Contents
About the Book
About the Authors
Also by James Patterson and Howard Roughan
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Book Two
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Book Three
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Book Four
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Book Five
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Epilogue
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Read on
Copyright
STAND-ALONE THRILLERS
Sail (with Howard Roughan)
Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)
Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)
Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)
Toys (with Neil McMahon)
Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)
Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)
Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)
Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)
Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
Mistress (with David Ellis)
Invisible (with David Ellis)
The Thomas Berryman Number
Murder House (with David Ellis, to be published July 2015)
ALEX CROSS NOVELS
Along Came a Spider
Kiss the Girls
Jack and Jill
Cat and Mouse
Pop Goes the Weasel
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Four Blind Mice
The Big Bad Wolf
London Bridges
Mary, Mary
Cross
Double Cross
Cross Country
Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)
I, Alex Cross
Cross Fire
Kill Alex Cross
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross
Alex Cross, Run
Cross My Heart
Hope to Die
THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB SERIES
1st to Die
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)
4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)
7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)
8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)
9th Judgement (with Maxine Paetro)
10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)
11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)
12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro)
Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro)
14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro)
DETECTIVE MICHAEL BENNETT SERIES
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)
Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)
Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)
Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)
I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)
Gone (with Michael Ledwidge)
Burn (with Michael Ledwidge)
Alert (with Michael Ledwidge, to be published September 2015)
PRIVATE NOVELS
Private (with Maxine Paetro)
Private London (with Mark Pearson)
Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Down Under (with Michael White)
Private L.A. (with Mark Sullivan)
Private India (with Ashwin Sanghi)
Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Sydney (with Kathryn Fox, to be published August 2015)
NYPD RED SERIES
NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 3 (with Marshall Karp)
NON-FICTION
Torn Apart (with Hal and Cory Friedman)
The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard)
ROMANCE
Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)
First Love (with Emily Raymond)
OTHER TITLES
Miracle at Augusta (with Peter de Jonge)
FAMILY OF PAGE-TURNERS
MIDDLE SCHOOL BOOKS
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (with Chris Tebbetts)
Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (with Chris Tebbetts)
Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (with Lisa Papademetriou)
Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill (with Chris Tebbetts)
Middle School: Ultimate Showdown (with Julia Bergen)
Middle School: Save Rafe! (with Chris Tebbetts)
I FUNNY SERIES
I Funny (with Chris Grabenstein)
I Even Funnier (with Chris Grabenstein)
I Totally Funniest (with Chris Grabenstein)
TREASURE HUNTERS SERIES
Treasure Hunters (with Chris Grabenstein)
Treasure Hunters: Danger Down the Nile (with Chris Grabenstein)
HOUSE OF ROBOTS
House of Robots (with Chris Grabenstein)
KENNY WRIGHT
Kenny Wright: Superhero (with Chris Tebbetts)
HOMEROOM DIARIES
Homeroom Diaries (with Lisa Papademetriou)
MAXIMUM RIDE SERIES
The Angel Experiment
School’s Out Forever
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
The Final Warning
Max
Fang
Angel
Nevermore
Forever (to be published May 2015)
CONFESSIONS SERIES
Confessions of a Murder Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Confessions: The Private School Murders (with Maxine Paetro)
Confessions: The Paris Mysteries (with Maxine Paetro)
WITCH & WIZARD SERIES
Witch & Wizard (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Gift (with Ned Rust)
The Fire (with Jill Dembowski)
The Kiss (with Jill Dembowski)
The Lost (with Emily Raymond)
DANIEL X SERIES
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)
Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)
Demons and Druids (with Adam Sadler)
Game Over (with Ned Rust)
Armageddon (with Chris Grabenstein)
Lights Out (with Chris Grabenstein)
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Daniel X: Alien Hunter (with Leopoldo Gout)
Maximum Ride: Manga Vols. 1–8 (with NaRae Lee)
For more information about James Patterson’s novels, visit www.jamespatterson.co.uk
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781473505568
www.penguin.co.uk
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Century
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © James Patterson, 2015
Excerpt from Alert copyright © James Patterson, 2015
James Patterson has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain by Century in 2015
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN 9781780892856
Trade paperback ISBN 9781780892863
For Dr. Susan Boulware and Gail Pond
AT PRECISELY 5:15 every morning, seven days a week, Dr. Stephen Hellerman emerged from his modest brick colonial in the bucolic town of Silver Spring, Maryland, and jogged six miles. Six-point-two miles, to be exact.
