Page 52 of Alex Cross Must Die

It was a white cowboy hat. Floating upside down.

Marple shouted at the two deckhands. “Over there! He must have jumped!”

“Holy shit!” said the Yankees fan. He grabbed a red rubber donut off the wall and heaved it over the rail. It landed about ten yards short of the hat.

“What’s going on?” the captain called down from the bridge.

“Man overboard, Cap!” shouted the second deckhand. “Midship! Starboard side!”

“I’ll come about!” The captain ducked back into the wheelhouse.

Marple heard the ferry engine strain as the boat started to make a wide right turn. She leaned back over the rail and scanned the choppy water, from the bobbing hat to the City Island dock, now just a few hundred yards away.

Then she saw a shape moving toward shore.

“There he is!” Marple shouted.

The Yankees fan ran up with a pair of binoculars. Marple grabbed them. She brought the eyepieces up and looked toward shore.

“Hey, look!” The second deckhand was shouting from the stern. Marple turned. He was pulling a length of thick rope from the water. It was tied to the stern rail and knotted at the lower end.

The Yankees fan leaned over the rail, squinting into the distance. “Jesus! He must’ve been hanging on to the rope the whole way! He’s lucky he didn’t get sucked into the screws.”

Marple lifted the binoculars again. She saw a male figure swimming the last twenty yards to the other side of the channel. He stood up in the shallows, waded out of the choppy surf, and staggered up the landing toward the road.

Marple watched through the eyepieces as the kid slid into the driver’s side of a white pickup truck. The rear tires spun in the gravel as the truck pulled away from the curb. Marple tried to adjust the focus knob, but the truck kept bouncing in and out of view.

The license plate was white with black letters, but the image was too shaky for a clear read.Dammit!Marple held tight on the rear window as the truck sped away. Even with the blur through the eyepiece, she could make out a large white decal on the right side of the glass.

A lone star.

CHAPTER 54

AN HOUR AFTERlosing the cowboy on City Island, Marple was sitting with Holmes and Poe in the common area of their first-floor offices. She was antsy and impatient for answers.

“Four point two million!” Virginia called out from her desk.

Not what Marple had been hoping to hear.

“What does that mean?” asked Holmes.

“Apparently, that’s how many pickup trucks are registered in the state of Texas,” said Marple.

“You said the truck was white,” said Poe. “That should narrow it down.”

Virginia called out again: “One point one million of those trucks are white!”

Marple let out a long sigh.

“Margaret, let it go,” said Poe. “Maybe your cowboy just freaked out when he saw the coffin opening. Maybe he realized that he was in a restricted area and was afraid of getting caught.”

“Or maybe he was following me,” said Marple. “Once I spotted him, he was crazy enough to take a swim in the middle of Long Island Sound.”

“Should we report him to Helene?” asked Poe. “She could put out an APB on the pickup.”

Marple shook her head. “She already knows I had a tip about Hart Island. If she finds out I was looking for Zozi Turner …”

Holmes leaned forward. “Look. The body wasn’t Zozi—and we’ve been told to take a back seat on that case. Let’s focus on more fertile areas.”

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