The 20th Victim

by James Patterson

  I dressed in a white robe and a pair of socks, then climbed aboard the California king with its down comforter and regal headboard. I woke up to Joe calling my name, flipping on the lights in the darkening room.

  “Sorry, Linds. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven something. Seven twenty. When we came back from seeing Ray, Dave and I got into a pile of yearbooks and photo albums, and then, of course, I told him everything Julie has said and done since she was born.”

  I said, “Oh, man. All caught up now?”

  Joe laughed, asked, “Do you want to go to the restaurant for dinner?”

  I shook my head no. I was so comfortable.

  “Me neither. I want to clean up and get into bed. But wait,” he said.

  He sat on the side of the bed and phoned room service, ordered cheese and fruit for two, basket of bread, bottle of Channing Winery Sauvignon Blanc, concluding with, “You got some candles? Good. Twenty minutes would be great.”

  He hung up the phone, shucked his jacket, came back to the bed, and kissed me.

  “God,” he said. “You do smell like flowers.”

  I showed him my newly polished fingers and toes, and he kissed me again, lifted a few strands of my hair away from my eyes.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  I fluffed my pillow, gazed out through the sliding doors to the balcony as the glow left the sky, and listened to Joe singing an old rock-and-roll hit in the shower. That oldies station we’d driven to must have gotten stuck in his head.

  “‘Do you love me? Do you love me?’”

  He burst out of the bathroom in a robe singing the chorus.

  “‘Now…that I…can dance.’”

  I laughed and opened my arms to him, and he got into bed.

  I put my arm across his chest. He drew me close, and I tipped my head up and kissed him again, this time putting a little heat into it.

  He said, “Look at us. Two oysters in white. No caviar required.”

  “Call your daughter,” I said, “before it gets too late.”

  Joe got up, found his phone in his jacket pocket, and came back to bed. Together we FaceTimed my sister, her two shrieking little girls fighting over who should tell Uncle Joe about their day. And then we shared a sweet conversation with a sleepy Julie, who I could see was in bed with Martha. Julie said, “Mommy, say ‘woof.’”

  I did it.

  “Nooooo. Say it to Martha!”

  Cat cackled in the background as Julie took the phone to my old dog. I woofed on command. Then Joe and I kissed Julie through the screen of the phone and told her to sleep tight.

  When we were alone again, Joe told me that Ray Channing looked terrible, but that he couldn’t suppress his happiness at seeing Joe again after so many years.

  “Told me I hadn’t changed a bit.”

  We both laughed, and room service knocked and delivered.

  Joe and I sipped wine. We nibbled. We talked, and then Joe put the candle in its little glass globe on the dresser before rolling the cart outside and locking the door.

  He took off his robe and tossed it over a chair, came back to bed, and helped me out of mine.

  “I have a confession,” I said.

  “Now? You wish my chest wasn’t hairy?”

  “I love your hairy chest. The lobster mac and cheese. That was my favorite course.”

  “It beat out the mini donut?”

  “It was the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

  Joe laughed. “Mac and cheese.”

  “With lobster.”

  “Got it. I think there’s a recipe for that.”

  By eight thirty or so we were making love by enough candlelight for each of us to see into the other’s eyes.

  Joe asked me, “What did you say, Blondie?”

  “I’m so lucky.”

  “Lucky me, too.”

  Chapter 12

  Twenty minutes after kissing my child, my husband, and my border collie good-bye, I parked my Explorer under the overpass on Harriet Street.

  It was only a half block to the medical examiner’s office. I wanted to see my best friend, and I thought coffee with Claire would be a nice, soft entry to my Monday-morning return to work.

  I pulled on the heavy glass doors, said “Hey” to Patrick, Claire’s new receptionist, who told me, “Dr. Washburn said go into her office. She’ll be there in a second.”

  Five minutes later Claire and Cindy came through the office door, Claire looking harried, Cindy wearing her deep-in-a-story face. I stood up and put my arms around them both and gave them a group hug.

  “Your hair smells wonderful,” Claire said.

  “I got a hair mask. Me! What’s going on, you two? What’d I miss?”

  Cindy said, “The day you left, did you hear about it? Roger Jennings gets shot in his car leaving the Taco King on Duboce Avenue.”

  “I missed it.”

  “Okay, well, he survives the shooting for a few days, unconscious, never says a word before he passes away late last night. You know who he is? Roger Jennings?”

  “Sure. He was a catcher. Released by the A’s and picked up by the Giants, what—about a year ago? Was the shooter caught?”

  Cindy filled me in. “No one saw the shooter, not even Jennings’s pregnant wife, who was in the seat beside him.”

