The 5th Horseman (17 page)
Authors: James Patterson
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #antique
Had she been speeding?
She glided into an empty space at the curb, her eyes straight ahead as the cop car sailed past her.
With a shaking hand, she turned off the ignition and waited for her heartbeat to slow.
Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.
Her pj’s were soaked with sweat, the satin collar and cuffs peeking out from her raincoat. My God. If the cop had questioned her, what would she have told him?
She’d been stalking Garza!
Pedestrians crossed at the red light in front of her. Office workers with briefcases and steaming coffee cups. Nurses and doctors, their coats buttoned over their scrubs, feet in soft-soled shoes.
Everyone going to their jobs.
Yuki reached two weeks back into her memory, recalling going to her high-rise office, being an associate in a top law firm, being a young, fast-track litigator.
She’d loved her work. Now she couldn’t picture going to the office. All she was good for was obsessing about Dennis Garza. Thinking how in some way that monstrous man had killed her mother.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 75
I SAW THE DUSKY-BROWN ENVELOPE lurking inside the tower of mail in my in-box. I fished it out and slit the flap with the shiv I kept in my top drawer.
I read the report. Read it again to make sure I was right. Latent had pulled fifty million smudged partials from the caduceus buttons.
There was nothing even remotely usable in the batch.
I got up from my desk, walked over to Jacobi, who was unwrapping an egg salad sandwich, piling coleslaw and garlic pickles onto a plate for his lunch.
“Join me?” he asked, holding up a sandwich half.
“Okay.”
I dragged up a chair, shifted his piles of junk, and made a space for myself.
As we ate, I downloaded my humming mind, filling Jacobi in on Yuki’s charge that her mother had been murdered at one of the city’s most revered hospitals.
I told him the rest of it — my conversation with the nurse at Municipal and about the caduceus buttons I’d scored from Carl Whiteley during our executive-suite fandango.
I kept talking, and Jacobi didn’t stop me. By the time I got to the malpractice suit, he’d broken out the box of Krispy Kremes. Put a chocolate glazed on a napkin in front of me.
“So, what are you thinking, Boxer? You thinking like a lieutenant, or an investigator?”
“The only autopsy report we have is Keiko’s.”
“And how did Claire call it?”
“Without any evidence to the contrary? Pending, until all the facts are in.”
“So, what am I missing here? Where’s the tie-in with Garza? You girls don’t like the way he looks?”
“He’s very handsome, actually.”
I told Jacobi that Keiko, like the patients in the malpractice case against Municipal, had entered the hospital through the ER — Garza’s turf.
This was also true of thousands of patients who survived, checked out, and, for all I knew, lived happily ever after.
“I have to find something in Municipal’s list of doctors, nurses, and maintenance staff that will either explain away my uneasy feelings or solidify them,” I said.
“So, what do you want from me, Boxer?” He crumpled up the rubbish from our lunch, dunked it into the trash can.
“I need you to work overtime.”
“Tonight?”
“Unpaid overtime.”
“Aw, jeez, Lieutenant. I just remembered. I’ve got opera tickets. . . .”
“Because I’ve used up my overtime budget for the month. Because I don’t have a bona fide victim. And because I don’t even know what the hell this is.”
Jacobi caved, knowing I’d do the same for him.
As the day shift stumbled out of the squad room and the graveyard shift trickled in, Jacobi and I ran the names of six hundred Municipal employees through the database.
We uncovered doctors with spotty medical histories and rap sheets on lower-level staffers for domestic violence, assault, armed robbery, drug abuse, and DWIs aplenty.
My DeskJet spat out a summary of the “button” victims.
I read it to Jacobi.
“All thirty-two patients came through the ER, and half were examined by Garza.
“They were black, white, brown, and every color in between. Ages seventeen to eighty-three and the timing of the deaths over the last three years appears to be random.”
“So, Boxer. What you’re saying is there’s no victim profile. If the thirty-two ‘button’ patients were actually whacked — a big fat if, by the way—”
“You’re right. I’m stumped, pardner. All I’ve got is this weird signature, and it’s the only thing that ties the victims together.”
