Alex Cross: Cross Justice Part 39

BY THE TIME I reached Pedelini's office, the detective had left for the day.

I drove to the lake, following the directions Bree had given me, and found the house where she'd watched Finn Davis deliver a payoff to Pedelini. It was a nice place, gorgeous lot, big house, well cared for, with a swing on the gra.s.s and a dock. It faced east, and I thought that the dawns must be special there.

I drove on, parked behind Detective Pedelini's car, and went around and up onto the deck. Inside, the television was playing, a baseball announcer calling a game. Over that there was the louder sound of children giggling, and I smelled baking chicken. I knocked on the screen door.

"Daddy!" a girl called. "There's someone at the door."

I heard him say something that sounded like "I'm busy with the cat. Go see who it is."

A second later, a pretty girl about ten came to the door, said, "h.e.l.lo?"

"h.e.l.lo to you," I said. "What's your name?"

"Tessa Pedelini."

"Tessa Pedelini, can you tell your father that Alex Cross is here to see him?"

She nodded and scampered away to relay the message.

There was a pause, and then I heard Pedelini say, "Here, you help her, then. Slow, right?"

"Right," Tessa said.

The detective came to the screen door, hesitated, and then came out onto the porch. He extended his hand to shake mine. I didn't take it.

"I was as surprised as you must have been to see those reports on your daughter," he said, putting his hands in his pockets. "But they're conclusive."

Feeling cold and merciless, I said, "I had you wrong, you know?"

"How's that?" he asked, frowning.

"I've known my share of dirty cops in my time, but you didn't trip my alarms at all when I met you," I said. "You came across as one of the good guys. Bree thought so too."

"I am one of the good guys," Pedelini said, looking me in the eye. "The best around here."

"That's not saying much, is it?"

His eyes narrowed. "If I'm out there doing my job, you can jaw all you want at me like that. But here on my own back porch, I won't tolerate it. I'll ask you to leave now before one of us does something stupid."

Pedelini looked at me expectantly.

I stood my ground, said, "My wife saw you accept a payoff from Finn Davis the other night. Right here. And your daughter was there to witness it."

He was rocked by that, took a step back, said, "Wasn't like that."

"What wasn't like that?" I asked. "Payoff's a payoff."

Pedelini's entire body tensed as if he were going to launch himself at me; he rose up on his toes, his fists curling and uncurling, before he said in a thin voice, "You have no idea of the pressures I'm under."

I could see it everywhere about him, then. What I'd taken for a pre-attack pause was actually his body's tensing under some heavy burden.

"Why don't you tell me?" I said.

"Why would I?"

"I'm a shrink as well as a cop," I said. "I'm offering you a twofer."

Pedelini almost smiled. Then he gazed around as if looking for an escape route.

"Maybe I wasn't wrong," I said, wanting him to open up. "Maybe my initial read of you was the correct one. Maybe you are a good man and I just lack understanding."

"d.a.m.n right you do," he said.

"Tell me."

He struggled, finally said, "Come with me."

The detective turned and entered the house. I followed him into a short hallway off a country-style kitchen where a small-screen television was showing the baseball game. A younger girl, eight, maybe nine, was sitting at a round table eating pretzel sticks, transfixed by the game.

"Braves up by two, Daddy," she said.

"There's a G.o.d after all, La.s.sie," Pedelini said.

"When's dinner?" La.s.sie asked.

He glanced at a timer on the stove, said, "Thirty-two minutes."

Pedelini left the kitchen. His daughter never glanced at me as I followed him into a family room with a large window that overlooked the lake.

"Beautiful place," I said.

"If you think dirty money bought it, you're wrong," Pedelini said. "My late wife inherited it from her father."

He turned into a doorway.

I stepped in after him and found myself in a hospital room.

CHAPTER 85.

MEDICAL EQUIPMENT FILLED two stainless-steel racks of shelves. An elaborate wheelchair stood empty in the corner. Glowing monitors were mounted on wall brackets above and to the sides of a hospital bed with high railings.

"Cat?" Pedelini said to the girl sitting up in the bed, straining to open her mouth to get the spoonful of food Tessa was offering. "This is Dr. Cross. He wanted to meet you."

The detective's youngest took the spoonful, closed her mouth, and turned her eyes toward me. In a thick, garbled voice, she said, "Another one?"

