Will I ever learn? Probably not in this lifetime.
“ALEX, IT’S DAVIES. I’m sorry to bother you at home.” Ramon Davies was superintendent of detectives with Metro, and also my boss, and he was on the line.
“It’s my birthday. Who died?” I asked. I was ticked off, mostly at myself for answering the phone in the first place.
“Caroline Cross,” he said, and my heart nearly stopped. At that very moment, the kitchen door swung open and the family came out singing. Nana had an elaborate pink-and-red birthday cake on a tray, with an American Airlines travel folio clipped on top.
“Happy birthday to you…”
Bree held up a hand to quiet them. My posture and my face must have said something. They all stopped right where they were. The joyful singing ended almost midnote. My family remembered whose birthday this was: Detective Alex Cross’s.
Caroline was my niece, my brother’s only daughter. I hadn’t seen her in twenty years; not since just after Blake died. That would have made her twenty-four now.
At the time of her death.
The floor under my feet felt like it was gone. Part of me wanted to call Davies a liar. The other part, the cop, spoke up. “Where is she now?”
“I just got off the phone with Virginia State Police. The remains are at the ME’s office in Richmond. I’m sorry, Alex. I hate to be the one to tell you this.”
“Remains?” I muttered. It was such a cold word, but I appreciated Davies not over-handling me. I walked out of the room, sorry I’d said even that much in front of my family.
“Are we talking homicide here? I assume that we are.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What happened?” My heart was thudding dangerously. I almost didn’t want to know.
“I don’t have a lot of details,” he told me, in a way that instantly gave me a hint—he was holding something back.
“Ramon, what’s going on here? Tell me. What do you know about Caroline?”
“Just take one thing at a time, Alex. If you leave now, you can probably be there in about two hours. I’ll ask for one of the responding officers to meet you.”
“I’m on my way.”
“And Alex?”
I’d almost hung up the phone, my mind in splinters. “What is it?”
“I don’t think you should go alone.”
Read an extended excerpt and learn more about I, Alex Cross.
Detective Alex Cross hunts three serial killers—but is someone else hunting him?
For an excerpt of the new Alex Cross novel, turn the page.
IT’S NOT EVERY DAY THAT I GET A NAKED GIRL ANSWERING THE DOOR I knock on.
Don’t get me wrong—with twenty years of law enforcement under my belt, it’s happened. Just not that often.
“Are you the waiters?” this girl asked. There was a bright but empty look in her eyes that said ecstasy to me, and I could smell weed from inside. The music was thumping, too, the kind of relentless techno that would make me want to slit my wrists if I had to listen to it for long.
“No, we’re not the waiters,” I told her, showing my badge. “Metro police. And you need to put something on, right now.”
She wasn’t even fazed. “There were supposed to be waiters,” she said to no one in particular. It made me sad and disgusted at the same time. This girl didn’t look like she was even out of high school yet, and the men we were here to arrest were old enough to be her father.
“Check her clothes before she puts them on,” I told one of the female officers on the entry team. Besides myself there were five uniformed cops, a rep from Youth and Family Services, three detectives from the Prostitution Unit, and three more from Second District, including my friend John Sampson.