Jacobi had a coughing fit, his still-healing gunshot wound pinching his lung and giving him hell. He weighed down the stack of papers with a stapler and stood to put on his jacket.
“Just stating the obvious, but nobody is saying homicide except Yuki. What’s she basing it on? She hates the guy?”
“I take your point, Warren. But buttons on the eyes of dead people means something. Talk me out of it if you think I’m crazy. Because I just can’t put this out of my mind.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 76
I THOUGHT ABOUT the sick mind that had to be behind those caduceus buttons as I drove home that night. Wondering again if Yuki and I were paranoid or if we were right: a very strange killer was murdering patients at Municipal Hospital.
And no one was stopping him.
No one was even trying.
I arrived at the front door of my apartment barely remembering the drive there. I completed my pit stop in record time, and soon I was back in the Explorer, heading toward the hospital.
The crime scene — the homicide scene?
I parked near the entrance to the ER and went inside, where I hung around the waiting room for a few minutes, flipping through an ancient issue of Field and Stream, blending in with the visitors sitting around me.
Then I took a little stroll.
The corridor was lit with a flat white fluorescence. Patients moved around carefully with their canes and IV poles. The medical staff walked purposefully, eyes straight ahead.
I kept my hands in my pockets, my baseball cap down over my eyes, hoping that the bulge of my Glock wasn’t noticeable under a soft, zippered jacket.
I honestly had no idea what the hell I was looking for.
Maybe if I poked around, something would click, and the deaths and stats and tantalizing clues would add up to an honest-to-God serial crime, possibly the worst ever in San Francisco.
At the same time, I had no business surveilling the hospital. I was a homicide lieutenant, not a freakin’ PI, and Tracchio would rip into me if he knew I was haunting Municipal on my own.
That’s what I was thinking when I took a corner and slammed into a man in a white coat with medium-long black hair. I knocked a clipboard right out of his hand.
Christ!
“Sorry,” I said.
Then I nearly jumped out of my shoes. I’d thought of him often, but I hadn’t seen Dr. Garza since the day Yuki and I brought Keiko into the emergency room.
The doctor picked up his clipboard and fixed his hard black eyes on mine. It was a challenge, and I felt a nearly overwhelming impulse to throw him against the wall and cuff him.
You’re under arrest for being a supercilious son of a bitch, for giving my friend nightmares, and for being a likely suspect in an unspecified number of suspicious deaths that might or might not be homicides. Do you understand your rights?
Instead, I balled my fists up inside my jacket pockets and stood my ground.
“I know who you are,” Garza said. “Police lieutenant. Friend of Ms. Castellano. She’s a little overanxious, wouldn’t you say? Having a hard time with her mother’s death.”
“My friend is fine,” I told him. “But I’m not so sure about you.”
His face cracked in a crazy grin that left us both in a paralytic standoff that was finally broken by his name blasting over the PA.
“Dr. Garza wanted in the ER.”
We stepped out of each other’s way.
“I have work to do,” he said.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 77
LAUREN MCKENNA took a quick breath, then knocked on the door. She waited anxiously in the carpeted hallway of the hotel, her stomach churning, thinking she was out of her mind to do this. Absolutely nuts.
She stared down at her gold pumps, the fake croc shoes a witty touch with the silk chiffon skirt, wondering if he’d notice — and then, a split second later, going the other way again, thinking it wasn’t too late to change her mind and get the hell out of there.
If she didn’t like him, she was going to say, “Sorry, I’ve got the wrong room.”
And then the door opened.
Her “date” smiled. He looked Asian American, maybe thirty or so, slim, hair gelled into spikes. He was dressed okay in a blue cotton shirt and tan dress slacks, but handsome, causing her a moment’s doubt — was she pretty enough for this guy? He reached out his hand and clasped hers.
“I’m Ken,” he said warmly. “You’re gorgeous, Lauren. I love what you’re wearing. You exceed all my expectations. Please come in.”
