Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(25)

“We are a call away,” Bree said. “Always, John.” He hugged her, said, “I’m trying to find the courage to go into our bedroom.”

I said, “I know this will seem impossible, but try to go in there with gratitude for all the amazing years you had with her. Go in there thankful for the great experiences you shared and the love you still feel for her before you even think about her being gone.”

Sampson said, “I don’t know if I’m there yet.”

“Try.”

“Okay, Alex,” he said, and he went back inside.





CHAPTER 27





THE FOLLOWING MORNING AROUND ELEVEN, Ned Mahoney and I listened to the hydraulic locks being thrown behind the bulletproof, Plexiglas doors to the psych unit and saw them slide back under the watchful eye of a redhead in a white lab coat.

Dr. Alice Martel smiled, shook our hands, and led us to a conference room. “Elaine has given me permission to talk to you about her case,” she said.

“You’ve had a chance to evaluate her?” I asked.

“Not a definitive evaluation, but I spent time with her yesterday after she’d had a decent night’s sleep,” Dr. Martel said. “And another half an hour earlier this morning. I can tell you her current state remains irrational at times, jumps from subject to subject in midsentence, and she tends to focus on certain wrongs that her late husband allegedly perpetrated. And she asks over and over when she can see her daughters.”

“Can we talk to her?”

A knock came at the door.

Dr. Martel glanced up and waved in a harried-looking man with a neatly trimmed beard and horn-rim glasses. “You’ll have to ask her counsel,” Dr. Martel said. “Thomas Bergson. Dr. Alex Cross. FBI Special Agent Mahoney.”

Bergson shook our hands. “You brought her in. Prevented the suicide.”

“She prevented it herself once she saw the world differently,” I said.

“Can we speak with your client?” Mahoney asked.

Bergson appeared torn but said, “I’ve just spoken with Ms. Paulson and she wants to cooperate if she can. But I want to state clearly and for the record that allowing you to talk with her in no way constitutes a decision on the defense’s part as to whether Elaine Paulson is of sound mind. I think the jury’s still out, right, Dr. Martel?”

“It is,” the psychiatrist said.

“We just want to talk to her,” Mahoney said. “Get her perspective.”

Bergson said, “Do you know when the ballistics report will come in?”

“Next couple of days,” I said. “We sent it to the FBI lab at Quantico, rush.”

The public defender paused, then nodded. “Okay. Half an hour. Nothing admissible in court pending Dr. Martel’s findings.”

“Agreed,” Mahoney said.

Ten minutes later, Dr. Martel wheeled a wan Elaine Paulson wearing a hospital gown and robe into the conference room.

She had an IV in her arm that Martel said was for fluids to treat her dehydration.

“Thank you,” Elaine said as soon as she saw me. “For doing what you did, Dr. Cross. I … I want to live for my girls, just like you said.”

“Love is the most powerful force in the universe,” I said.

“It can build you up or destroy you,” she replied, bobbing her head a little too vigorously. “I can see now that that was my relationship with Randall, build up and destroy … and when can I see Tina and Rachel?”

Mahoney said, “After our talk, I’ll see what can be done.”

Elaine’s story came out in fits and fragments, and it was jumbled and tangential at times. She told us she’d had a crush on Randall Christopher from the first moment she saw him, at a basketball game their sophomore year at Maryland. They met by chance at a party, started talking, and did not stop for hours.

Christopher wasn’t like the other athletes she knew. He understood he wasn’t good enough to go professional, and his passions were teaching and coaching to make an impact on teens.

They fell in love and got married after graduation. Christopher became a teacher in an inner-city school in Baltimore and found out what worked and what didn’t work when it came to motivating students the way a sports coach might. Elaine worked at a financial firm for the seven years her late husband spent at the school. Her substantial salary enabled him to think long term about establishing a school of his own design based on his own theories.

“Randall liked being a maverick, going against the grain,” she said. “It fit with infidelity.”

She suspected that he’d had several affairs over the years, all short-term flings that were followed by long periods of monogamy when he was an excellent father and husband. A year ago, as people began urging Christopher to run for office, she recognized signs from earlier affairs and suspected that her husband was once again dallying outside their marriage: He was working late. He had to spend an extra day on the road. He’d shy away from her when she tried to initiate intimacy.

“A woman knows,” she said. “I expected the affair to end in a week or a month, as they had before. But this was different. This had a whole other level of stink about it.”

She smelled faint whiffs of his affair on his clothing, the scent of perfume.