Cat & Mouse

Alex Cross was hooked up to so many machines it was a visceral shock to see him. I knew that he was in his early forties. He looked younger than his age. That was the only good news.

I studied the charts at the base of the bed. He had suffered severe-to-moderate blood loss secondary to the tearing of the radial artery. He had a collapsed lung, numerous contusions, hematomas, and lacerations. The left wrist had been injured. There was blood poisoning, and the morbidity of the injuries put him on the “could be about to check out” list.

Alex Cross was conscious, and I stared into his brown eyes for a long time. What secrets were hidden there? What did he know? Had he actually seen the face of his assailant? who did this to you? Not Soneji Who dared to go into your bedroom?

He couldn’t talk and I could see nothing in his eyes. No awareness that I was there with Detective Sampson. He didn’t seem to recognize Sampson either. Sad.

Dr. Cross was getting excellent care at St. Anthony’s. The hospital bed had a Stryker frame attached to it. The injured wrist was encased in an elastoplast cast and the arm was anchored to a trapeze bar. He was receiving oxygen through a clear tube that ran into an outlet in the wall. A fancy monitor called a Slave scope was providing pulse, temp, blood pressure, and EKG readings.

“Why don’t you leave him alone?” Sampson finally spoke after a few minutes. “Why don’t you leave both of us. You can’t help here. Please, go.”

I nodded, but continued to look into the eyes of Alex Cross for a few more seconds. Unfortunately, he had nothing to tell me.

I finally left Cross and Sampson alone. I wondered if I would ever see Alex Cross again. I doubted that I would. I didn’t believe in miracles anymore.

Chapter 81

THAT NIGHT, I couldn’t get Mr. Smith out of my head, as usual, and now Alex Cross and his family were residing there as well. I kept revisiting different scenes from the hospital, and from the Cross house. Who had entered the house? Who had Gary Soneji gotten to? That had to be it.

The crisscrossing flashbacks were maddening and running out of control. I didn’t like the feeling, and I didn’t know if I could conduct an investigation, much less two, under these stressful, almost claustrophobic, conditions.

It had been twenty-four hours from hell. I had flown to the United States from London. I’d landed at National Airport, in D.C., and gone to Quantico, Virginia. Then I had been rushed back to Washington, where I worked until ten in the evening on the Cross puzzle.

To make things worse, if they could get any worse, I found I couldn’t sleep when I finally got to my room at the Washington Hilton & Towers. My mind was in a chaotic state that steadfastly refused sleep.

I didn’t like the working hypothesis on Cross that I had heard from the FBI investigators at headquarters that night. They were stuck in their usual rut: They were like slow students who scan classroom ceilings for answers. Actually, most police investigators reminded me of Einstein’s incisive definition of insanity. I had first heard it at Harvard: “Endlessly repeating the same process, hoping for a different result.”

I kept flashing back to the upstairs bedroom where Alex Cross had been brutally attacked. I was looking for something-but what was it? I could see his blood spattered on the walls, on the curtains, the sheets, the throw rug. What was I missing? Something?

I couldn’t sleep, goddamn it.

I tried work as a sedative. It was my usual antidote. I had already begun extensive notes and sketches on the scene of the attack. I got up and wrote some more. My PowerBook was beside me, always at the ready. My stomach wouldn’t stop rolling and my head throbbed in a maddening way.

I typed: Could Gary Soneji possibly still be alive? Don’t rule anything out yet, not even the most absurd possibility.

Exhume Soneji’s body if necessary.

Read Cross’s book-Along Came a Spider.

Visit Lorton Prison, where Soneji was held.

I pushed aside my computer after an hour’s work. It was nearly two in the morning. My head felt stuffed, as if I had a terrible, nagging cold. I still couldn’t sleep. I was thirty-three years old; I was already beginning to feel like an old man.

I kept seeing the bloody bedroom at the Cross house. No one can imagine what it’s like to live with such imagery day and night. I saw Alex Cross-the way he looked at St. Anthony’s Hospital. Then I was remembering victims of Mr. Smith, his “studies,” as he called them.

The terrifying scenes play on and on and on in my head. Always leading to the same place, the same conclusion.

I can see another bedroom. It is the apartment Isabella and I shared in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

With total clarity, I remembered running down the narrow hallway that terrible night. I remember my heart pushing into my throat, its feeling larger than a clenched fist. I remember every pounding step that I took, everything I saw along the way.

I finally saw Isabella, and I thought it must be a dream, a terrible nightmare.