Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

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.”

CHAPTER 33

Because it was Christmas morning, a special day, Nana agreed to make her sweet bacon. The recipe: thick bacon fried in a cast-iron skillet, then covered with brown sugar and baked in the oven.

“I only cook sweet bacon for a holiday or a birthday,” she had always said. That used to be the rule of the house. Her house, she insisted, even though Alex had bought and paid for it. But once, Damon had insisted that Arbor Day was a real holiday, and Nana had agreed with him. And after that, she changed the rule. Now she said: “I only cook sweet bacon for a major holiday or a birthday.”

Waffles. Pancakes. Cheese grits. And sweet bacon.

“There may be no need to cook the turkey later on,” Bree said. “This meal could last me the whole day. Maybe the whole week.”

“You speak for yourself,” Damon said. “I’ll be ready for turkey and mashed potatoes. And those yams I love with the mini-marshmallows.”

The maple syrup was soaking into the waffles and pancakes. The sweet bacon strips were crunchy-crisp. And the mood was finally cheerful.

Then Jannie spoke. “You know, it seems to me there’s only one thing missing from this breakfast table,” she said.

They all immediately thought of Alex. A somber mood reinvaded the room. There was quiet. Nana squeezed her lips together to keep from tearing up. Bree looked out the window of the kitchen door.

Damon shot a why’d-you-make-everyone-feel-bad-again look at Jannie. She realized that her innocent comment had been misinterpreted and had upset everyone.

Jannie said, “Oh, no! Listen. Listen. What I meant was, what’s missing are those ridiculous reindeer antlers and the flickering electric red nose that Damon puts on every Christmas.”

“Oh, I forgot all about those stupid…those stunning antlers,” Nana said.

“Get outta here,” Damon said. “That’s not happening. You wear the antlers. Nana can wear the antlers.”

“Nobody wears those antlers like you,” Jannie said and giggled.

“Oh please, can I see them on you? Oh please,” said Ava.

“I don’t even know where those dumb things are,” Damon said.

“Lucky for us I do,” said Jannie. “I’ve got them right here.”

And she produced from under her chair a pair of cloth antlers attached to a headband and decorated with a sprig of plastic holly. She also had a tiny red lightbulb fixed to a big rubber band that would fit snugly around Damon’s head.

Then Nana said, “Before we see Damon dressed like a reindeer, let’s join hands and say a prayer.”

They held hands and bowed their heads. Nana spoke.

“Dear Lord, Who on this blessed Christmas Day brought Your Son into the world, we ask You to look with kindness on another son. Your son Alex. As he strives to help others, we ask You to help him. To keep him from harm. To protect him from evil. According to Your holy will.”

Then together the Cross family said, “Amen.”

CHAPTER 34

Strangely, the sounds I’d come to associate with the Nicholson house were gone. No weeping, no screaming, and no children’s voices. Even the crazy man who ran the show was silent as he walked behind me, prodding me forward with the muzzle of one of the shotguns.

I surveyed the wreckage of the room in the light that seeped in from behind the curtains. The three children were still lying on the floor and seemed to be sleeping. A red velvet club chair had been viciously slashed open since I left. A mahogany end table had been broken up and the pieces partially burned in the fireplace.

Diana sat cross-legged on the floor with her husband’s head resting on her lap. She looked pale and exhausted. The doctor looked a whole lot worse. He lay motionless, his eyes closed. This was a life-or-death situation, and I had a good idea which side of the equation Nicholson was favoring.

I glanced at Fowler, who’d edged around the room but was still covering me with the shotgun. He was less manic than when I’d left him more than four hours before. His eyes were droopy, as if he’d taken something to counteract the methamphetamine, which meant he was vulnerable. That was good; if he almost passed out, it would give me a chance to subdue him. But if he went back to the meth, he’d quickly turn unpredictable.

“Why are you wearing the vest?” he asked, and I thought I smelled liquor.

“My boss made me wear it,” I replied as I moved toward Nicholson and his wife. “Said I couldn’t come in here without it.”

“Means they’re coming soon,” Fowler said.

“Only if you want it that way, Henry,” I said, kneeling next to the wounded doctor to take his pulse. It was slow, erratic, but it was there.

“He’s dying,” Diana whispered. “And there’s nothing I can do.”

“That’s all right,” Henry said behind me. “Let them come.”

I heard the tap, tap, tap of steel on glass, looked over my shoulder, and saw exactly what I did not want to see. Fowler had dumped the rest of his meth in the vial out onto the coffee table.

“That necessary, Henry?” I asked.

“Course,” he said, grinning at me maliciously with his rotten teeth. “How else am I going to be alert enough to see all this to its logical conclusion?”

He bent over, booted a line up each nostril. He sat up and shook his head, as if the meth had lit a fire in there. “There you go,” he said. “That’s how you get the edge on.”

“Henry, we’ve got to get Barry some help.”

“You’re like everybody else here, Cross,” Fowler said, skin flushing as he went into another one of his rages. “Nobody listens. Or if they do happen to listen, they don’t understand what I’m saying. That was Diana all the way. In one ear and out the other. What I’m saying is Barry boy’s going to die anyway. We are all going to die anyway. Now, I could plug another bullet into his belly to finish the job, but I want Diana to see him slowly wind down like a goddamned toy. Yeah, a toy. Like that stupid electric poodle that Chloe has. Bark-bark-bark. Then two barks, then one bark, then no bark.”

I found myself shaking my head in amazement at his bizarrely directed venom. Diana, however, looked weary and close to collapse. She ignored Fowler’s ravings and just kept gently stroking her husband’s pale hand.

“Henry, I came in here because I had some questions about the story you told me earlier.”

“What story?” he asked.

“Why you’re here,” I said, getting up. “Why you’re doing this.”

“I told you everything you needed to know,” Fowler sneered.

I looked around, trying to feel my way through uncharted territory and help Nicholson without setting Fowler off. I spotted an unscathed bottle of Absolut vodka on a shelf opposite the downed Christmas tree.

I moved toward it, saying, “But you didn’t tell me everything there was to know, did you, Henry?”

“You got all you’re going to get,” Fowler said as I picked up the bottle. “What are you doing?”

“Helping Barry,” I said.

Fowler flicked off the safety on the shotgun. “I told you that was not happening.”