And he had to do it sooner rather than later.
He looked at his phone. He punched 911 but got no connection. No Service, the screen read. He’d have to go back to the other side of the creek before reception turned solid.
Deuce looked around, got his bearings, and set off toward the logging trail. It would be dark before he knew it, but he’d been walking around in these woods since he was four.
When the boy hit the logging road, a three-quarter moon was rising behind him. He broke into a jog and went up and over the rise.
Right where the trail got steep again, Deuce caught a glimpse of something dark, heavy, and long coming right at him.
He tried to duck, but it was too late.
A forearm smashed into the boy’s neck and clotheslined him. Deuce’s feet went out from beneath him, and his upper body, arms, and head whipsawed violently before crashing onto the logging road.
The boy felt bones break on impact, and he took a nasty crack to the head. He saw stars, and his limp fingers and arms flung wide. His iPhone sailed off into the woods, along with all the wind in his lungs.
For a second, maybe two, Deuce was dazed and saw only shadows and darkness. He heard nothing but the sound of his own choking and felt nothing but pain that seemed everywhere.
Then the boy heard a man’s voice right beside him. “There, now,” he said. “Where did you think you were going, young man?”
Part One
PLATINUM DAMAGES THE BRAIN
CHAPTER
1
I LOOKED IN my bedroom mirror and tried to tie the perfect necktie knot.
It was such a simple thing, a ritual I performed every day before work, and yet I couldn’t get it right.
“Here, Alex, let me help,” Bree said, sliding in beside me.
I let the tie hang and said, “Nerves.”
“Understandable,” Bree said, coming around in front of me and adjusting the lengths of the tie.
I have a good six inches on my wife, and I gazed down in wonder at how easily she tied the knot.
“Men can’t do that,” I said. “We have to stand behind a guy to do it.”
“Just a difference in perspective,” Bree said, snugging the knot up against my Adam’s apple and tugging down the starched collar. She hesitated, then looked up at me with wide, fearful eyes and said, “You’re ready now.”
I felt queasy. “You think?”
“I believe in you,” Bree said, getting up on her tiptoes and tilting her head back. “We all believe in you.”
I kissed her then, and hugged her tight.
“Love you,” I said.
“Forever and ever,” Bree said.
When we separated, she had shiny eyes.
“Game face, now,” I said, touching her chin. “Remember what Marley and Naomi told us.”
She got out a Kleenex and dabbed at her tears while I put on my jacket.
“Better?” Bree asked.
“Perfect,” I said, and opened our bedroom door.
The three other bedrooms off the second-floor landing were open and dark. We went downstairs. My family was gathered in the kitchen. Nana Mama, my ninety-something-year-old grandmother. Damon, my oldest child, down from Johns Hopkins. Jannie, my high-school junior and running star. And Ali, my precocious nine-year-old. They were all dressed as if for a funeral.
Ali saw me and broke into tears. He ran over and hugged my legs.
“Hey, hey,” I said, stroking his head.
“It’s not fair.” Ali sobbed. “It’s not true, what they’re saying.”
“Course it’s not,” Nana Mama said. “We’ve just got to ignore them. Sticks and stones.”
“Words can hurt, Nana,” Jannie said. “I know what he’s feeling. You should see the stuff on social media.”
“Ignore it,” Bree said. “We’re standing by your father. Family first.”
She squeezed my hand.
“Let’s do it, then,” I said. “Heads high. Don’t engage.”
Nana Mama picked up her pocketbook, said, “I’d like to engage. I’d like to put a frying pan in my purse here and then clobber one of them with it.”
Ali stopped sniffling and started to laugh. “Want me to get you one, Nana?”
“Next time. And I’d only use it if I was provoked.”
“God help them if you are, Nana,” Damon said, and we all laughed.
Feeling a little better, I checked my watch. Quarter to eight.
“Here we go,” I said, and I went through the house to the front door.
I stopped there, listening to my family lining up behind me.
I took a deep breath, rolled my shoulders back like a Marine at attention, then twisted the knob, swung open the door, and stepped out onto my porch.
“It’s him!” a woman cried.
Klieg lights blazed to life as a roar of shouts erupted from the small mob of media vultures and haters packing the sidewalk in front of our house on Fifth Street in Southeast Washington, DC.
There were fifteen, twenty of them, some carrying cameras and mikes, others carrying signs condemning me, all hurling questions or curses my way. It was such a madhouse I couldn’t hear any of them clearly. Then one guy with a baritone voice bellowed loudly enough to be heard over the din:
“Are you guilty, Dr. Cross?” he shouted. “Did you shoot those people down in cold blood?”
CHAPTER
2
A BLACK SUBURBAN with tinted windows rolled up in front of my house.
“Stay close,” I said, ignoring the shouted questions. I pointed to Damon. “Help Nana Mama, please.”
My oldest came to my grandmother’s side and we all moved as one tight unit down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.
A reporter shoved a microphone in my face, shouted, “Dr. Cross, how many times have you drawn your weapon in the course of duty?”
I had no idea, so I ignored him, but Nana Mama snapped, “How many times have you asked a stupid question in the pursuit of idiocy?”
After that, it took everything in me to tune it all out as we crossed the sidewalk to the Suburban. I saw the rest of my family inside the SUV, climbed up front, and shut the door.
Nana Mama let out a long breath.
“I hate them,” Jannie said as we pulled away.
“It’s like they’re feeding on Dad,” Ali said.
“Bloodsuckers,” the driver said.
All too soon we arrived in front of the District of Columbia Courthouse at 500 Indiana Avenue. The building is a two-wing, smooth limestone structure with a steel-and-glass atrium over the lobby and a large plaza flanked by raised gardens out front. There’d been twenty vultures at my house, but there were sixty jackals there for my rendezvous with cold justice.
Anita Marley, my attorney, was also there, waiting at the curb.
Tall and athletically built, with auburn hair, freckled skin, and sharp emerald eyes, Marley had once played volleyball for and studied acting at the University of Texas; she later graduated near the top of her law-school class at Rice. She was classy, brassy, and hilarious, as well as certifiably badass in the courtroom, which was why we’d hired her.
Marley opened my door.
“I do the talking from here on out, Alex,” she said in a commanding drawl just as the roar of accusation and ridicule hit me, far worse than what I’d been subjected to at home.
I’d seen this kind of thing in the past, a big-time trial mob with local and national reporters preparing to feed raw meat to the twenty-four-hour cable-news monster. I’d just never been the raw meat before.
“Talk to us, Cross!” they shouted. “Are you the problem? Are you and your cowboy ways what the police have become in America? Above the law?”
I couldn’t take it and responded, “No one is above the law.”
“Don’t say anything,” Marley hissed, and she took me by the elbow and moved me across the plaza toward the front doors of the courthouse.
The swarm went with us, still buzzing, still stinging.
From the crowd beyond the reporters, a man shouted in a terrified voice, “Don’t shoot me, Cross! Don’t shoot!”
Others started to chant with him in that same tone. “Don’t shoot me, Cross! Don’t shoot!”