Depending on whether it was Daylight Saving Time or not, it was either still dark or just dawn as he first stretched his calves against the tall oak shading most of his front yard, but no matter what the season, Dr. Hellerman, an acclaimed neurologist at Mercy Hospital in nearby Langley, rarely saw another human being from start to finish of his run.
That was exactly how he wanted it.
Although he’d never been married, dated sparingly, and socialized with friends even less, it wasn’t that the forty-eight-year-old doctor didn’t like people; he simply liked being alone better. Being alone meant never being tempted to tell someone your secrets. And Dr. Stephen Hellerman had a lot of secrets.
A brand-new one, in particular. A real dandy.
Taking his customary left turn out of his driveway, heading north on Knoll Street, Hellerman then hung a right onto Bishop Lane, which curved a bit before feeding into the straight shoot of Route 9 that hugged the town’s reservoir. From there it was nothing but water on his left, dense trees on his right, and the weathered gray asphalt beneath his Nike Flyknit Racers.
Hellerman liked the sound the shoes made as he ran, the consistent thomp-thomp-thomp-thomp that measured off his strides like a metronome. More than that, he liked the fact that he could focus on that sound to the exclusion of everything else. That was the real beauty of his daily run, the way it always seemed to clear his mind like a giant squeegee.
But there was something different about this particular morning, and Hellerman realized it even before the first beads of sweat began to dot the edge of his thick hairline.
The thomp-thomp-thomp-thomp wasn’t working.
This new secret of his—less than twelve hours old—was unlike all the others encrypted inside his head, never to be revealed. The facts that Hellerman moonlighted for the CIA, was paid through an offshore numbered account, and engaged in research that no medical board would ever approve were secrets of his own choosing. Decisions he’d made. Deals he’d cut with his own conscience in a Machiavellian trade-off so big that it would garner its own wing in the Rationalization Hall of Fame.
But this new secret? This one was different. It didn’t belong to him.
It wasn’t his to keep.
And try as he did, there simply wasn’t enough thomp-thomp-thomp-thomp in the world to let him push that thought out of his head, even if only for an hour.
Still, Hellerman kept running that morning, just like every morning before it. That was what he did. That was the routine. The habit. Six-point-two miles, every day of the week. The same stretch of roads every time.
Suddenly, though, Hellerman stopped.
If he hadn’t, he would’ve run straight into it.
A WHITE van was parked along the side of Route 9 with its hood open, the driver hunched over the engine, which was hissing steam. He had his back turned to Hellerman. He hadn’t heard him approaching.
“Dammit!” the guy yelled, pulling back his hand in pain. Whatever he’d touched on the engine was way too hot. As if the steam weren’t a giveaway.
“You okay?” asked Hellerman.
The guy turned with a look of surprise to see he wasn’t alone. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks. Wish I could say the same for this piece of shit van, though.”
“Overheated, huh?”
“I think the coolant line has a leak. This water should at least get me through my route,” the guy said, pointing to a bottle of Poland Spring perched on top of the grille. He smiled. “Unless, of course, you’re a mechanic.”
“No, just a humble doctor,” said Hellerman.
“Oh, yeah? What kind?”
“Neurologist.”
“A brain doctor, huh? I’ve never met one of those before.” The guy poured some water on the radiator cap to cool it down before giving it a second go. “My name’s Eddie,” he said.
“Stephen.”
Hellerman shook Eddie’s hand and watched as he emptied the Poland Spring into the radiator. He looked pretty young, thirtyish. Good shape, too. Hellerman, as an MD and a running fanatic, tended to notice such things. Anytime he first met someone, they were immediately classified as either “fit” or “unfit.” Eddie was fit.
“Yeah, that oughta do it,” said Eddie, rescrewing the radiator cap.
Meanwhile, Hellerman glanced at the side of the white van. There was no logo, no marking of any kind. Eddie, nonetheless, was dressed in matching gray shorts and a tucked-in polo, much like a driver for FedEx or UPS.
“You mentioned having a route,” said Hellerman. “Are you a delivery man, Eddie?”
Eddie smiled again. “Something like that,” he said before slamming the hood. “But my real specialty, Dr. Hellerman, is pickups.”
