Roses are Red (novel)

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Roses are Red is the sixth book featuring the Washington DC homicide detective and forensic psychiatrist Alex Cross written by James Patterson.

[edit] Plot summary

The book begins with a young 24 year old woman named Brianne Parker standing just outside of a Citibank. She is waiting for the bank to open. From talks with the Mastermind, she knew the bank was a freestanding one. As soon as the teller opens the bank, Brianne puts on a mask of US President Bill Clinton and tells the teller to step inside. She tells the teller to go to the managers office and she has to be out in eight minutes or her and the manager will both die.

The Mastermind had left instructions on how the robbery was to take place, down to the second. She tells the manager to open the vault. The manager tells Brianne that the safe is opened by a computer and it never opens at the same time. At that moment the phone rings and the managers husband calls to say there is a man in the house and if Brianne doesn’t get out at exactly 8:10am then he and her child and the nanny, who was pregnant, would be killed. The manager opens the safe. After taking the money, Parker locks the teller and the manager in the safe and leaves. She doesn’t call the man holding the family hostage. The Mastermind had planned that they had to die.

At the residence of Dr. Alex Cross, they are having a christening for him and Christine’s little baby, Alex. Christine and Cross are apart since the events in Pop Goes the Weasel. During the party Kyle Craig shows up. Christine begs Alex to not work that night. He tells Kyle he can’t help tonight, but Kyle insists. They meet in the porch where Alex plays the piano. Kyle wants help with the bank robbery and the murder of the manager’s family. By the time Alex returns to the party, Christine had left with the baby without saying goodbye.

The Mastermind visits Brianne and Errol Parker at their hideout in an abandoned building. The Mastermind bring pizza and wine. Eroll wonders why kill the family. The Mastermind tells him it was part of the plan. Suddenly the Parker’s begin to choke. The Mastermind had poisoned the food with Suxamethonium chloride and they die within 15 minutes. He raises the wine glass and makes a toast “To perfect crimes”.

The next day Alex tried to call Christine, but she didn’t answer. Cross and his partner John Sampson hit the street looking for information on the robbery. A contact told them about the Parkers who live in the southeast area. Eroll Parker was Maria Cross’s stepbrother. Sampson and Cross look for them but can’t seem to find them anywhere.

A few nights later Cross meets with Christine, on the way home she tells him she can no longer see him. Their relationship is over.

Alex immerses himself in the robbery case since Christine broke up with him. Cross and Sampson visit another snitch who informs them that the Parkers have an apartment on the projects on 1st Avenue. It’s late and dark but they search through the building. They finally find the decomposing bodies of the Parkers. Brianna looked like she’d been raped as har pants were partly off and her shirt unbuttoned. Based on the way the bodies were positioned, Cross determines they were murdered. Cross calls Kyle to tell him he found the bodies of the suspects.

The autopsy confirmed the poison and the sexual violation. Cross heads home to get some sleep. The next morning he plays the piano to ease his pain. Nana comes to console him.

That same morning the new crew hired by The Mastermind go to work. They call themselves Mr. Red, Mr. White, Mr. Blue and Ms. Green. Mr. Red and Mr. White were at the manager’s home holding hostage the wife and her 3 kids. Blue and Green were at the First Union National Bank. Red and White make a home video to show the manager that they were holding the family hostage. The Mastermind had left explicit instructions on how to proceed.

At the bank Ms. Green held a semi automatic weapon at the tellers while Blue explained the rules to the bank manager. Mr. Blue asks all the usual questions, if there are alarms or panic buttons, if the cameras were recording. He explains that if the police are alerted the tellers and the manger will be shot. Suddenly a warning comes on the police radio scanner they carried that a robbery was in progress at the bank. Mr. Blue, true to his word kills them all, just as The Mastermind had planned.

