alex?” Ramiro said. “He sounds psychotic.”

“Or wasted on something stronger than pathological rage,” I said.

Adam Nu was on the phone with Congressman Brandywine, assuring him that as far as we knew, his wife was still alive among the hostages inside. I studied the notes I’d jotted down after Fowler hung up, trying to see some kind of pattern to his ravings.

He’d talked to us as if we were the jury and he were arguing his case in civil court. He admitted shooting the Christmas presents. He’d called his ex-wife’s husband “Mr. Optometrist-fucking cash-flow doctor of the year.” He clearly loathed Barry Nicholson. He clearly had deep-seated money resentment. Called Christmas the “high holy day of consumerism.” Ranted about Tiffany. He had even referred to Cindy Lou Who and Whoville, from the Grinch story.

Was that how he saw himself, in some deluded way? As the Grinch? I tapped on the notebook and realized something. I hadn’t heard the two women, had I? Maybe one there, right at the outset, before Fowler started shooting. But from that point onward, no women’s voices at all. Were they dead?

No. He would have made a reference to shooting them. So they were there, but not talking. Why? So they didn’t disturb-

“Alex,” McGoey said.

I looked up. The detective handed me a computer tablet, said, “Guys downtown just sent over the file on Henry Fowler.”

Nu got off the phone with the congressman. The three of us used separate tablets to scan through the police reports, psychological evaluations, and clippings that Henry Fowler had generated on his way to a hostage standoff. I skipped his rap sheet for the moment, wanting to understand who he had been before all this. In some ways, it was like taking a walk with the Ghost of Christmas Past.