Hellerman’s toes twitched inside his Flyknit Racers. Never mind that he hadn’t told Eddie his last name. Just the way the guy delivered the line—hell, the line itself—was enough to set off every warning bell in his head.
My real specialty is pickups? That could only mean one thing, thought Hellerman.
He was the package.
The sound he heard next only confirmed it. It was the van’s side door sliding open. Eddie wasn’t alone.
Out came a guy who could’ve been Eddie’s brother, if not his clone. Same age, just as fit. The one major difference? The gun he was holding.
“You know,” said the guy, aiming at Hellerman’s chest, “one of the first things you learn in field training is that the only habit you should have is to have no habits. You never eat lunch at the same restaurant, you don’t have a favorite park bench … and for the love of stupidity, you never jog every day at the same time along the same route. But, of course, you’re not actually a field agent, Dr. Hellerman, are you? You’re just a civilian recruit.” He motioned to the van. “Get in.”
It took Hellerman all of one second to consider his options. There weren’t any. None, at least, that didn’t end with his taking a bullet.
So into the windowless van he went. It was empty in the back. Save now for him. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“That depends,” said the one with the gun. “Can you keep a secret?”
He let go with a loud laugh that immediately became the most annoying and terrifying noise Hellerman had ever heard in his life. Even after the sliding door was closed in his face, he could still hear it loud and clear. Until.
Pop! Pop-pop!
It sounded like firecrackers, but Hellerman knew that wasn’t what it was. Those were definitely gunshots. Three of them.
What the hell …?
THE ONE with the gun wasn’t the only one with a gun.
Before Hellerman could even begin to figure out what had happened outside the van, Eddie opened the driver’s side door and quickly climbed behind the wheel. He slid his Beretta M9 into one of the cup holders so casually it could’ve been a grande mocha from Starbucks.
“You’re safe now,” he said, starting the engine. “But we need to get out of here. Fast.”
“Eddie, who are you?” asked Hellerman.
“My name’s not Eddie,” he said, shifting into drive and punching the gas simultaneously.
The tires screeched, kicking up gravel from the side of the road, as Hellerman frantically grabbed the back of the shotgun seat to hold on. As he watched the speedometer hit forty, then fifty, then sixty, he waited for Not Eddie to elaborate, but nothing came.
“In that case, who was that with you?” Hellerman asked.
“He’s the guy who was going to kill you,” Not Eddie answered. “Right after he got what he wanted.”
“Which is what?”
“You tell me.”
Oddly enough, Hellerman knew exactly what Not Eddie meant. This was all about his new secret, it had to be. “Are we talking about the kid?”
“Yes, exactly … the kid. Where is he? We need to get to him before they do.”
The speedometer was pushing seventy now. The posted speed limit on Route 9 was thirty-five.
“Wait a second,” said Hellerman. He was back to full-blown confused. “Who’s they?”
“The ones who developed the serum. That’s what the kid told you about, right? That’s what he uncovered. The serum.”
“How do you know?”
Finally, Not Eddie was ready to explain. “I’m FBI,” he said.
Had Hellerman actually been sitting in a seat, he would’ve fallen out of it. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re telling me the FBI has an agent working undercover in the CIA?”
“Someone has to keep them in line.”
“By killing one of them?”
“It was either you or him, so I think the words you’re really looking for are ‘thank you.’ ”
“I’m sorry,” said Hellerman. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. But now you’ve got to help me,” Not Eddie said. “Where is he? Because we can’t protect him if we don’t know where he is.”
Hellerman couldn’t argue with the logic. After all, he was living proof of it. Mr. Not Eddie—or whatever his real name was—had just saved his life.
So he told him what he knew, that the kid had travel plans.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Hellerman.
“And what did he want you to do?”
“Spill the beans internally. Later this morning, I’m supposed to meet with the assistant director.”
Not Eddie, whose real name was Gordon, glanced back at Hellerman in the rearview mirror. “Thanks,” he said with a nod. “I appreciate your telling me the truth.”
“As do I,” said Hellerman.
“Yeah, about that … there’s something else I need to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
Gordon pulled off the road with a sharp tug on the wheel. He turned back to Hellerman and shrugged. “That stuff about me working for the FBI? I lied.”
And just like that, without the slightest hesitation, he reached for his grande mocha Beretta M9 and shot Hellerman in the head.
