Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 32

“You are not going back in there,” Lieutenant Nu said. “I’ll never be able to look your wife in the eye again.”

“Join the club on that one,” I said, jumping up. “But I’ve got to go back in there, or that doctor is dead and maybe the others too. And I have a plan.”

“And that plan is?” McGoey asked.

I told Nu that while I’d slept, part of my mind must have worked out what was really behind Fowler’s fall from glory and his actions of the past twenty-four hours.

“We can use it, I think,” I said, and I told them what I was considering.

“Shit,” Nu grumbled. “You do have to go back in there.”

He hustled me into a SWAT armored vest, and I went back out into the blizzard once more. It was six thirty, a pale winter dawn, the second time I crossed Thirtieth Street to the Nicholsons’ home. The newscasters and onlookers had been pushed back. Only the vans and the MPD officers, the medics, and the SWAT teams were allowed to remain close to the house.

I picked up the shovel the congressman’s wife had brought me and started shoveling my way up the walk through thirteen inches of snow. Church bells rang from the direction of O Street, probably Christ Church. From the other direction, more bells, probably Mt. Zion.

More than ever I felt like I was part of something that was staining the celebration, and as I rapped on the front door, I felt ready to do some cleaning up. But was I right? Would my plan work?

I heard the creak of floorboards, and my resolve grew weaker.

The door opened. I stepped inside, hands raised. Fowler kicked shut the door, pushed me face-up against the wall, and frisked me again. “Not a good idea, Cross,” he said as he searched me. “Coming back in here.”

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t let you leave now.”