Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(81)

The boys told us that they snuck out after their mothers were asleep and went to a friend’s house on Fourth Street. Her mother had been away for the weekend and the girl decided to host a party. The boys did not leave until four fifteen a.m. and decided to take a shortcut through the school grounds on their way home.

“Who was the girl?” Bree asked.

“Dee Nathaniel,” Monroe said. “We were both kind of wasted, and we cut through the campus diagonally across the football field and went under the stands. That’s where we were when we heard, like, faint thuds. Four of them.”

“Like, they could have been anything,” Ashford said. “Not real loud, but enough that you could hear them.”

The boys said they continued walking out.

Monroe said, “I look way down the field and I see the front end of the car sticking out behind the dumpsters, kind of a little in the light, but not under it. So we walked toward it ’cause we had to go that way.”

Ashford said, “Straightest way to the alley and home. We were maybe forty yards from the dumpster, and we both saw this person moving in the shadows way off to our right.”

“Male? Female?” Bree said.

“Couldn’t tell,” Ashford said.

Monroe said, “But not a big, big person, you know.”

Remembering that Elaine Paulson had also claimed to have seen someone moving in the shadows near the football stands headed northeast, I said, “If the school was to your east and this person was to your west, what direction was this person moving in?”

Ashford thought about that, curved his right hand hard right, said, “Like, circling back away from us. North, I guess.”

“Northwest toward Dee’s home? Or straight north? Or northeast?”

Monroe said, “Headed back toward the football stands. I guess that’s northeast?”

Exactly where Elaine had said the person was moving. But did it matter when the gun that killed her husband and his girlfriend belonged to her?

“Back up,” Sampson said. “Did you see the bodies before you saw this person?”

Both boys shook their heads. Monroe said, “That wasn’t until we heard the car engine still idling and we came around the dumpsters to see them.”

“Close enough to see two dead people and decide to take their jewelry?” Sampson growled. “One of them your high-school principal?”

Ashford squirmed in his seat but didn’t look or sound re-morseful when he said, “I don’t know. Mr. Christopher … he — they were dead. They couldn’t use their glitter no more.”

His mother swatted his head, said, “Should have kept you in Sunday school.”

Sampson said, “It seems awful convenient, you two seeing someone flee the scene just before you decide to go grave-robbing.”

“No way,” Ashford said. “That’s for real, man. Tell ’em, Dev.”

“We saw someone going northeast, for sure,” Monroe said. “And, like, after we took the stuff, we were leaving, going through the fence to the alley, and we most definitely saw someone coming from behind the north end of the school. That’s when we ran.”

Ashford nodded. “Because we knew her.”

Bree asked, “Who?”

“Tina and Rachel’s mom,” Monroe said. “Mr. Christopher’s wife.”

Ashford said, “It didn’t make sense to us. I mean, I know she’s in jail for it with the gun and all. But why would she come back like that after she just shot two people?”





CHAPTER 93





OUTSIDE THE COURTHOUSE a half an hour later, Ned Mahoney chewed on the inside of his lip when I said, “They have a point.”

“And I have a murder weapon that you took from the hands of the killer!” Mahoney shot back. “Explain that.”

“I can’t,” I said, feeling my cell phone buzz in my pocket. “Can you explain how two reluctant witnesses describe the events of that night the same exact way, with the same third person in the shadows circling around to the northeast?”

“Elaine Paulson was lying,” he replied. “She was describing herself. She wasn’t by the side of the school when the shots went off. She was right in front of the Bentley and then she snuck around west and then northeast to get around the boys.”

Bree shook her head. “Why come back?”

“To make sure they’re dead.”

Sampson shook his head this time. “No. I can’t see that, not if she shot them at close range like an assassin would. If she’s the killer, she gets out fast and does not return.”

Mahoney said, “But other parts of her story don’t match. She told you she came onto the campus from the northeast. I looked at the bodega security footage last night. I saw the Bentley turn onto the school grounds at three forty-six a.m. and the Suburban with the two Secret Service agents go by a few moments later. But I did not see Elaine Paulson run by at all.”

Sampson said, “I didn’t see her either.”

“We’ve got the right person in custody facing trial,” Mahoney said.

My cell phone buzzed again. I pulled it out, saw a number I did not recognize and this text: Dr. Cross. Can you call me, please? It’s urgent. Gina Nathaniel.