Then he turned the van around and went back to pick up his partner, whom he hadn’t really killed.
That was a lie, too.
HAD IT been anyone else, any other woman, the moment might have registered upward of a 7.6 on the Emasculation Scale, or whatever number it takes to rattle a man’s self-confidence until he crumbles.
But this wasn’t any other woman. This was Claire.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
Right in the middle of our having sex, she’d burst out laughing. I mean, really laughing. The whole bed was shaking.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said, trying to stop. That just made her laugh harder and do that little crinkle thing with her nose that in a weird and wonderful way always made her look even prettier.
“Damn, it’s the sex, isn’t it? I’m doing it all wrong again,” I joked. At least, I hoped I was joking.
As I propped an elbow on the mattress, she finally explained. “I was just remembering that time when you—”
“Really?” I said, immediately cutting her off. “That’s what you were thinking about?”
There was a certain something simpatico between Claire and me that allowed each of us to know what the other was about to say or do, based on nothing more than our shared history. For the record, that history was two years of officially dating, followed by the past two years, during which we were just friends (with benefits) because our respective careers had put a major strain on the officially dating thing.
Oddly enough—or maybe not—we’d never been happier together.
Claire wrapped her arms around me, smiling. “Just so you know, I always thought it was cute,” she said. “Endearing, even.”
“And just so you know, it happened over three years ago and I’m pretty sure I was drunk.”
“You weren’t drunk,” she said.
“Okay, but it was definitely over three years ago. Shouldn’t there be some kind of statute of limitations?”
“On a man’s first attempt to talk dirty in bed? I don’t think so.”
“How do you know it was my first time?”
She shot me a deadpan look. “I want to spank you like Santa Claus?”
All right, she had me there.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Rookie mistake. In my defense, though, it was right before Christmas.”
“Of course,” said Claire, “because that’s the first rule of talking dirty in bed. Keep it topical.”
“Okay, now you’re just mocking me.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I was mocking you before that,” she said. “Tell you what, though, I’m willing to give you a second chance.”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Charlie Brown and the football, that’s why,” I said.
“I promise I won’t laugh this time.”
“Sure thing, Lucy.”
“No, really.” Claire lifted her head off the pillow, gently kissing my lower lip. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Mr. Mann.”
I stared at her, waiting for her to say she was only kidding. Calling me by my last name was sometimes a tip-off. Not this time, though.
“You’re stalling,” she insisted.
“No, just stumped. Not a lot of holidays in June.”
Claire chuckled, playing along. She always played along. “You’ve got Flag Day next week,” she said. “Maybe something about your pole?”
“Very funny.”
“Speaking of half-mast, though.”
I glanced down beneath the sheets. “Well, whose fault is that?”
Claire suddenly grabbed my backside, rolling me like a kayak. Next thing I knew, she was on top and pushing her long auburn hair back from her eyes.
“Sometimes it just takes a woman,” she said.
She then leaned down to my ear and whispered a request that was easily the dirtiest thing I’d ever heard her say. Just filthy. X-rated. Obscene.
And I loved it.
But before I could show her just how much, we both froze to a horrible sound filling the room.
Now I really couldn’t believe my ears.
CLAIRE UNATTACHED herself from me, for lack of a more delicate way to describe it, and reached for “the Stopper” on my bedside table. That was my nickname for it. When it rang, everything else stopped.
“I’m sorry,” she said before taking the call.
“You and me both,” I said under my breath.
In all, Claire owned three cell phones. The first, her iPhone, was for personal use. Friends and family.
The second, a BlackBerry, was for work. Claire S. Parker, as her byline read, was a national affairs reporter for the New York Times.
Her third phone, an old Motorola, was also for work. Except this phone and its number were for a very small and select group. Her sources.
Which was another reason why the Stopper was a good name for this phone. The identity of these sources stopped with her, cold, end of story. Not her editor, not the executive editor, not even Judge Reginald McCabe had ever been told the name of a single source of Claire’s.
As far as that last guy, Judge McCabe of the United States District Court, was concerned, he went so far as to charge Claire with contempt when she refused to identify a source after being subpoenaed in a criminal homicide case involving an American military attaché assigned to the UN. That got her thirty-six days and nights at the Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, New York. I have to say, she rocked the orange jumpsuit they made her wear.
“Hello?” Claire answered.
