Page 39 of The House of Cross

“While we were waiting for the service to begin, I got an alert,” she said. “The Elko County medical examiner released the results of the DNA tests they did, confirming that it was indeed my nephew’s body in that van.”

Remembering the alert that she’d ignored before coming into the funeral home, Bree wanted to shrink off somewhere and hide.

“Please leave, Ms. Stone,” Alcott said. “You have no more business here.”

“Just one more question. Whatever happened to Sean? Ryan’s twin brother.”

At that, the billionaire’s stoicism cracked, and Bree saw deep and genuine pain flood through. “Sean had a long history of mental illness. He blamed me, my husband, and his brother for it. When Sean was eighteen, he took his inheritance, told us he never wanted to see us again, and left.”

“No contact since then?”

“We tried several times in the first year, but after that, he was in the wind as far as we were concerned.”

“So you’ve really lost two children.”

Tears formed in Mrs. Alcott’s eyes and dripped down her cheeks as she nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Bree said as she got to her feet. “I truly am sorry for your losses.”

CHAPTER 28

WHEN I FINALLY WOKEup, I had no idea where I was at first.

Then I heard a creak on the staircase outside my bedroom, realized I was home, and looked blearily at the clock.

I groaned. Nine a.m.

Bree wasn’t in our bed, and the blackout curtains had been drawn to let me sleep.

I was about to go back to that when music started playing downstairs—Mariah Carey wailing about Christmas.

I came wide awake. It was Christmas Eve morning. I knew what that meant in the Cross household and refused to miss it.

Although Mahoney and I had landed at two a.m., I forced myself up and into the shower and let the hot water beat on my neck while the events of the prior day played in my head.

Judge Pak’s girlfriend, Allie Winters, had been devastated bythe news of his death. Winters, a successful artist, believed that the judge was planning to propose to her. She confirmed that he’d led a polyamorous life with his late wife but said he was done with that.

“Too much drama,” she’d said. “He was ready for a conventional existence.”

Pak’s girlfriend also said that she’d had suspicions about his gambling problems, although she knew nothing concrete.

Then the San Francisco homicide department that had been disparaged the day before came up big. Detectives Bell and Ponce and an excellent IT officer named Sally Gable managed to trace the hippie assassin for fifteen blocks; they saw her enter an alley between row houses, and she did not come out, so they theorized she might be holed up in one of the buildings.

Mahoney, the detectives, and I walked through the alley and looked in trash bins. A soaking-wet wig of locs was buried under garbage in one. The peasant skirt and hooded raincoat were in another.

“Is there a camera at the other end of this alley?” Mahoney asked as we bagged the evidence for DNA analysis.

“I’ll find out,” Bell said, and called their IT wizard. After a minute, she nodded. “There is. Sally is sending over footage.”

Mahoney called it up on his iPad. The camera caught the woman appearing from the alley; she turned her back and hurried away while she opened a black umbrella. We backed the footage up and froze it on our best look at her, which gave us about an eighth of her face. She wore Doc Martens boots, black tights, black jacket. Her hair was short, spiky, and blond.

“Judge Franklin’s killer had hair like that,” I said.

Mahoney nodded. “I say it’s her. Same athletic build. But I’mnot sure we’ve got enough of her face here to use recognition software.”

“We’ve got her DNA on those clothes.”

“We do indeed.”

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