Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(20)

“A murder investigation,” Sampson said, stepping past her.

“No,” she gasped. “My God. She’s so … murder?”

“Any idea where she might have gone?” I asked her as Mahoney went inside.

“I don’t know for sure. But she’s been going to the spit off Toms Cove in the afternoon, sitting on the dunes, watching the waves. She said it’s been calming.”

“Alex!” Sampson called.

“Excuse me,” I said and I went inside to a tiny and tidy living area with a wicker love seat and a chair. Sampson and Mahoney were putting on latex gloves at the counter that separated the living area from the little kitchen.

“There’s a sealed envelope here,” Sampson said. “Addressed to the daughters.”

“Open it,” I said, already feeling queasy at what it might contain.

Mahoney slit it open with a knife, pulled out a single piece of paper, and unfolded it. I looked over his shoulder and read Dear Tina and Rachel, I love you more than life itself. I’m sorry that it has come to this. I’m sorry about all of it …

I didn’t need to see the rest. “She’s going to kill herself.”

It was all I could think of as we raced in Mahoney’s car down the narrow road toward Toms Cove, ignoring the traffic trying to leave the area ahead of the coming storm.

The cove itself was west of the dunes that separated it from the National Seashore. We pulled into a parking area at the visitors’ center and spotted the blue Nissan Sentra with Pennsylvania plates that Mrs. Penny said Elaine Paulson was driving.

Against a stream of people heading the other way, we walked toward the dunes and the ocean, the wind building and thunder rumbling behind us.

Big waves were crashing up and down the beach. To the north, the shore was wider, with extensive dunes behind it. To the south, the sand narrowed to a long spit with barely a necklace of dunes separating it from the cove.

While the beach was largely devoid of swimmers and vacationers now, there was still a smattering of hard-core fishermen and surfers. We split up; Sampson and Mahoney headed for the spit, which seemed the more deserted place, and I ran toward a cluster of fishermen, older men with an elaborate array of surfcasting rods and pails of bait. I showed them a picture of Elaine Paulson and asked if they’d seen her, but they shook their heads and said they’d only just arrived.

I went up the beach several hundred yards, seeing fewer and fewer people ahead of me; the dunes appeared empty. When the wind started to throw grains of sand that stung my cheeks, I turned my back to it and debated whether to leave.

That’s when I realized that, looking south, I had a much different perspective on the beach. A few seconds later I spotted Elaine Paulson sitting in the seagrass about three-quarters of the way up the flank of a dune back toward the parking lot. I had walked right by her because it looked like she’d sat down and tucked herself into the dune.

Or she died in that position, I thought as I cut hard and fast due west into the dunes and then hooked south. Creeping up the north side of the dune where I’d last seen her, I kept peering ahead through the waving seagrass.

I was almost to the crest before I spotted her through the grass around the front of the dune, about thirty feet ahead. She was turned slightly away from me, directly facing the water. She had a green windbreaker on, hood up, and was sitting in a kind of depression in the dune, her spine to the wall of sand and grass behind her.

No wonder I missed her on my first pass, I thought, watching her as I crouched and moved closer. She blends right in.

My attention was fixed on her hood, which hadn’t moved. Was she sitting there or was she slumped there?

I’d no sooner had that thought than her shoulders began to tremble. She pulled back the hood with her right hand and, with her left, pressed a nickel-plated revolver tight to her temple.





CHAPTER 22





I TOOK TWO LONG STRIDES toward her, threw myself to my knees well within her line of sight, hands up, and shouted over the wind, “Think of Tina and Rachel!”

Whether it was my sudden appearance or my bellowed reference to her daughters, the late Randall Christopher’s wife startled and pulled the gun two inches away from her temple. I could see she’d been sobbing and was not seeing me well; she was still clearly in the waking trance that people intent on killing themselves get into.

“Please put the gun down, Elaine,” I said. “Please. My daughter knows Tina and Rachel. They’re schoolmates.”

That further interrupted her suicidal spell. She squinted at me as her hand relaxed. The angle of the revolver’s muzzle shifted clear of her skull, but it lingered about four inches above her left shoulder.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Jannie Cross’s father,” I said. “My name is Alex.”

Her jaw quivered as the handgun’s muzzle angled back toward her head. “I know who you are, Dr. Cross. I know why you’re here.”

“Right now I’m just a father to a young lady who adores your daughters. And I don’t want to see Tina and Rachel exposed to any more pain than they’re already feeling at the death of their father.”

“And his older whore,” she said bitterly. “His older socialite whore.”

Christopher’s widow had the gun pressed back against her temple again. She gazed my way with watery, bloodshot, and soft-focused eyes.