The unwritten ground rules for when she took these calls were simple. If I had been at her place downtown, I’d have gotten up and given her some privacy. Since we were at my place, though, I had squatter’s rights. If she needed privacy, she’d be the one leaving the bedroom.
But she remained sitting there on the edge of the bed. Naked, no less.
She listened for a few moments, the beat-up old flip phone pressed tight against her ear. Then, her voice high-pitched with surprise, she asked, “Wait, you’re here in the city?” Quickly, she began tapping her thumb and forefinger together, twisting her wrist in the air. If I’d been a waiter in a restaurant, I would’ve been bringing her the check. But I knew what she actually wanted.
I leaned over to the bedside table closest to me, pulling out the drawer. After handing her a pen, I was about to offer up some paper when I saw her reach for a yellow legal pad that was sitting atop a tall stack of books on the floor, also known as my to-read pile. Mostly biographies. Some historical fiction mixed in as well.
As Claire scribbled something on the pad, I stared at the freckles on the curve of her shoulders, hundreds of them. My eyes drifted down her spine and I smiled, thinking of the trip we took to Block Island a few summers ago, when I rubbed suntan lotion on her bikinied back and sneakily left bare a small stretch of real estate spelling out my initials, TM.
“Trevor Mann!” she screamed later that afternoon when she caught a glimpse in the mirror as she stepped out of the shower. After delivering a punch to my shoulder—with more wallop than her thin frame would ever have suggested—she broke up laughing. “I’ve been trademarked!”
Even now, squinting a bit in the dimness of my bedroom, I could still sort of see most of the T and some of the M. Or so I’d convinced myself.
“Okay, don’t go anywhere,” Claire said into the phone.
Damn.
I was hoping she’d hang up, turn around, and say, “Now, where were we?” but I knew that was beyond wishful thinking. By the time she looked back at me over her shoulder and all those freckles, I already knew.
“You have to go, don’t you?” I said.
She leaned over and kissed me. “I’m sorry.”
Those same unwritten ground rules had it that I wasn’t supposed to pry. But as I watched her dress, and saw the bounce in her step, I couldn’t help myself.
“You’ve got something, don’t you?” I asked. “Something good.”
She nodded with a touch of giddiness.
I stared at her, waiting for something, anything that hinted at what it might be. I must have looked like a dog sitting at the edge of the dinner table, silently begging for scraps.
“I know,” she said finally. “But we have to keep some mystery between us, don’t we?”
Buttoning the last button on her navy-blue blouse, she returned to the side of the bed and kissed me one last time before leaving.
“Call me in the morning,” I said.
She smiled. “Promise.”
A little over two hours later, I was jolted awake by the sound of my phone. It was just shy of one a.m.
Claire’s older sister was calling from Boston. She was crying and couldn’t get the words out. She didn’t have to. It was as if I knew the second I picked up the phone. There was a certain something simpatico between Claire and me.
Something terrible had happened.
DETECTIVE DAVE Lamont shook my hand firmly in the front waiting area of the Midtown North Precinct on West Fifty-Fourth Street and led me upstairs to the far back corner of a squad room that was empty and silent, save for the baritone hum of the fluorescent lighting overhead.
“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a folding metal chair in front of his desk. “You want some coffee?”
“No, I’m okay. Thanks.”
He grabbed a mug with a faded New York Giants logo on it that was sitting on top of some overstuffed folders. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched him as he walked off. Lamont was a tall man, filled out by age, but still with a build that suggested a degree of athleticism somewhere in his past. Given the Giants mug, I was thinking there was probably an old high school yearbook out there with the word linebacker next to his name.
Claire once showed me her high school yearbook. Her senior quote was from Andrew Marvell: “Had we but world enough and time …”
Christ, this is really happening, isn’t it? She’s really gone. Just like that. I feel numb. No, that’s not right. I feel everything. And it’s hurting like hell.
Claire’s sister, Ellen, had given me Detective Lamont’s name and number. He’d made the call to her up in Boston, breaking the news.
I wasn’t next of kin, husband or fiancé, or even the last person to see Claire alive, but when I’d told Lamont my name over the phone I’d been pretty sure he’d agree to see me right away.
“You were that ADA, weren’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, that was me,” I answered.
Me, as in that former Manhattan assistant district attorney. Back when I played for the home team. Before I changed jerseys.
Before I got disbarred.
