‘I miss you too,’ I said.
Then Jamilla broke the connection with a soft, ‘Bye.’
I sat there shaking my head back and forth. Shit. What an ass I am sometimes. I was blaming Jamilla for what had happened with Christine, wasn’t I? How dumb was that?
Chapter Seventy-Three
‘Hi there. I missed you,’ I said and smiled. ‘And I’m sorry.’
Five minutes after Jamilla hung up, I called her back to try and make amends.
‘You should be sorry, you poop. Glad to see your famous antennae are still working all right,’ she said.
‘Not so hard to figure out. The crucial evidence was right before my eyes. That was the shortest phone talk we’ve ever had. Probably the most uncomfortable and frustrating too. I had one of my famous feelings about it.’
‘So what’s the matter, boy scout? Is it the job or is it something else? Is it me, Alex? You can tell me if it is. I have to warn you, though, I carry a gun.’
I laughed at her joke. Then I took a breath, before I let it out slowly. ‘Christine Johnson is back in town. It gets worse from there. She came for little Alex. She wants to take him away, to get custody, probably take him to Seattle.’
I heard a sharp intake of breath, then. ‘Oh, Alex, that’s terrible. Terrible. Did you talk to her about it?’
‘I sure did. I was at her lawyers’ this afternoon. Christine finds it hard to be tough, her lawyer doesn’t.’
‘Alex, has Christine seen the two of you together? How you are with him? You’re like that old movie, Kramer vs. Kramer. Dustin Hoffman and that cute little boy?’
‘No, she hasn’t really watched us together, but I’ve seen her with Alex. He turned on the charm. Welcomed her back without any recriminations. Little traitor.’
Jamilla was angry now. ‘Little Alex would. Always the perfect gentleman. Like his father.’
‘That, plus – she is his mother. The two of them have a history, Jam. It’s complicated.’
‘No it isn’t. Not for me, not for anybody with a brain. She left him, Alex. Separated herself by three thousand miles. Stayed away for over two years. What’s to say she won’t do it again? So what are you going to do now?’
That was the big question, wasn’t it?
‘What do you think? What would you do?’
Jam sniffed out a laugh. ‘Oh, you know me – I’d fight her like hell.’
I finally smiled. ‘That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to fight Christine like hell.’
Chapter Seventy-Four
The phone calls weren’t over for the night. As soon as I got off with Jamilla, and we’re talking sixty seconds here, the infernal contraption started to ring again. I wondered if it was Christine. I really didn’t want to talk about Alex right now. What would she want to say to me – and what could I say to her?
The phone wouldn’t stop ringing, though. I looked at my watch. Saw it was past midnight. Now what? I hesitated before I finally snatched it up.
‘Alex Cross,’ I said.
‘Alex. This is Ron Burns. Sorry to call you so late. I’m just flying into D.C. from New York. Another conference on counterterrorism, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean right now. Nobody seems to know exactly how to fight the bastards, but everybody has a theory.’
‘Play by their rules. Of course, that would inconvenience a few people,’ I said. ‘And it’s sure not politically or socially correct.’
Burns laughed. ‘You go to the heart of the matter,’ he said. ‘And you aren’t timid about your ideas.’
I said, ‘Speaking of which… ’
‘I know you’re a little pissed,’ he said. ‘I don’t blame you after what’s been happening. The Bureau runaround, everything you were warned about. You have to understand something, Alex. I’m trying to turn around a very slow-moving ocean liner. In the Potomac. Trust me for a little longer. By the way, why are you still in D.C.? Not up in New Hampshire?’
I blinked, didn’t understand. ‘What’s in New Hampshire? Oh shit, don’t tell me.’
‘We have a suspect. Nobody told you, did they? Your idea about tracking the mentions of the Wolf’s Den on the Internet worked. We got somebody!’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing now, at midnight. ‘Nobody told me. I’ve been home since I left work.’
There was silence at his end. ‘I’m going to make a couple of calls. Get on a plane in the morning. They’ll be expecting you in New Hampshire. Believe me, they will be expecting you. And Alex, trust me a little longer.’
‘Yeah, I will.’ A little longer.
Chapter Seventy-Five
It seemed both unlikely and peculiar, but a respected assistant professor of English at Dartmouth was the subject of the FBI surveillance in New Hampshire. He had recently gone into a chat room called Taboo and bragged about an exclusive website where anything could be bought if you had enough money.
An agent at SIOC had monitored the strange conversation with Mr Potter…
BOYFRIEND: EXACTLY HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY ‘ANYTHING’?
POTTER: MORE THAN YOU HAVE, MY FRIEND. ANYWAY, THERE’S AN EYESCAN TO KEEP OUT RIFFRAFF LIKE YOURSELF.
THE PACKAGE: WE’RE HONORED THAT YOU’RE SLUMMING WITH US TONIGHT.
POTTER: THE WOLF’S DEN IS ONLY OPEN ABOUT TWO HOURS A WEEK. NONE OF YOU ARE INVITED, OF COURSE.
It turned out that Mr Potter was the moniker used by Dr Homer Taylor. Guilty or not, Dr Taylor was in a world of trouble right now. Twenty-four agents, four two-person teams working eight-hour shifts, were watching every step he took in Hanover. During the work week, he lived in a small Victorian house near the college and walked back and forth to classes. He was a thin, balding, proper-looking man who wore English-made suits with bright-colored bow ties and purposefully uncoordinated suspenders. He always looked very pleased to be himself. We’d learned from college authorities that he was teaching Restoration and Elizabethan drama as well as a Shakespeare seminar that semester.
His classes were extremely popular and so was he. Dr Taylor had the reputation of being available to his students, even ones who weren’t actually taking his courses. He was also known for his quick wit and nasty sense of humor. He often played to standing room, which he called ‘full houses’, and frequently acted out scenes, both the male and female parts.
It was assumed that he was gay, but no one was aware of any serious relationships the professor had. He owned a farm about fifty miles away in Webster, New Hampshire, where he spent most weekends. Occasionally, Taylor went to Boston or New York, and he’d spent several summers in Europe. There had never been an incident with a student, though some of the males called him ‘Puck’, a few openly to his face.
The surveillance on Taylor was difficult, given the college-town atmosphere. So far, it was believed that our agents hadn’t been spotted. But we couldn’t be certain of that. Taylor hadn’t been seen doing much beyond teaching his classes, and returning home.
The second day that I was in Hanover, I was in a surveillance car, a dark blue Crown Vic, along with an agent named Peggy Katz. Agent Katz had been raised in Lexington, Massachusetts. She was a very serious person whose main hobby seemed to be an avid interest in professional basketball. She could talk about the NBA or WNBA for hours, which she did during our surveillance time together.