Lauren thanked him, stepped inside the plush hotel room, her heart banging in her chest.
Ken was saying, “Let me see your face. Do you mind?”
He reached out, moved her bangs away from her eyes.
“Can you smile?” he said, then smiled himself.
Lauren clamped her jaw shut, clutched her handbag to her chest, looked around. She was trying to take in everything at once. Fear Factor on the TV, the bottle of champagne on ice, the man himself — a total stranger.
How had she thought she could go through with something like this?
“Come on,” he said. “Give me a little smile.”
She did it then, baring her teeth in a clenched grin, Ken saying, “Braces? How old are you, Lauren?”
“Nineteen. I’m a sophomore. In college.”
“You don’t look it,” he said, smiling at her again, his teeth extremely white, that gorgeous skin, not too old, but still, this was nothing like a blind date.
She was in a hotel room with a stranger, one who wanted to pay her money — for God only knew what.
Lauren started flashing back, thinking about all of the little humiliations of the past week — dodging the landlord, her bounced check taped next to the register at the campus bookstore, all the money she’d borrowed from friends.
Her roommate saying, “Call this number. Margot can help you with an easy-breezy debt-consolidation plan.”
Easy-breezy? This was insane!
Now Ken was helping her out of her camel-hair coat. She encouraged herself: hang in there, Lulu. Be brave. Try to have fun. Anyway, think of all that money.
She saw Ken’s eyes on her long legs, checking out her clingy, see-through blouse, her bra straps peeking out on top. So she put her hands on her hips, striking a pose like a runway model, laughing nervously when Ken looked amused.
Lauren heard herself say what she’d heard call girls say in movies.
“Mind if we get the business part out of the way?”
“Not at all.” Ken took several bills out of his back pocket. He stacked ten crisp hundreds in her open hand.
“You can count it. But it’s all there. Don’t worry, I’m a decent guy.”
Lauren smiled awkwardly, tucked the cash into her Kate Spade bag, and left it by the TV.
Ken offered her the wing chair near the window, and she took it, gratefully accepting the glass of Dom. The champagne bubbled its way down her throat, damping her anxiety.
“Do me a favor,” Ken was saying. “Put your feet flat on the floor. Shake your head a little, like the wind is blowing through your hair. The way the beautiful models do it.”
“Like this?”
“Excellent. That’s great. And you can relax, Lauren. I want you to have fun tonight.”
She was kind of relaxed, feeling warm in the expensive room with the velvet curtains. In the distance, the bridge was lit up and framed like a picture in the window.
Ken was very nice. Not rushing her or acting crude. He took the bottle from the ice bucket beside her, topped off her glass.
She said, “I’ll tell you a secret, Ken. This is my first time doing this.”
“Well, I’m honored,” he said. “I can see that you’re a real sweet girl. Hey, I’d like your opinion about something.”
He crossed the room and took some brochures out of his coat pocket. Offered them to her.
“I’m thinking of getting a new car. Which one do you like best? Porsche, BMW, Mercedes?”
Lauren was studying the glossy fliers, getting herself into the right mood, when she heard the door open from the adjoining room.
Her heart jumped as a really big guy with blondish hair came through the door as if he had every right to be there.
She shot an alarmed, questioning look at Ken.
“I was just going to tell you,” said Ken. “This is my friend Louie.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 78
THE CAR FLIERS FELL from Lauren’s hand, scattering around her gold shoes. Suddenly, she felt cold all over, her stomach dropping as if she were inside an elevator car and the cable had just snapped.
She gaped at Louie — broad, muscular, in khakis and a pink polo shirt. He looked like a jock, but older, maybe a coach.
He gave Lauren a look, like “wow-ee.” Swiveled his head and looked at her again.
“Listen,” Lauren said. She felt queasy as she rose quickly out of the chair. She gauged the distance to the door. “I didn’t agree to a, a . . . threesome. That’s definitely not okay with me.”
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