I knew he knew the story. Most every cop in the city did, at least the veterans. It was the kind of story they wouldn’t forget.
Lamont came back now and sat behind his desk with a full mug of coffee. He took a sip as he pulled Claire’s file in front of him, the steam momentarily fogging the bottom half of his drugstore-variety glasses.
Then he shook his head slowly and simply stared at me for a moment, unblinking.
“Fuckin’ random,” he said finally.
I nodded as he flipped open the file to his notes in anticipation of my questions. I had a lot of them.
Christ. The pain is only going to get worse, isn’t it?
“WHERE EXACTLY did it happen?” I asked.
“West End Avenue at Seventy-Third. The taxi was stopped at a red light,” said Lamont. “The assailant smashed the driver’s side window, pistol-whipped the driver until he was knocked out cold, and grabbed his money bag. He then robbed Ms. Parker at gunpoint.”
“Claire,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Please call her Claire.”
I knew it was a weird thing for me to say, but weirder still was hearing Lamont refer to Claire as Ms. Parker, not that I blamed him. Victims are always Mr., Mrs., or Ms. for a detective. He was supposed to call her that. I just wasn’t ready to hear it.
“I apologize,” I said. “It’s just that—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a raised palm. He understood. He got it.
“So what happened next?” I asked. “What went wrong?”
“We’re not sure, exactly. Best we can tell, she fully cooperated, didn’t put up a fight.”
That made sense. Claire might have been your prototypical “tough” New Yorker, but she was also no fool. She didn’t own anything she’d risk her life to keep. Does anyone?
No, she definitely knew the drill. Never be a statistic. If your taxi gets jacked, you do exactly as told.
“And you said the driver was knocked out, right? He didn’t hear anything?” I asked.
“Not even the gunshots,” said Lamont. “In fact, he didn’t actually regain consciousness until after the first two officers arrived at the scene.”
“Who called it in?”
“An older couple walking nearby.”
“What did they see?”
“The shooter running back to his car, which was behind the taxi. They were thirty or forty yards away; they didn’t get a good look.”
“Any other witnesses?”
“You’d think, but no. Then again, residential block … after midnight,” he said. “We’ll obviously follow up in the area tomorrow. Talk to the driver, too. He was taken to St. Luke’s before we arrived.”
I leaned back in my chair, a metal hinge somewhere below the seat creaking its age. I must have had a dozen more questions for Lamont, each one trying to get me that much closer to being in the taxi with Claire, to knowing what had really happened.
To knowing whether or not it truly was … fuckin’ random.
But I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not Lamont, and especially not myself. All I was doing was procrastinating, trying hopelessly to avoid asking the one question I was truly dreading.
I couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“FOR THE record, you were never in here,” said Lamont, pausing at a closed door toward the back corner of the precinct house.
I stared at him blankly as if I were some chronic sufferer of short-term memory loss. “In where?” I asked.
He smirked. Then he opened the door.
The windowless room I followed him into was only slightly bigger than claustrophobic. After closing the door behind us, Lamont introduced me to his partner, Detective Mike McGeary, who was at the helm of what looked like one of those video arcade games where you sit in a captain’s chair shooting at alien spaceships on a large screen. He was even holding what looked like a joystick.
McGeary, square-jawed and bald, gave Lamont a sideways glance that all but screamed, What the hell is he doing in here?
“Mr. Mann was a close acquaintance of the victim,” said Lamont. He added a slight emphasis on my last name, as if to jog his partner’s memory.
McGeary studied me in the dim light of the room until he put my face and name together. Perhaps he was remembering the cover of the New York Post a couple of years back. An Honest Mann, read the headline.
“Yeah, fine,” McGeary said finally.
It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but it was enough to consider the issue of my being there resolved. I could stay. I could see the recording.
I could watch, frame by frame, the murder of the woman I loved.
Lamont hadn’t had to tell me there was a surveillance camera in the taxi. I’d known right away, given how he’d described the shooting over the phone, some of the details he had. There were little things no eyewitnesses could ever provide. Had there been any eyewitnesses, that is.
Lamont removed his glasses, wearily pinching the bridge of his nose. No one ever truly gets used to the graveyard shift. “Any matches so far?” he asked his partner.
McGeary shook his head.
