Kill Alex Cross

time and quietly let myself out of the house.

When I got back to the car, I scribbled a single note to myself for later:

“Where is Zoe’s phone?”

I SPENT MOST of that day crisscrossing the city, interviewing other Branaff students who knew either Zoe or Ethan and socialized with them. Then late in the afternoon, I drove up to Riverdale, Maryland, for one last stop. This one was unannounced.

George O’Shea lived on a corner lot in a gridded, middle-class neighborhood just off the East – West Highway.

I parked under the basketball hoop on his freshly black-topped driveway and went up to ring the bell.

He was smoking a cigar when he answered the door. At Branaff, O’Shea’s custodial uniform was always clean and pressed, but here he was wearing an old flannel shirt, open halfway down his chest. I could hear a game on the TV somewhere behind him.

“It’s Detective Cross, right?” he said, squinting at me through the fly-specked screen.

“Sorry to come by on a Saturday,” I said. “We’re working around the clock on this. Just a few follow-up questions if you don’t mind.”

For a brief second, he looked like he did mind, like he wasn’t entirely sure I was giving him the whole story. And I wasn’t.

Ever since I’d met O’Shea, my mind kept coming back to him. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. Just a vague sense that behind all the smiles and the interest in police work, there was something he wasn’t saying. It was only a hunch at this point, but I’ve taken action on less than that before.

“How’s it going, anyway?” he asked. “Any good leads, or whatever you call it?”

“Nothing I can really talk about,” I said.

He nodded and rocked back on his heels. “Right. I understand. Still, it must be interesting work, huh?”

I watched him through the door. What was he thinking about right now?

“Do you mind if I come in?” I asked.

“Oh — yeah. Of course,” he said, like it hadn’t occurred to him. “I was just ruining a pot of coffee. You want some?”

“No thanks. I’ll try to be quick here.”

He thumbed over his shoulder as I came in. “Let me just switch off the machine. Make yourself comfortable.”

I hung back and looked around as he headed toward the kitchen.

“Must be a real drag working on the weekend,” he called back. “That’s the one thing about my job. At least I’ve got a nice regular schedule.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, fingering through his mail. It was out on an end table, mostly bills, mostly unopened. A dusty collection of salt and pepper shakers sat in a curio cabinet on the wall. “Speaking of schedules, do you keep records of the custodial staff’s time at the school?” I asked.

O’Shea didn’t answer. An announcer on the TV hooted out his approval for a double play that had just gone down. And I knew right then that something was wrong.

“George?”

When I got to the kitchen, it was empty. No George anywhere. The back door was wide open, and I could see O’Shea out on the lawn, scrambling over his chain-link fence toward the street.

The son of a bitch was making a run for it.

THERE IS NOTHING that pisses me off like a footrace I don’t want. When I ran out of George O’Shea’s house a half second later, I think I bent his screen door right off the frame.

O’Shea was a big guy. The kids at Branaff called him Hagrid behind his back. But he was a lot faster than he looked. By the time I was out on the street sprinting after him, he was halfway up the block. Clearly he had a good reason to run.

“Don’t do this, George!”

A guy raking his leaves had already taken out his phone when I passed. “Call the police!” I yelled at him. I noticed he took my picture first.

Two kids on the sidewalk screamed at me and pedaled their Big Wheels like crazy, trying to keep up.

The top of the block ended in a cul-de-sac. O’Shea cut between two of the houses and kept going.

When I caught sight of him again, he was trying to scale a tall cedar fence in somebody’s backyard. He had to jump a couple times before he got a grip on the top of it and started pulling himself up.

Then the plank in his hand cracked. He slipped back down a few feet — and that’s when I caught up with him.

I got hold of his ankle before he could muscle all the way over, and I pulled him right off the top of the fence.