Catrina Pedelini was her name, and she reminded me of a baby robin I'd seen once when I was walking with my mother to the linen factory. The newly hatched bird, spa.r.s.e-feathered and bony and broken, had fallen from its nest. Cat Pedelini was all angles with a pigeon chest, a spine that arched to the left, and crippled hands and arms that curled back toward her torso so that she appeared to be holding something dear. Her face was at once disfigured and attractive.

"I'm not a medical doctor," I said. "I'm here to see your father, but I'm very glad to meet you."

"Dad needs a doctor?" she asked, looking to her father.

"He's here about work, sweetheart," Pedelini said, coming over to stroke the wispy silver-blond hair on her head. "You're doing a good job."

"I watch Criminal Minds after dinner?" she asked.

Tessa looked at me, said, "That's Cat's favorite show."

"You eat everything on your plate, you can watch one episode before bath time," Pedelini said.

She made a gurgling, pleased sound in her throat and then said, "But I use a bowl."

"Bowl, then," Pedelini said gently and kissed her on the head. "I'll be in soon."

The detective moved by me, back out into the hall, and I followed him to the kitchen, where his middle daughter said, "Braves up by one, Dad. When's dinner?"

"There is a G.o.d after all," Pedelini said as he pa.s.sed. "And twenty-four minutes. Have a pretzel."

"I've eaten almost the whole bag."

"Another of life's tragedies."

He went down a short hall, out the screen door, and onto the deck.

"Tell me about Cat," I said.

Pedelini shrugged, said, "She had a damaged gene to begin with, or so they tell me. But she was further damaged in the labor that took my Ellen. The official diagnosis is cerebral palsy."

"She seems sharp," I said.

"Very. She's quite a girl. A fighter."

The sheriff's detective had tears in his eyes. He wiped at them.

"She why you take money from Finn Davis?" I asked.

"You have any idea what it's taken to get her this far?"

"I can't imagine," I said.

"Every cell, every fiber of my being. I promised my wife when she knew she was dying and had already seen Cat. I promised her I would move heaven and earth for our baby. And I have."

I had been right. Guy Pedelini was a man of conscience and inner goodness. I could almost feel it pulsing out of him at that moment.

"But care like that costs a lot of money," I said, pressing the issue.

"Whole lot," he agreed. He scuffed his shoes, looked at the deck.

"More than your insurance will pay."

"That too," he said, and sniffed.

"So, what, Marvin Bell's money makes up the difference?"

He paused as if disgusted with himself, said, "Almost."

"What's he pay you to do?" I asked.

The detective took a deep breath, went to the railing, and looked out over the lake, where the reflection of the three-quarter moon s.h.i.+mmered on the water.

"To look the other way?" I asked, following him. "When the trains come through Starksville with guys who use a three-finger salute riding on top of freight cars carrying loads of drugs bound for dealers up and down the line? Is that what you do to help La.s.sie, Tessa, and Cat?"

Pedelini had his back to me. His shoulders trembled slightly, and he started to pivot toward me. We were less than sixteen inches apart. The sheriff's detective had turned nearly ninety degrees to his left and was facing the narrow cove and the sh.o.r.e road beyond it when the rifle shot rang out. I caught the muzzle flash from across the cove a split second before I heard the blast.

Pedelini spun around, sagged on the railing, and then ragdolled to the deck.

Blood trickled from a head wound.

CHAPTER 86.

I DOVE ACROSS the detective to s.h.i.+eld him from a second shot, but it never came. All I heard was the screaming of Pedelini's girls.

"Call 911!" I yelled at Tessa, who'd come to the screen door.

I didn't wait to see if she complied, just turned to her father, whose eyes had rolled up in his head. He was breathing, though. And his pulse was strong.

I didn't want to move him, but I turned his head slightly to look at the wound. The bullet had dug a nasty groove through the scalp and along the surface of his skull, like a wood-carving tool had worked it. But I couldn't see anywhere the bullet had penetrated his cranium.

I heard a car start, wheels squealing. I stood, peered across the cove, and spotted the taillights of a car racing away on the sh.o.r.e road. The car swerved, and I saw an old couple dive out of the way.

The car lost control, hit something hard with a tremendous crash. The brake lights never came on.

I started to run. That was my shooter.