I glanced at the large monitor, which had shifted into screen saver mode, an NYPD logo floating about. Lamont, I could tell, was waiting for me to ask him about the space-age console, the reason I wasn’t supposed to be in the room. The machine obviously did a little more than just digital playback.
But I didn’t ask. I already knew.
I’m sure the thing had an official name, something ultra-high-tech sounding, but back when I was in the DA’s office I’d only ever heard it referred to by its nickname, CrackerJack. What it did was combine every known recognition software program into one giant cross-referencing “decoder” that was linked to practically every criminal database in the country, as well as those from twenty-three other countries, or basically all of our official allies in the “war on terror.”
In short, given any image at any angle of any suspected terrorist, CrackerJack could source a litany of identifying characteristics, be it an exposed mole or tattoo; the exact measurements between the suspect’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; or even a piece of jewelry. Clothing, too. Apparently, for all the precautions terrorists take in their planning, it rarely occurs to them that wearing the same polyester shirt in London, Cairo, and Islamabad might be a bad idea.
Of course, it didn’t take long for law enforcement in major cities—where CrackerJacks were heavily deployed by the Department of Homeland Security—to realize that these machines didn’t have to identify just terrorists. Anyone with a criminal record was fair game.
So here was McGeary going through the recording sent over by the New York Taxi & Limousine Commission to see if any image of the shooter triggered a match. And here was me, having asked if I could watch it, too.
“Mike, cue it up from the beginning, will you?” said Lamont.
McGeary punched a button and then another until the screen lit up with the first frame, the taxi having pulled over to pick Claire up. The image was grainy, black-and-white, like on an old tube television with a set of rabbit ears. But what little I could see was still way too much.
It was exactly as Lamont had described it. The shooter smashes the driver’s side window, beating the driver senseless with the butt of his gun. He’s wearing a dark turtleneck and a ski mask with holes for the eyes, nose, and mouth. His gloves are tight, like those Isotoners that O. J. Simpson pretended didn’t fit.
So far, Claire is barely visible. Not once can I see her face. Then I do.
It’s right after the shooter snatches the driver’s money bag. He swings his gun, aiming it at Claire in the backseat. She jolts. There’s no Plexiglas divider. There’s nothing but air.
Presumably, he says something to her, but the back of his head is toward the camera. Claire offers up her purse. He takes it and she says something. I was never any good at reading lips.
He should be leaving. Running away. Instead, he swings out and around, opening the rear door. He’s out of frame for no more than three seconds. Then all I see is his outstretched arm. And the fear in her eyes.
He fires two shots at point-blank range. Did he panic? Not enough to flee right away. Quickly, he riffles through her pockets, and then tears off her earrings, followed by her watch, the Rolex Milgauss I gave her for her thirtieth birthday. He dumps everything in her purse and takes off.
“Wait a minute,” I said suddenly. “Go back a little bit.”
LAMONT AND McGeary both turned to me, their eyes asking if I was crazy. You want to watch her being murdered a second time?
No, I didn’t. Not a chance.
Watching it the first time made me so nauseous I thought I’d throw up right there on the floor. I wanted that recording erased, deleted, destroyed for all eternity not two seconds after it was used to catch the goddamn son of a bitch who’d done this.
Then I wanted a long, dark alley in the dead of night where he and I could have a little time alone together. Yeah. That’s what I wanted.
But I thought I saw something.
Up until that moment, I hadn’t known what I was looking for in the recording, if anything. If Claire had been standing next to me, she, with her love of landmark Supreme Court cases, would’ve described it as the definition of pornography according to Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio.
I know it when I see it.
She’d always admired the simplicity of that. Not everything that’s true has to be proven, she used to say.
“Where to?” asked McGeary, his hand hovering over a knob that could rewind frame by frame, if need be.
“Just after he beats the driver,” I said.
He nodded. “Say when.”
I watched the sped-up images, everything happening in reverse. If only I could reverse it all for real. I was waiting for the part when the gun was turned on Claire. A few moments before that, actually.
“Stop,” I said. “Right there.”
McGeary hit Play again and I leaned in, my eyes glued to the screen. Meanwhile, I could feel Lamont’s eyes glued to my profile, as if he could somehow better see what I was looking for by watching me.
“What is it?” he eventually asked.
I stepped back, shaking my head as if disappointed. “Nothing,” I said. “It wasn’t anything.”
Because that’s exactly what Claire would’ve wanted me to say. A little white lie for the greater good, she would’ve called it.
