Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 39

“What do you think killing everyone in this room is going to do for you, Henry?” I asked, glancing at a clock on the mantelpiece and seeing that it was a quarter past seven. “Erase what you’ve done?”

“Among other things.”

I gestured at the phone on the floor. “They’ve been listening.”

He swung the shotgun at me now. “I really don’t like you, Cross.”

“You can make it right, Henry,” I said.

“I’m going to hell for what I’ve done. I’ve made my peace with that.”

“My grandmother’s in her nineties, and she likes to say that every Christmas is a time for rebirth,” I said. “I can tell you how you can do that, if you’ll let me.”

His meth eyes hopped all over me. “You trying to sell me some twelve-step program?”

I made a show of looking at Diana and Dr. Nicholson and the children and then said, “I think you’ll want to hear this alone, Henry. You can decide later whether to tell them. We’ll go somewhere. The kitchen. Have a cup of coffee. I’ll tell you what I think.”

“How stupid do you think I am?” Fowler asked. “Yeah, we’ll go talk, and then these bastards’ll take off.”

“Don’t be crazy, Henry,” Diana said. “I would never leave Barry.”

Sadness mixed with loss flickered across his face. Fowler looked at me, reached into his pocket, fed himself something again.

“You taking a visit to the OxyContinent?” I asked.

“So what if I am?”

“Let’s go talk,” I said, thinking that it was good he was taking a narcotic.

Fowler blinked, then gestured toward the center hall. “My den.”

I didn’t want Fowler in the den, which was on the opposite side of the house. I wanted him in the kitchen, which was at the rear and overlooked a walled-in garden.

“I could really use some coffee.”

The narcotic was hitting Fowler, taking the edge off his high anxiety.

“Sure. We aim to please,” he said, then he cracked up and poked me forward with the gun.

We walked to the living room entranceway. Fowler stopped there and spun around. He held his shotgun in the air. For a moment I thought he might fire at the ceiling again. Instead, he spoke to his family with quiet contempt. “I swear to God, if any one of you moves, I will paint the walls with your blood.”