I, Alex Cross

stereotype of a lonely guy; it was easy to imagine how he and Marcella might have met.
    She poured me a tall glass of Pellegrino, and we sat down on a leather couch with a view of the city.
    "Let me get this out of the way." I slid a picture of Caroline across the coffee table. "Have you ever seen her before?"
    "Don’t answer that, Marcella." Shupike started to push the picture back, but Ms. Weaver stopped him. She stared at it, then whispered something in his ear until he nodded.
    "I don’t recognize her," she said to me. "And for whatever it’s worth, if I had, I wouldn’t have taken David’s advice. I really do want to help if I can."
    She seemed sincere to me, and I chose to believe her.
    "I’ve been trying to figure out who Caroline was working for when she was killed. I wonder if you could point me in any direction," I said.
    She pulled her small bare feet up onto the couch while she thought about it.
    "How much rent was she paying?"
    "About three thousand a month."
    "Well, she certainly wasn’t making that on the street. If you haven’t already, you should check and see if she had a profile with any of the services. Almost all of them are posted online now. Although, if she was truly higher end, it will be that much harder."
    "Why is that?"
    She smiled, not impolitely. "Because not everyone caters to the kind of clientele who use Google to find their girls."
    "Point taken. I’ve checked out the services already, though." I liked this woman, in spite of her job history. "What else?"
    "It would help to know if she was working in-call, out-call, or maybe both. Also, if there was any kind of specialty that she had. Dominant, submissive, girl on girl, massage, group parties, that sort of thing."
    I nodded, but this wasn’t easy for me, and it was getting worse. Every turn of the case reminded me of something else I didn’t want to know about Caroline. I took a sip of mineral water.
    "What about the girls themselves? Where are they coming from?"
    "I’ll tell you this — college newspapers were my gold mine. These kids think they can handle anything. A lot of them already despise men. Some just want an adventure. I advertised in a lot of places, but you’d be surprised." She pointed at the pocket where I’d put away Caroline’s picture. "She might have been paying her way through law school. Even medical school, believe it or not. I had a future surgeon as one of my very best girls."
    She stopped then and leaned toward me to see into my eyes. "I’m sorry, but… did this girl mean something to you? If you don’t mind my asking. You seem… sad."
    Normally, I might have minded, but Marcella Weaver had been nothing but helpful and open with me so far.
    "Caroline was my niece," I told her.
    She sat back again with a manicured hand over her mouth. "I never even saw the slightest violence against any of my girls. Whoever did this deserves to die a painful death, if you ask me."
    It seemed like I’d said enough already, but if that lawyer hadn’t been sitting there, I probably would have told Marcella Weaver that I felt exactly the same way.

Chapter 14

    I COULD FEEL some positive movement on the case, but the rest of the day was all dreaded missing-persons follow-up. Sampson hooked up with me for the afternoon, and we interviewed one distraught family member after another.
    By the time we got to Timothy O’Neill’s parents, the only thing I felt we’d accomplished for sure was stirring up bad feelings.
    The O’Neills lived in a brick-and-stone colonial in Spring Valley. It was modest for the neighborhood but still seven figures, I was pretty sure. Like a lot of people up here, the O’Neills were part of the Washington machinery. They struck me as a "good" Irish Catholic family, and I wondered how that jibed with the story of their missing son.
    "We love Timothy very much" was Mrs. O’Neill’s first response to my questioning. "I know what his file says, and I’m sure you’ll think we’re naive, but our love for Timmy is unconditional."
    We were standing in their living room, next to a baby grand with family photos spread out over the top. Mrs. O’Neill held on to one of Timothy, a larger version of the same picture I had on my bulletin board at home. I hoped for their sake he had just moved away from Washington.
    "You said he was working as a bartender?" Sampson asked.
    "As far as we knew," Mr. O’Neill said. "Tim was saving up for his own place."
    "And where was that job?"
    Their eyes