Part One, Maggie Rose and Shrimpie Goldberg (1992), Chapters 1-5 Summary

Alex Cross, a detective as well as a psychologist, is on the front porch of his home in Washington D.C. playing the piano. Cross receives a phone call from his partner telling him of the murder of a black family in Langley Terrace, a poor section of the capitol. Cross, who is a widow, leaves his two children with his grandmother to rush to the scene. Cross and his partner, Sampson, Cross's friend since they were small children, arrive at the home of the latest murder victims. Inside a bedroom, they find the bodies of a woman, her daughter, and a small boy. The women have been mutilated and the boy tossed aside, as if incidental in the killings. Cross is drawn to this boy, seeing...