Cross arrives on scene. Kyle and the FBI are there. He’s introduced to Kyle’s team: Agents Betsy Cavalierre, Michael Dowd and James Walsh. Cross goes in the bank and finds 2 dead tellers executed and inside the vault, another teller and the bank manager dead also. The bodies inside the vault looked as if all the gun’s bullets had been emptied on them. Cross asks about the family. Kyle informs him that the family was ok and safe. Cross wonders what the connection is between the 2 banks. Betsy Cavalierre informs Alex that there were similar robberies in the Midwest, but no one was ever killed and the robbers had been caught.

That evening Alex gives Damon and Janelle boxing lesson. Damon accidentally strikes Jannie in the side of the head. Janelle has a seizure.

At the hospital, the doctors due a series of tests, but can’t determine the cause of the seizure.

The Mastermind is pleased with how everything is progressing. He wished he could have been at both banks and killed those people himself. In his mind, he imagines the sight and smell of the murders and relishes in it. The Mastermind is the one that had called in the robbery. He is now looking for the next recruits. They were smart and very professional.

Cross and Cavalierre meet with a retired FBI Agent that took down some bank robbers in the 1980’s whose MO were similar, except there was never bloodshed. They try to get his ideas.

Cross is at the hospital with Jannie, Kyle Craig calls him to let Cross know another bank has been hit. This time in Rosslyn, Virginia

Cross gets there and inside the bank he is greeted by Kyle Craig and Betsy Cavalierre. James Walsh and Mike Doud are also there. No one was hurt and the robbers got away with the money. The manager’s family was also kidnapped but no one knows the status of that situation because the phone lines were dead. All 3 of them head to the manager’s home. When they arrive to the house, they find out everyone was safe and alive.

The Mastermind was watching the scene at the house. He was also watching Alex Cross, whom the mastermind considered to be his main opponent.

Cross calls the hospital, a nurse tells Cross that Jannie had another seizure. At the hospital, Jannie is having an MRI. The doctor tells Alex that Jannie has a tumor. He spends another night at the hospital again.

The next morning, Interpol agent Sandy Greenberg calls Alex to tell him Lucy Cousins, Geoffrey Shafer’s wife was murdered at a supermarket. Shafer’s children were ok and recognized him.

Alex goes to visit Christine who is emotionally devastated. It’s revealed that she has nightmares and can’t concentrate. She walks off without turning around.

Alex meets the FBI agents in the bank robbery case.

Elsewhere, The Mastermind is having trouble sleeping and writes a complaint letter to the CEO of Citibank about bad customer service. After he writes the letter he signs it and stores it in a filing cabinet. The Mastermind knows that sending the letter is dangerous and could get him caught. We also learn that he holds the government, banks and internet companies in contempt

Janelle goes to surgery to remove the tumor. Alex takes 2 days off from work. The surgery was successful and Jannie was recovering.

2 days later, Alex returns to work. Cavalierre tell Alex that she has a lead. A former Bank robber returned to town by the name of Tony Brophy. Tony committed violent bank robberies. Betsy agrees to buy information from him. Tony tells Cross and Cavalierre that he met the man behind the murders, a man that calls himself the Mastermind. Tony tells them that the Mastermind knew everything about him, even all the small details. Tony tells them that he could not see him. The lights were bright in the room he met the Mastermind and could only see a silhouette. The Mastermind was looking for killers, not bank robbers.

Cross and Cavalierre go thru files of hate mail from the banks that were robbed. One letter in particular drew their attention. The man that wrote it lived nearby. The man’s name was Joseph Petrillo, who wrote a hate letter every week for the last 2 years. Petrillo was a former security guard that was laid off by Citibank. The letters were intelligent and well written.

The 2 go to see Petrillo who shoots them. Once back up arrives they burst in, but find Petrillo had blown his head off.

That night, Christine calls Alex and tells him Shafer was in her house. He tells her to get out of the house with little Alex and call the police. Alex arrives at her house, the police are already there. Alex goes inside and Christine is frantic. She insists that Shafer is there. Cross checks the house himself but no one had ever been there.

Early the next morning, Mr. Blue is hiding behind a tree. He is ready to kidnap the wife of a Chase Manhattan bank manager. For 3 days the place had been scoped out. Suddenly the wife is about to leave 15 minutes earlier than expected. He manages to catch up to her, pulls a gun and hits her with it. They go inside the house.

