Mary, Mary

looking up again. “The people who kidnapped me were out to hurt Alex. When that terrible time was all over, I found it impossible to return to a normal life with him. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t.”
    “And just for the record, by Alex you mean Mr. Cross?”
    Not Agent or Doctor Cross, but Mister Cross. Any little dig the lawyer could get in.
    Even Christine winced, but then she said, “That’s right.”
    “Thank you, Christine. Now, I want to go back just a little bit. Your son was born in Jamaica, while you were being held hostage. Is that correct?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was he born in a hospital in Jamaica, or under any medical supervision?”
    “No. It was in a small shack in the woods, the jungle. They brought a midwife of some kind, but she didn’t speak English, at least not to me, and there was no prenatal care at all. I was extremely thankful that Alex Junior was born healthy, and stayed that way. Essentially, we lived in a prison cell for those months.”
    Ms. Billingsley got up, crossed the room, and handed Christine a tissue. “Ms. Johnson, was this abduction the first time that your involvement with Mr. Cross brought violence into your life?”
    “Objection!” Ben was on his feet right away.
    “I’ll rephrase, Your Honor.” Billingsley turned her solicitous smile back to Christine. “Were there any other violent incidents, prior to or after your son’s birth, related to Mr. Cross’s line of work that directly affected you?”
    “There were several,” Christine said without hesitation.
    “The first time was just after we met. My husband at the time was shot and killed by someone Alex was looking for in another terrible homicide case. And then later, after our son was born, and when he was living in Washington with his father, I know that at least once Alex Junior was taken out of the house in the middle of the night, for safety’s sake. Actually, all of the Cross children were taken out of the house. A serial killer was coming after Alex.”
    Billingsley stood at the petitioner’s table, waiting. Finally, she pulled a stack of photographs from a manila folder.
    “Your Honor, I would like to submit these as evidence. They clearly show Mister Cross’s home on the night of one such emergency evacuation. You will see my client’s son here being carried out by a non-family member in the midst of the confusion that was apparently taking place.”
    I wanted to yell out my own objection to this so-called evidence. I knew for a fact that it was John Sampson and not some nameless police officer who carried Little Alex out that night, the night Christine had a photographer—
a private investigator!
—outside my house. No one had been in danger because we had acted judiciously and quickly. But the photos were allowed to speak for themselves, at least for the time being.
    It got worse from there.
    Anne Billingsley walked Christine through a series of misleading events related to my job, virtually putting words in her mouth. The charade concluded with the trip to Disneyland, which the lawyer dressed up as some horrible minefield of dangers for Little Alex, whom I “abandoned” to go searching through Southern California for a psychopath who could terrorize my family again.

Chapter 35
    THEN IT WAS MY TURN.
    The time Ben spent interviewing me on the witness stand was the hardest and trickiest ordeal I’d ever faced, with the most at stake. He had coached me not to address the judge directly, but it was hard not to. My little boy’s future was in her hands, wasn’t it?
    Judge June Mayfield. She looked to be about sixty, with a stiff beauty-shop kind of hairdo that was more middle-America 1950s than new-millennium Seattle. Even her name sounded old fashioned to me. As I sat in the witness chair, I wondered if Judge Mayfield had children. Was she divorced? Had she been through anything like this herself?
    “I’m not here to say negative things about anyone,” I said slowly. Ben had just asked me if I had any concerns about Christine as a parent. “I just want to talk about what’s best for Alex. Nothing else matters.”
    His nod and the pursing of his lips told me that was the right answer—or was the look merely for the judge’s benefit?
    “Yes, absolutely,” he said. “So could you just please explain to the court how Alex Junior came to live with you for the first year and a half of his life?”
    Sitting there on the stand, I had a direct sight line with Christine. That was