Criss Cross (Alex Cross) - James Patterson Page 0,42

on what I’d read in the disturbing files Peaks had shown me.

As soon as Tanner Oates was born, he’d been abandoned in an alley in Galveston.

It would be a gross understatement to say the Texas foster-care system let Oates down. When his speech did not develop past grunting and whining, his first foster father, sick of the noises, began to beat him.

In turn, the boy began to lash out like a raging wild animal, which only provoked more abuse.

It wasn’t until he was nearly nine that he was finally diagnosed as profoundly hard of hearing. He wore bilateral hearing aids from that point forward and was eventually transferred to the care of the King family, who taught him to speak and read. His IQ, it turned out, was near genius level.

“This is it,” Peaks said now.

We’d reached the landing, and he pushed open the door to a large empty office. He gestured toward the corner.

“Mr. King’s body was there in a pool of blood. His wife’s corpse was laid perpendicular to him. Both headless. The heads are still missing.”

“Like all the rest of them,” I said. “They’re his trophies.”

“Skulls by now,” Peaks said.

“You said we could look at the Kings’ old house.”

“I said I’d ask.”

The Ranger pulled out his cell phone, looked at it. “No bars. Let me try outside.”

“Where the tornado’s coming,” I said, following him out.

“True enough,” he said, and he dropped down the stairs.

I paused to take it all in, tried to imagine what Oates could have experienced there that caused him to saw off the heads of the only people who’d ever been good and kind to him. I failed.

By the time I reached the bottom of the staircase, Peaks was stepping outside. I half expected to see the door torn away by the gusts, but then, as before, the wind died down.

And I heard that humming noise again. I realized it was coming from the other side of the wall where I was standing. I flashed the light around and saw another door, right below the one upstairs.

I went over to it as the gusting rose again and tried the knob. It turned.

I pushed it open, went inside, and saw the source of the hum: a Honda generator pushed up against a hole that had been cut in the back of the building to vent the machine’s exhaust. A heavy-duty extension cord ran from the generator and into a jumble of old boxes, trash, and debris left behind by the salvagers. I followed the cord to a large, dark windowless room also crammed with junk.

I flashed my light around into the shadows and then back along the electric line that ran to a large, filthy white box. I crossed to it, kicking aside cans and other trash, and realized I was looking at an old lift-top freezer.

I raised the lid and a powerful strobe light went on, blinding me. But not before I’d seen at least a dozen frozen human heads stacked inside the cold locker.

I staggered backward, dropping the lid, and threw up my arms to block the light, which seemed to be coming from the wall right behind the freezer.

Over the wind, I thought I heard something a split second before someone very powerful grabbed me around the neck from behind.

CHAPTER 47

THE MAN HAD HIS MASSIVE forearm pressed so hard against my windpipe, I thought he would crush it. His head was jammed tight next to mine, so even over the wind, I could hear his high-pitched wheezing and grunting.

I am not a small man by any means, but Oates dragged me backward as if I were no bigger than a child as I choked and clawed for my weapon. He slashed my right wrist with a blade of some kind, and it went through flesh and tendon right down to the bone.

I moaned in pain. He grunted with pleasure and dragged me back another few feet.

“I don’t care who you are,” the Meat Man said in a weird nasal voice. “You don’t come into my house without an invitation.”

I felt him square his feet as if he meant to use that blade again. A deep, instinctive will to survive took over. So did all my years of training.

I dropped my chin hard against his forearm, dug in my heels, and drove myself back. It threw him off balance, and that gave me just enough leverage to twist left and drive my elbow hard into his solar plexus. It knocked the wind out