When Cross and Cavalierre get to the bank all the employees, except for one, are dead. The manager’s wife was also dead. The survivor has a message from the Mastermind. The message was that everyone was dead because a mistake was made. The survivor, the bank’s security guard, also blames himself for not protecting his friends.

Later that day, the Mastermind goes to pay a visit to his crew. He brought pizza and wine again. This time it was laced with marplan as the poison. After they’re all dead he has sex with the dead Ms. Green.

3 days later, Alex spends the day with little Alex. He takes him back to Christine’s, she comes out and informs Alex that she is leaving Washington DC.

The Mastermind interviews his new crew. 3 of the 5 men had shown up, Brian MacDougal, B.J. Stringer and Robert Shaw. They are from New York. The leader, Brian MacDougal, said the other 2 were at work. The next job was for 15 million, usd.

In reality the other 2 members, Vincent O'Malley and Jimmy Crews, were outside in a parking lot listening to the whole thing.

The 2 members outside wait for the Mastermind to go out of the hotel and follow him to a mental institution named Hazelwood.

The next day, Cross goes to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. He is there to meet with Craig, Cavalierre, the FBI director and the Secretary of Justice. The SOJ wants results. Cross and Cavalierre work late. There are a number of suspects with dozens of agents working the case.

The next day, a van pulls in front of a tourist bus. The bank crew takes a bus full of tourists hostage. He instructs everyone to get rid of cell phones and tells the driver to follow the van.

A fax is sent to the directors of the Metro Hartford Insurance Company, who were meeting at the Mayflower Hotel, informing them that a bus carrying many of their wives is being held hostage and if 30 million is not received in 5 hours everyone will die. The kidnappers inform them that they’re the ones responsible for the other robberies and that those robberies were committed as object lessons for them.

The FBI is told that the Metro Hartford will pay the ransom.

The Mastermind is on the scene outside of the Mayflower Hotel.

Cross, Walsh, Doud and Cavalierre are ready to make the drop. The call comes from the kidnappers who give them the instructions.

1. $5 million in uncut diamonds in one duffel bag. 2. No more than eight other duffel bags. 3. The cash in $50 and $20 only. 4. No Dye packs no tracking devices. 5. Pick up a delivery at the front desk. Inside are walkie talkies. 6. Load money into a van and head north. 7. No surveillance planes or helicopters. 8. Head to the Washington Baltimore airport. 9. At 5:10pm exactly they should be on the train from Baltimore to Boston. It was the Mastermind speaking to them.

While on the train, several times, the Mastermind toyed with the FBI and Cross by getting them ready to throw the money and then telling them to stop. finally it was time to drop the money. They exited the train seven miles later.

When Cross, Cavalierre, Doud and Walsh exit the station, other FBI are there. They inform them that they caught a break and a woman reported the bus being seen at an abandoned farm. When they get there all the people are alive inside the house.

Cross was working 16 hour days. The FBI has a suspect, a former US Army sergeant named Mitchell Brand, who fit the profile. He was violent, had committed 6 bank robberies and had an IQ of over 150.

That night Sampson comes over for a beer. Alex tells John Sampson that it’s over between Christine and him and that little Alex was coming to live with them.

The next morning Sampson calls Cross and tells him they found Mitchell Brand at an east side ghetto building and that Chief Pittman had ordered a lot of man power to bring him in. Alex leaves immediately. When Alex gets there he sees the situation is out of control and there are too many police officers there. Cross takes control. Pittman tells him to not screw it up.

James Walsh arrives after Alex did and the 2 head up the ghetto building. Cross asks where Cavalierre is and Walsh tells him she took a few days off to see her family. Brand’s girlfriend, Theresa Lopez, lives in the projects there. Cross warns Walsh that Brand is most probably armed.. They lead a team of eight, which includes Sampson. They burst in the apartment. Theresa Lopez’s 3 children were watching TV. Brand comes out of the bedroom. He has a gun at Theresa’s head. He tells them he was at a wedding last week and that someone was setting him up. He puts down the gun.

