Alex Cross: Cross Justice Part 31

Stefan thought a moment, then nodded. "I've seen a few kids at the school use something like that, I think."

"Names?" Naomi asked.

"I don't know," Stefan said. "I think they were Patty's students. Where is she? She hasn't come to see me or answered my calls."

Bree said nothing.

Naomi said, "I'm sure she's just under a lot of stress."

"Or bailing on me," Stefan said in a fretful tone.

Bree and Naomi had tried to a.s.sure him otherwise. But after they'd left the jail, they'd gone by Patty Converse's place. Her car was gone, but from what they'd been able to see through the window, her stuff was still inside. Naomi had tried Patty's phone number several times, but got voice mail.

So they'd come back to the railroad tracks around four that afternoon.

A train rumbled at them out of the south. Bree and Naomi walked well back from the tracks in order to see the tops of the freight cars. But they were all bare of riders, even the caboose. Another train came a few minutes later out of the north. It too was riderless.

"I'm thinking this is a little bit like the needle in the haystack," Naomi said. "I mean, we can't watch all day."

Bree thought about that, looked around, and then back toward the thicket of trees between the tracks and the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. The trees overlooking the tracks triggered a memory of Ali watching some show on the Outdoor Channel the other day.

"Is there a store here that carries hunting and fis.h.i.+ng gear?" Bree asked.

"There's an army-surplus place that does, I think."

They were soon back in the car, driving west of town to P and J's Surplus. They went in and were greeted with several Confederate flags on the wall.

Bree ignored them and found the only salesperson, a heavyset white girl in her midteens named Sandrine. She looked at Bree suspiciously and at Naomi with mild interest.

"I seen you in the papers and on TV," Sandrine said to her. "You're defending that kid killer, right?"

"I'm Mr. Tate's attorney," Naomi said.

"You're following the case?" Bree asked.

She shrugged. "Papa says I shouldn't pay attention to any of it."

"Why's that?"

"Just n.i.g.g.e.rs killing n.i.g.g.e.rs, he says. No offense. I'm just quoting."

Sandrine said this offhandedly. Bree swallowed her reaction by wondering how many people in and around Starksville thought about the case like that.

Naomi managed to stay composed as well, said, "We're here looking for something to buy."

"Yeah?" Sandrine said, perking up. "What're you looking for?"

Bree told her, and the girl came waddling and smiling right out from behind her little counter. "We got it all at P and J's! Got six of them in just the other day. How many you want?"

Bree thought and then said, "We'll start with two."

CHAPTER 66.

West Palm Beach, Florida

BURNING CANE FILLED the air with smoke again as I drove toward Belle Glade, wanting to be there and in Palm Beach and in Starksville all at once.

It was five twenty in the evening. I'd spent the day with Drummond and Johnson, who'd quickly reached staff at both the Abrams and Martin residences and confirmed that Coco had painted the women's portraits. None of the staff knew who Coco was, however, much less where she lived.

Maggie Crawford's estranged husband, John, was fis.h.i.+ng in Alaska. The b.o.o.b King had been in surgery all day and was unreachable. So was Elliot Martin, Lisa Martin's billionaire husband, who was in Shanghai on business.

They'd left messages with all their aides. On the way to Mize Fine Arts on Worth Avenue, Johnson called up the Internet on his phone and ran a search for a Coco in Palm Beach and the surrounding areas. There was no such listing.

Then we'd found Mize Fine Arts closed during prime shopping hours, and no one answered our knocking.

"I'd like to go in there and look around," Johnson said as we turned away.

"I'm sure you would," Drummond said. "But I don't think a name on three paintings gives us a search warrant. And that looks like a serious alarm system. You wouldn't be able to explain yourself if you were somehow caught inside."

When I looked at Drummond, he winked at me.

We went to Mize's home. It must have been a grand place once, not huge like the megamansions out on Ocean Boulevard, but an impressive structure. The front yard and gardens were nicely maintained. But the manor itself needed painting. And up close, you could see the front door required varnis.h.i.+ng, and the stucco siding was in minor disrepair.

Drummond rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang it again.

I wandered around the side and into the shadows between the house and a bamboo hedge that separated it from the place next door. The walkway was busted concrete overgrown with weeds. The backyard was worse, looked like it hadn't been tended in months. A gutter downspout was disconnected halfway down from the roof. The lower part hung by a bracket.

"If he's in there, he's not answering," Drummond said when I returned.

"I'd check the tax rolls on this guy," I said.

"Why's that?"

"He's not taking care of his property, which means he's under financial stress of some sort."

Drummond called in a request for all information on Jeffrey Mize as we returned to the car.

"We'll have to sit on the place," Johnson said.

"And the art gallery," I said. "Sooner or later, Mize or Coco will show up."

Because Johnson was the only one who had seen Coco in person, he went to watch the shop. Drummond and I sat on the house until it was time for me to go learn what had become of my father.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," the sergeant said before I left.

