The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross #25)(56)

But driving past that line of pines into the hollow, we spotted only two: a faded red Ford Ranger pickup and an old Toyota Corolla that looked in need of springs, both with their noses toward an embankment below the ranch house.

Sampson parked sideways behind them, blocking anyone trying for a quick exit. We got out. The fog was lifting from the ridges above the hollow. A dog barked in the distance beyond the pole barn. Closer, I heard the blatting of a sheep and the squeal of a pig or two.

We went up a crumbling brick walkway and knocked on the front door. No answer. No sounds inside. Sampson knocked again, and I thought I caught a flutter of movement in a window to my right. But again there was no answer.

“Let’s take a look around,” I said. “Maybe he’s in the barn.”

As we crossed the yard and got closer to the barn, the animal sounds got louder, more frantic, the dog barking, the sheep blatting, and the pig squealing. I knocked at a side door, then tried the knob. It turned. I pushed the door open. Bells hanging on the inner knob jangled.

The pig started squealing in an even higher pitch. The sheep blatted in terror. So did the dog; it sounded desperate, crying and yelping.

We stepped inside and took in the cavernous space in one long, sweeping, and horrified glance.

“Jesus Christ,” Sampson said. “This isn’t right.”





CHAPTER


73


THE PIG WAS forty pounds or so. It was in a low wire pen and was missing a two-inch-wide strip of skin along the length of its spine; it was clearly in terrible pain.

A lamb was in a pen beside the pig. Three of its legs were broken and it was struggling piteously.

The dog, a beagle, had been beaten with a blunt object. It tried over and over to get to its feet, but it kept falling and yelping for help.

Three GoPro cameras on tripods were aimed at the cages. Beyond the pens, a long workbench stretched the length of the side wall. On it were dozens of pieces of grotesque taxidermy, animals stuffed in their tortured state.

Behind the bench, the rear sliding door of the pole barn was open to the big garden. Thirty, maybe forty more creatures—small dogs and cats, wild things like skunks and opossums, even an owl—were stuffed in positions that preserved their agony and set in the garden in neat little rows. A few were dressed in doll clothes, which only made the situation more disturbing.

“We need to call in the locals,” Sampson said.

Before I could reply, a man wearing headphones appeared in the open doorway to the garden. Bone thin and dressed in painter’s pants and a green wife-beater, he had skin as pale as a fish belly, pinkish eyes, and wispy hair the color of snow.

Two steps into the barn, as he was smiling at the wounded animals in their pens, he spotted us over by the door. He ripped off his headphones.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Police,” Sampson said, holding up his badge. “You Carter Flint?”

Shock locked Flint in his tracks for a second as he looked from John’s badge to the suffering animals. Then he whirled and flew out the barn door.

I tore after him. I had no jurisdiction. I wasn’t even a cop, technically, but after what I’d seen, I wasn’t letting the sadist who’d done it get away.

Neither was Sampson; he was off my left shoulder, exiting the barn into the garden. Flint was surprisingly fast and nimble. He was already beyond the garden’s borders and racing behind two other outbuildings toward the north tree line at the base of a ridge a hundred and fifty yards away.

“If he makes those woods, we’ll lose him,” Sampson growled.

I gritted my teeth and danced through the stuffed animals until I hit the grass, then I told myself to be like Jannie—relax and run. For thirty yards I was convinced I’d catch him, but Flint was younger and, judging from the way he was gaining ground, much fitter than me.

But not fitter than Sampson, who blew by me.

When Flint was forty yards from the woods, he hit tall, tangled grass. It slowed him. But it didn’t slow John, whose long legs had him leaping after the sadist. Flint looked back in desperation and then lunged for the woods.

Sampson ran up a hummock in the weeds and dived after him.





CHAPTER


74


SAMPSON’S SHOULDER AND his two hundred and twenty pounds drove into the back of Flint’s legs, flattening him in the deep wet grass. I ran up, gasping, as John straddled the sadist and kept his shoulders pinned.

“My knee.” Flint moaned. “Something snapped. And I got broken ribs.”

Sampson dug out zip cuffs and wrenched Flint’s arms up behind him, which provoked another round of howling.

“My ribs!”

“Screw your ribs,” Sampson said. “And screw your knee. You’re lucky I don’t kick out your front teeth.”

I helped Sampson up and then pulled Flint to his feet. His left leg buckled, and he began to whimper.

“I can’t help it, man. I got a mental sickness. I tried to stop. I did, but—”

“Save it for a judge,” Sampson said.

“Where are the blond women?” I said. “Which building?”

He didn’t react at first. Then he looked confused. “What blond women?”

“The ones you made those movies of,” Sampson said. “Fake executions. Uploaded them to the Killingblondechicks site.”