The next morning Alex picks up Jannie from the hospital. The tumor had been benign and was successfully removed.

The next evening there is a briefing at the FBI building. Alex thinks that the Mastermind is done robbing banks and was now playing a game of “catch me if you can”.

The next day, Cross, Cavalierre, Doud and Walsh go to Hartford, Connecticut to interview Metro Hartford employees and former employees. The last person Cross interviewed, a woman named Hildie Rader had the most useful information. She claims to have met one of the kidnappers.

She frequented a bar and a man struck up a conversation with her. The next day the man appears again, but seems more interested in getting information on Metro Hartford executives. Hadie said the bartender was a friend of hers and said the man had asked about her by name the day before he met her. She also told them that the man had also talked to another employee from Metro Hartford asking more questions. About Metro Hartford executives. Cross and Cavalierre decide to interview both women the next day and try to get a composite drawing of the suspect.

Cavalierre and Cross try to make love, but Alex is too emotional and can’t. They hug instead.

The Mastermind quietly breaks into a home. He puts on a Bill Clinton like the one used on the first robbery. He goes upstairs, goes into a bedroom. He jumps on a woman and binds & gags her. He tells her if she tells anyone about this he will kill her. He says he is going to impregnate her. He warns her she has to have the baby or he will kill her.

The next day Cavalierre tell Cross about the incident. The woman had contacted the police after all..The woman had left the hospital and was found poisoned. She had disobeyed the Mastermind and he carried his threat.

Alex returns home. In the middle of the night Cavalierre calls Alex to tell him they caught a break. A girl thinks her father was involved in the robbery. Her father is an NYPD cop.

Cross and Cavalierre head to New York City to see the girl. The girl was Veronica MacDougall, the daughter of Brian MacDougall. She was turning her father in because Brian drank too much and struck Veronica’s mom a lot.Brian was a narcotics detective with his partners. They’d all been working together for 12 years.

Veronica noticed that her father had more money than an average cop should. She claimed she was very observant and said when she grew up she would make a great detective. He could afford fancy clothes, take expensive trips, buy a new car every other year, had a sailboat. One night she followed her dad when he was drunk to her grandmother’s house. Hidden in a shed was a bag with $20 thousand dollars. She became more observant. She overheard a conversation with Jimmy Crews about a job in Washington DC. Soon afterwards he was gone for 4 days, during when the Metro Hartford kidnapping had occurred. He returned the day after. That night he had broken veronica’s mom’s check bone. That night she went to the shed and found more money. Veronica opens her backpack and takes out a load of cash, ten thousand dollars.

The 5 cops are put under surveillance. The ransom money at the grandmother’s shed was removed. They also ran a spending check on the detectives.

The Department of Justice decides to take all 5 of them at the same time. The takedown was at 5 am. Cross and Cavalierre are at MacDougal’s. Inside MacDougal starts to shoot. It was like he knew they were coming. He tries to get away but Alex stops him and and punches him several time.

It takes a few days but MacDougal tells Cross that he can tell them hoe to find the Mastermind but wants a deal. He tells Cross that they were only involved in the Metro Hartford job, not the other jobs and that no one ever got killed in his jobs.

A few days later the Mastermind breaks into James Walsh’s house and kills him, but makes it look like a suicide.

The next morning Cross is asked to look at the scene. Mike Doud is with him. Walsh was Doud's best friend. He believes it wasn’t a suicide despite the appearance.

Alex returns to New York. The Justice Department agrees to make the deal with MacDougall. MacDougal tells them he’s at Hazelwood Veterans Hospital in the mental ward.

Sampson and Cross go to Hazelwood. Despite the Senior Doctor’s protest, Cross will work as a counselor and Sampson as a porter.

That night the Mastermind writes another hate letter, this time to his landlord. He is angry that his doctor revoked his privilage to leave the hospital grounds. He stops writing and leaves his room when he sees Dr. Cross.

Alex has a list of suspects for who is the Mastermind and he reviews them with Sampson. Later that night Cavalierre reports that Agent Mike Doud is missing.

