Chapter 100
CHAPTER
On the five-hour drive home, John and I felt a lot better than we had coming down that morning. It was terrible that Harold Beech had spent decades behind bars for crimes he didn’t commit. But we were putting an end to his incarceration.
We decided that, while we could never forgive ourselves for our role in Eamon Diggs’s imprisonment and violent death, we would be men enough to travel to Pittsburgh, see Diggs’s family, explain what had happened, and recommend they sue as well.
As we neared my home, Sampson said, “It does make you wonder, though.”
“Wonder what?”
“How things would have been different if Soneji had been caught at the beginning, after Joyce Adams and before Conrad Talbot.”
“Whole lot fewer people dying needlessly,” I said, sighing and feeling the guilt of that. “Soneji was a rabid dog, and he was in front of us from early on. I mean, he was right there in the Charles School faculty meeting the day after he shot Conrad Talbot.”
“And at Washington Day after the computer science teacher and her husband and baby died on the Beltway after he sabotaged the brake linkage.”
“Cold,” I said, shaking my head. “And he was right there the whole time when Maggie Rose and Shrimpie were taken. Right under our nose for so long. He was so ordinary, so unremarkable, he was invisible, just like he always wanted to be.”
“Remember his wife? Missy?”
“It was years before she knew that he was working part-time at Washington Day. Mr. Secrets, she called him, and she was right.”
All of it nagged at me as I trudged up the steps to our house after Sampson dropped me off. Bree wasn’t home from work yet. Ali was in his room studying.
I found Nana Mama in the kitchen, getting a leftover casserole out of the refrigerator. “You made good time,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, taking a seat at the kitchen island.
“How’d Harold Beech take it?”
“Angry at life before we told him. Astonished at life by the time we left.”
“That must have made you feel good.”
I nodded. “It did. But I can’t help wondering if it’s enough. Honestly, it makes me question if I want to go on being a detective. I mean, my reputation, my career—it was all built on lies, Nana.”
My grandmother set the casserole dish down on the stovetop.
“First of all, getting Harold Beech out of prison is not enough. It’s a start, but you’ll have to keep at it, doing good deeds in his name and in Eamon Diggs’s memory.
And second, enough of this woe-is-me stuff.
You were born to be a detective, Alex Cross. You were born to right wrongs.”
“Even my own?”
“Especially your own,” she said. “That’s the mark of a real man.”
For reasons I couldn’t explain, I felt overwhelmed at that. I went to her, leaned over, and hugged her tiny little bird body tight.
“What’s this about?” Nana said, sounding baffled and patting me on the back.
“I love you for always setting me straight, for always seeing a smart way forward.” I pulled back and looked down at her. “I don’t tell you that enough. I don’t know what I would have done without you after Maria died. And I don’t know what I’d do without you now.”
“Well, thank you for all that. My God,” she said, wiping tears off her cheeks after I kissed her on the head. “And I love you too, Alex. But I’ll have you know, according to my cardiologist, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
I thought of everything I’d been through that day and started chuckling.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I don’t know. I’ve spent years going after evil spiders in all sizes and shapes. And here you are, this little old lady in her nineties, and you are the strongest person I’ve ever known, and you remember everything. You’re like… you’re like an elephant or something.”
Nana Mama laughed. “I’d say I’m more like a tortoise these days. But a lot of them do live to be a hundred years old or more.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said, hugging her again. “Lucky me.”