Driving north out of Belle Glade an hour later, there was a bug hatch, and so many insects smashed into the winds.h.i.+eld that it stayed smeared no matter how much wiper fluid I used. Near the Pahokee city limits, I stopped to fill up with gas and clean off the winds.h.i.+eld, then I drove into town, seeing signs about the high school football team.

Drummond said the high school teams at Pahokee and Belle Glade always ranked among the top teams in the state and together had put almost sixty players in the NFL. Pretty impressive when you consider the economic devastation. There were fewer businesses in Pahokee than there'd been in Belle Glade.

But the Cozy Corner Cafe on Lake Street was still open. I parked in front. The humidity this close to Lake Okeechobee was stupefying. In the ten steps I took between the rental and the front door of the cafe, I was drenched, though maybe that also had to do with the sudden nervousness that swept through me. What had happened to my father all those years ago?

There were six customers in the cafe, though only one was female and alone. She smiled at me, waved me over. A pretty, plump older Latina woman with a beaming smile, she got up out of her booth, pus.h.i.+ng back her long ponytail of black hair flecked with gray, and adjusted an attractive purple batik dress. A small, simple wooden cross hung on a chain about her neck.

"Dr. Cross?" she said, smiling as she took my hand in both of hers and peered kindly up at me through wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. "I'm Reverend Alicia Maya. I understand you're interested in Paul Brown?"

CHAPTER 67.

OVER THE COURSE of an hour, an iced coffee, and a slice of pineapple pie, Reverend Maya told me what she knew about Paul Brown. She'd met him shortly after she had taken over the small Unitarian Universalist church in Pahokee as a first-time minister.

"I was twenty-five, right out of divinity school and sure I could change the world," Reverend Maya said. "You wouldn't believe it now, but back then, Pahokee was a thriving place. Everyone had jobs. People came here for jobs, including Paul Brown."

Reverend Maya said Brown showed up at one of her evening services. He was weak and limped terribly.

"He stayed after the service," she said. "He said he had no place to go and would be glad to clean the church if I let him sleep there. I was doubtful, but I could see he was a man in pain beyond the mere physical, and I said yes. He ended up living in the church for about eight months, working out in the picking fields in the day, cleaning the church at night."

I held up my hands. "Before we go any further, can you answer a couple of quick questions?"

"I'll try."

"After Brown died, did you call someone named Clifford Tate in Starksville, North Carolina?"

The reverend c.o.c.ked her head, looked off, and then said, "Yes. I believe the name and number were in a little book I found with Mr. Brown's things."

The loss of my father felt strangely final then, and it must have shown on my face because Reverend Maya said, "Sergeant Drummond said he was a relative of yours?"

"I believe he was my father," I said.

She blinked, took a big breath, said, "Oh. I didn't know that."

Reverend Maya said Brown seemed to be a tortured man doing his best to atone for past sins, though he was evasive when it came to discussing their nature. He rarely spoke to her, but she often found him kneeling in prayer.

"I'd ask him what he was praying for," the minister said. "All he would say was 'Forgiveness.'"

"He never told you what had happened? What he did?"

The minister looked conflicted and I could tell it had something to do with confidentiality between a minister and a member of the flock, even a dead member of the flock. So I told her about Jason Cross.

Reverend Maya listened raptly as I described my parents' descent into h.e.l.l. I told her how my mother had died and about my disjointed memories of what I'd believed for three and a half decades was the night my father died.

"Mr. Brown confessed some of that to me, though there were never any names used. He said he'd killed his wife because she was suffering so."

"I think that's true. Did he ever mention us, the children? Or his mother?"

She nodded. "He did. He said his children were living with his mother somewhere up north, and that they were doing much better without him."

Reverend Maya said that one evening several months after Brown had appeared at her church, she'd gone to check on him. Brown wasn't there in the little room where he lived. Then she heard a shot and found him lying dead behind the church. He'd shot himself in the face with a shotgun.

"Can I see where it happened?"

She shook her head. "The church was a termite-ridden building that was torn down about five years after I left to take over a church in West Palm. But I'd be glad to show you his grave, if you'd like."

"His grave. I'd like that very much."

CHAPTER 68.

"WE'LL TAKE MY car," Reverend Maya said. "Funner."

To my surprise, she led me to an older-model, gleaming, two-door white Mazda Miata convertible roadster.

"Do all Unitarian Universalist ministers drive sports cars?" I asked.

She laughed. "This one does. It's my single vice in life."

The reverend was good at her vice; she drove the Miata on the rural roads beyond the decaying streets of Pahokee as if she'd had race training somewhere. I never got the chance to ask her if she had because she peppered me with questions about my life and my family.

I could tell by the end of the fifteen-minute drive that Reverend Maya was as good at probing for the soul of things as she was at driving.

"You've led an amazing life by any definition," she said as she downs.h.i.+fted and turned through the narrow gate of a small cemetery out in the countryside. "I think Paul, uh, your father would have been very proud of you."

I smiled, choked up, and said, "Thanks."