She was always a quick thinker, right up until the end.
NO WAY in hell did I feel like taking a taxi home.
In fact, I didn’t feel like going home at all. In my mind, I’d already put my apartment on the market, packed up all my belongings, and moved to another neighborhood, maybe even out of Manhattan altogether. Claire was the city to me. Bright. Vibrant.
Alive.
And now she wasn’t.
I passed a bar, looking through the window at the smattering of “patrons,” to put it politely, who were still drinking at three in the morning. I could see an empty stool and it was calling my name. More like shouting it, really.
Don’t, I told myself. When you sober up, she’ll still be gone.
I kept walking in the direction of my apartment, but with every step it became clear where I truly wanted to go. It was wherever Claire had been going.
Who was she meeting?
Suddenly, I was channeling Oliver Stone, somehow trying to link her murder to the story she’d been chasing. But that was crazy. I saw her murder in black and white. It was a robbery. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and as much as that was a cliché, so, too, was her death. She’d be the first to admit it.
“Imagine that,” I could hear her saying. “A victim of violent crime in New York City. How original.”
Still, I’d become fixated on wanting to know where she’d been heading when she left my apartment. A two-hundred-dollar-an-hour shrink would probably call that sublimated grief, while the four-hundred-dollar-an-hour shrink would probably counter with sublimated anger. I was sticking with overwhelming curiosity.
I put myself in her shoes, mentally tracing her steps through the lobby of my building and out to the sidewalk. As soon as I pictured her raising her arm for a taxi, it occurred to me. The driver. He at least knew the address. For sure, Claire gave it to him when he picked her up.
Almost on cue, a taxi slowed down next to me at the curb, the driver wondering if I needed a ride. That was a common occurrence late at night when supply far outweighed demand.
As I shook him off, I began thinking of what else Claire’s driver might remember when Lamont interviewed him. Tough to say after the beating he took. Maybe the shooter had said something that would key his identity, or at least thin out the suspects. Did he speak with any kind of accent?
Or maybe the driver had seen something that wasn’t visible to that surveillance camera. Eye color? An odd-shaped mole? A chipped tooth?
Unfortunately, the list of possibilities didn’t go on and on. The ski mask, turtleneck, and gloves made sure of that. Clearly, the bastard knew that practically every taxi in the city was its own little recording studio. So much for cameras being a deterrent.
As the old expression goes, show me a ten-foot wall and I’ll show you an eleven-foot ladder.
The twenty blocks separating me from my apartment were a daze. I was on autopilot, one foot in front of the other. Only at the sound of the keys as I dropped them on my kitchen counter did I snap out of it, realizing I was actually home.
Fully dressed, I fell into my bed, shoes and all. I didn’t even bother turning off the lights. But my eyes were closed for only a few seconds before they popped open. Damn. All it took was one breath, one exchange of the air around me, and I was lying there feeling more alone than I ever had in my entire life.
The sheets still smelled of her.
I sat up, looking over at the other side of the bed … the pillow. I could still make out the impression of Claire’s head. That was the word, wasn’t it? Impression. Hers was everywhere, most of all on me.
I was about to make a beeline to my guest room, which, if anything, would smell of dust or staleness or whatever other odor is given off by a room that’s rarely, if ever, used. I didn’t care. So long as it wasn’t her.
Suddenly, though, I froze. Something had caught my eye. It was the yellow legal pad on the end of the bed, the one Claire had used when she took the phone call. She’d ripped off the top sheet she’d written on.
But the one beneath it …
I ALL but lunged for the pad, gripping it beyond tight while staring at the indentations she’d left behind.
Another impression.
I could make out a letter here, a letter there. An S followed by something, followed by a B. Or was that a 6?
I flipped on the nearby lamp for more light, angling the pad every which way, trying to decipher the ever-so-slight grooves in the paper. It could’ve been a name, but all my money was on it being an address. It was where Claire was going. It had to be. But I still couldn’t make it out.
I thought for a few seconds, racking my brain. Before I knew it, I was dashing across my living room and into my office, grabbing a pencil, followed by a piece of paper from my printer tray. This could work, I thought.
Laying the paper over the pad, I began gently making a rubbing, like people do with tombstones and other memorials. But the printer paper was too thick. I needed something thinner. I knew exactly where to find it, too.