After a week, Cross thought the hospital was dead end. After some persuasion, Cavalierre has Alex agree to spend the weekend together. That weekend was romantic. The second day Alex begins to wonder about the first job at First Union. They decide to look over the personelle files again. After a few hours Alex sees a name he recognizes, a man who is a patient at the hospital, a Frederick Szabo.

Alex watches Frederick Szabo and for several days he does nothing and never leaves. Cavalierre call Alex. She wewnt to First Union bank and interviewed former co-workes of Szabo. He was the Director of Security. He was meticulous, exact and precise. The employees used to call him the Mastermind.

The next day, Cross notices Szabo was leaving. He follows him to his apartment. Cross notices that there was never any metion of Szabo ever working at the bank or having an apartment. In fact the file said Szabo was homeless and never had a job since leaving Vietnam. Cross waits until Szabo leaves befor breaking in and looking around. He finds a file cabinet with hate letters written to major banks, as well as the plans and layouts for the banks hit and the Mayflower hotel. From the corner of his eye he sees a man wearing a Clinton mask charging at him with a big hunting knife. The man yells Cross’ name. The two struggle. Cross pushes him away and shoots him in the shoulder. Cross removes the mask and sees it was Szabo. Szabo yells at him and tells Cross has the wrong man.

The FBI is at Szabo’s apartment. Szabo is taken to a cell where despite all of Cross’ and Cavalierre’s questions, he remained silent. After several hours Szabo grins and tell Cross again that they have the wrong man. After many exhausting hours Cross returns home. He lies awake in bed and recalls his conversation with Tony Bropho and his description of the sillhoette of the Mastermind. Szabo does not match that desription. Cross calls Cavalierre and tells he that he thinks he knows who the real Mastermind is.

Cross convices Cavalierre and then the two convince Kyle Craig. Cross and Cavalierre head to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. More FBI agents are there to meet them. Alex was remembering the picture of Dr. Bernard Francis. Dr. Francis met the description of the sillhouette that matched Bropho’s description. Francis had been Szabo’s therapist for 9 weeks in 1996 and 5 months in 1997.

The FBI put around the clock surveillance on Dr. Francis, who is entertaining a prostitute. A call comes in and the agents listen. It was from one of the nurses at Hazelwood. She was warning Dr. Francis that the FBI was back and going thru all the files.

The next day Cross and Cavalierre get an idea and run it past Kyle, who approves it. The FBI arrest the nurse, who claims not to be in contact with Dr. Francis or been involved in the robberies. A search thru her apartment showed a diamond used as part of the ransom. She then confessed to knowing about the kidnappings, the robberies, Francis and Szabo.

Dr. Cross and Betsey Cavalierre went to Francis’s house to arrest him. He opens and acts surprised. Francis had learned about how to rob a bank from Szabo, who had share his ideas and blue prints. Zsabo had also made notes of the sessions. Francis makes his way to the roof and jumps off landing on the pool. Cross and Cavalierre go after Francis who is trying to make his way to the parking lot, but the FBI was there waiting for him. He takes out a bottle of poison and drinks it, falling on the ground. He is still alive and with his last words he tells Cross that they have the wrong man.

Epilogue. 3 week have passed. Alex, Sampson, Nana Mama, Janelle and little Alex attend Damon's choir concert. That night Kyle Craig calls to tell Alex that Cavalierre is dead. Alex gets dressed when the phone rings again. It was the Mastrmind. He tells Alex that he killed Betsey and that all they had caught were his minions.

At Cavalierre’s house ,the scene is terrible. She had been raped and knifed several times. Alex swears he will kill the Mastermind.

The Mastermind arrives at the scene. He relishes this moment and relives killing Betsey. He approaches Alex and tells him how sorry he is about Betsey. It is revealed that the Mastermind was Kyle Craig, but this is not revealed to Cross when this book ends.

The End

[edit] Movie Adaptation

Its has been confirmed that Roses Are Red will be produced into a movie. Wether or nor Morgan Freeman will reprise his role as Alex Cross is still unknown.