I, Alex Cross

"She can hear me?"

"She probably can. I think so." I put his hand on Nana's and my hand on top of his. "Go ahead."

"Hi, Nana!" he said as if Nana were hard of hearing, and it was difficult not to laugh.

"Inside-the-house voice, buddy," Bree said. "But good enthusiasm there. I'll bet Nana heard you."

Chapter 72

JANNIE WAS MORE reserved with her grandma. She moved kind of awkwardly around the room, like she just wasn't sure how to be herself. Mostly, she hung back by the door until I motioned her over.

"Come here, Janelle. I want to show you and Ali something interesting."

Ali hung on my arm, and Ja

I took a picture out of my wallet. It was the one I'd found in Caroline's apartment, and I'd been carrying it with me.

"Now, this is Nana Mama, your uncle Blake, and me. Way back in 1976, if you can believe it."

"Daddy! You look ridiculous," Ja

"It's called a boater. It was the Bicente

"Oh, that's really too bad." Ja

"Anyway," I went on, "about five minutes after this picture was taken, a big Washington Redskins float came by in the parade. They were throwing out mini footballs, and Blake and I just about lost our minds trying to catch one. We ran after the float for blocks without even a second thought for poor Nana Mama. So you know what happened next, right?"

This was mostly for the kids, but also for Nana – like we were sitting around the kitchen table and she was over at the stove, eavesdropping. I could just imagine her standing there, stirring something good and pretending not to listen in, getting a wisecrack ready for me.

"It took her hours to find us, and let me tell you, when she did, you have never seen Nana that mad in all your life. Not even close."

"Ali stared at Nana, trying to imagine it. "How mad was she? Tell me."

"Well, do you remember when she quit us and moved out for a while?"

"Yeah."

"Madder than that, even. And remember when a certain someone" – I poked Ali in the ribs – "'drove' the vacuum cleaner down the stairs and put scratches all over the wood?"

He played along and dropped his jaw wide open. "Madder than that?"

"Ten times madder, little man."

"What happened, Daddy?" Ja

The truth was, Nana had slapped both of us across the face – before she hugged us silly and then bought us a couple of red, white, and blue cotton candies, as big as our haircuts, on the way home. She'd always been a little old-school that way, at least back then. Not that I ever held the occasional whupping against her. That's just the way it was in those days. Tough love, but it seemed to work on me.

I picked up her hand and looked at her, so frail and still in the bed, like some kind of place marker for the woman I'd known for so long and loved so dearly, possibly since before I could remember.

"You made sure we never ran off like that again, didn't you, Regina?"

Two seconds ago, I'd been making jokes. Now I was feeling overwhelmed, and if I had to guess, I'd say I was feeling a lot of the same emotions Nana had that day on the Mall before she found Blake and me, safe and sound.

I was scared and I was desperate, most likely because I was exhausted from fighting back all the worst-case scenarios in my head. More than anything, I wanted our family to be back together, the way it was supposed to be, the way it had always been.

But I doubted it was going to happen, and I couldn't really face that yet, or maybe ever.

Stay with us, Nana.

Chapter 73

THE NEXT MORNING started early, too early for most of the other detectives on the case. I had a list of names from the diaries in Nicholson's safe-deposit box, and Sampson had confirmed current addresses for twenty-two escorts who'd worked the club in Virginia at one time or another.

Starting at eight, I sent out five teams of two uniformed officers each, to pull in as many from the list of escorts as we could find.

Presumably these were night birds we were going after. First thing in the morning seemed like a good bet. I wanted to talk to as many of them as possible, before any cross talk could start mucking things up and making this investigation even trickier than it was already.

Sampson also called in a favor from our friend Mary A

By ten o'clock, we had an impressive fifteen of the twenty-two names accounted for.

I spread them out into every conference room, interview space, cubicle, and hallway available, and I don't think I made any new friends in Narcotics that morning. Too bad. I didn't much care that I might be inconveniencing somebody.

The place was a total zoo, including the four extra officers I kept around to make sure nobody walked out on us. The rest of the team I sent back out to look for the escorts who hadn't turned up. The possibility that some of them might never be found was something I'd have to worry about later.

The interviews started slowly. None of these very pretty women trusted us, and I couldn't blame them much for that. We didn't hold back on details of Caroline's murder, or the possibility of others. I wanted the young women to realize the kind of danger they'd been in, working for Nicholson, working for anyone in the escort business. Anything to get them to talk to us.

A few of the women quickly admitted to recognizing Caroline's picture. She'd gone by the name Nicole when she was at the club, which wasn't often from the sound of it. She was "nice." She was "quiet." In other words, they told me nothing I could use to find her murderer.

Instead of lunch, I took a walk around the block to clear my head, but it didn't help much. Was I wasting my time here? Were we asking the wrong questions? Or should we just let the escorts go and try to salvage the afternoon for something else?

This was the classic problem for me: I never knew when to stop, because stopping always felt like quitting. And I wasn't ready for that yet. For one thing, I still vividly remembered Caroline's "remains." I feared there were several others who'd died the same horrible way.

I was on my way back up Third Street, feeling no better than before, when my phone rang. Mary A

"I'm outside," I answered. "Trying to clear my head – if that's possible. Taking a walk."

"Only place I didn't look," she said. "You should get back in here and talk to this girl Lauren again."

I started walking faster. "Red hair, shearling coat?"

"That's the one, Alex. Seems like her memory's warming up. She's got a few interesting things to say about one of the missing girls, Katherine Te