I STAYED AT THE FLETCHER ALLEN HOSPITAL in Vermont for nearly a week, which was my longest hospital stay to date, and maybe another warning to me. How many warnings did I get?
Around 6:00 in the evening on Friday, I received a call from Detective Jeanne Galletta out in L.A. “Alex, has anyone told you the news yet?” she asked. “I assume they have.”
“What news, Jeanne? That I’m being released from the hospital tomorrow?”
“I don’t know anything about that. But yesterday, Mary Wagner confessed to the murders here in L.A.”
“She didn’t commit those murders. Michael Bell did.”
“I know that. Even Maddux Fielding knows it. Nobody believed her, but she confessed. Then, sometime last night, poor Mary Wagner hung herself in her cell. She’s dead, Alex.”
I sighed and shook my head a couple of times. “I’m really sorry to hear that. It’s just another death Bell is responsible for. Another murder.”
The following morning, and much to my surprise, I was released from the hospital. I called home with the news, and I even managed to get on a flight to Boston. From Boston I caught the hourly shuttle to D.C. Never been so happy to get on a crowded commuter plane in my life.
It was easiest to get a cab at the airport, and as I rode into Southeast around 7:00 that night, I felt a soft, warm glow spreading inside my body. There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. I know that isn’t true for everybody, but it is for me, and I also know how lucky it makes me.
The cab pulled up in front of the house on Fifth, and suddenly I was running across the small front lawn, then taking two long strides up the paint-faded front steps.
I grabbed Little Alex up in my arms, and I spun him up high in the air. It hurt, but it was worth it. I called back at the cabbie, who was leaning out his side window, a little befuddled, but even he was smiling some, in his slightly jaded D.C.-cabbie way. “I’ll be right there!” I told him. “Be right with you.”
“No problem. Take your time, buddy. The meter’s running anyway.”
I looked at Nana Mama, who had come out on the porch with my young son.
“What?” I whispered. “Tell me what happened.”
“Ali is home,” she said in a quiet voice. “Christine brought him here, Alex. She changed her mind again. She’s not staying in the east either. Ali is home for good. Can you believe it? Now how about you? Are you home?”
“I’m home, Nana,” I said. Then I looked into the beautiful eyes of my small son. “I’m home, Ali. I promise you.”
And I always keep my promises.
Alex Cross faces the deadliest psychopath of them all—his wife’s killer.
For an excerpt from the next Alex Cross novel,
turn the page.
“I’M PREGNANT, ALEX.”
Everything about the night is so very clear to me. Still is, after all this time, all these years that have passed, everything that’s happened, the horrible murderers, the homicides solved and sometimes not.
I stood in the darkened bedroom with my arms lightly circling my wife Maria’s waist, my chin resting on her shoulder. I was thirty-one then, and had never been happier at any time of my life.
Nothing even came close to what we had together, Maria, Damon, Jannie, and me.
It was the fall of 1993, a million years ago it seems to me now.
It was also past two in the morning, and our baby Jannie had the croup something terrible. Poor sweet girl had been up for most of the night, most of the last few nights, most of her young life. Maria was gently rocking Jannie in her arms, humming “You Are So Beautiful,” and I had my arms around Maria, rocking her.
I was the one who’d gotten up first, but I couldn’t seem to get Jannie back to sleep no matter what tricks I tried. Maria had come in and taken the baby after an hour or so. We both had work early in the morning. I was on a murder case.
“You’re pregnant?” I said against Maria’s shoulder.
“Bad timing, huh, Alex? You see a lot more croup in your future? Binkies? More dirty diapers? Nights like this one?”
“I don’t like this part so much. Being up late, or early, whatever this is. But I love our life, Maria. And I love that we’re going to have another baby.”