  Claire said, “The bullet entered through the center of the victim’s neck, severing multiple vertebrae and arteries, before exiting through the left side of his neck.”

  Cindy said, “And someone, the shooter or an accomplice maybe, uses the chaos as cover to write the word Rehearsal on the back window of his Porsche Cayenne.”

  “Rehearsal,” I said, thinking out loud. “The shooting was a trial run. Could be that Jennings was a random person in the wrong place.”

  “Maybe,” said Cindy. “But I’ve been digging into Roger Jennings. I’m thinking he was lining up his next career. A little more dangerous than baseball.”

  “How so?”

  “He was dealing,” she said.

  I said, “That’s a fact?”

  “Trusted sources tell me that Jennings was selling MDMA to his teammates. There may be others. Chi and McNeil are on it. And now,” said Cindy, “I’ve got to get back and file the story.”

  She blew kisses.

  Then she was gone.

  Chapter 13

  As Cindy flew out the door, Yuki blew in.

  “I hope there’s coffee in here somewhere.”

  Claire pointed to the coffeemaker, and when we were all topped off, arrayed around Claire’s desk, we started catching up. Claire had been working all weekend, trying to organize the cremains of five bodies recovered from a crack house fire in the Tenderloin.

  “This is the worst,” she said. “Cause of death could be overdose, smoke inhalation, gunshot, all of the above, or none of the above. I doubt I’m going to ID even one of those bodies.”

  Yuki said to me, “Arson is suspected, but it could have been a crack pipe falling onto a pile of newspapers, everyone too whacked out to notice.”

  Claire got up from her desk, saying, “Be right back.”

  I asked Yuki how her case was going, and she said, “This defendant, Clay Warren. When I was working with Zac, I would have been fighting to get this kid released. I would have argued that he was a victim of circumstance. He didn’t know about the drugs. I’d have gotten him to give up the puke who left him literally holding the bag. Now I’m gonna send him to prison for the rest of his dumb-ass life. Talk about cognitive dissonance,” Yuki said.

  She asked about Julie, and I told her that Joe and I were exhausted last night, but Julie didn’t want to sleep. At all. “We compromised, let Julie and Martha into our bed, and our snoring finally knocked them out. Next thing I hear, ‘Mommy! I’m gonna be late for school.’”

  Yuki was laughing when Claire came back and reseated herself in her chair. She took a swig of coffee, sighed deeply.

 
I asked, “You okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I splashed cold water on my face. I want to sign off on these fire victims before I go home tonight. So tell me. You went to the French Laundry?”

  Claire’s receptionist knocked, poked his head in, and said, “Sorry to interrupt. Sergeant, Inspector Conklin just called. He said he needs you to come upstairs.”

  We broke up our little party and hugged Claire good-bye. Yuki and I power walked up the long breezeway that connects the medical examiner’s office to the Hall of Justice.

  An elevator was waiting and we boarded it, Yuki getting out on three. I exited on the fourth floor and found my partner at the entrance to the squad room, putting on his jacket.

  “Good. You’re here, Boxer,” Rich Conklin said. “Double homicide in Saint Francis Wood. We’re catching.”

  Chapter 14

  Conklin and I jogged down the fire stairs and through the lobby to the main exit on Bryant.

  He briefed me as we checked out a squad car.

  “The victims are Paul and Ramona Baron.”

  “The record producer?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I pictured Baron. Dark haired. Midforties. Small guy with a Vegas personality. The picture in my mind was of him recently celebrating a movie deal with a big crowd at the club Monroe.

  Rich was telling me, “Their housekeeper, Gretchen Linder, found their bodies when she came to work about a half hour ago. The wife was still breathing, then she died while Linder was calling it in. She’s at the scene now.”

  Conklin got behind the wheel, and while I buckled up and flipped on the sirens, he floored it, the car shooting away from the curb. I held on to the armrest as we sped southwest toward Saint Francis Wood, an affluent old-money enclave, one of those neighborhoods where nothing much ever happened—until it did.

  Apart from a few expletives when jackass drivers failed to give way, Conklin and I didn’t speak again until we arrived at the murder house.

  Three patrol cars were in front of a beautiful old home, about four thousand square feet taking up a double-corner lot. The lawn was mown, shrubbery shorn. The property was as tidy as a freshly made bed.

  We parked between the CSI van and an ambulance, got out of the car.

  I spent a moment taking in the big picture: the multimillion-dollar old homes as far as I could see, ancient trees lining the street. There were two cars parked in the Barons’ driveway, a late-model Mercedes and an Audi, both gleaming. A well-used Honda was parked at the curb along with the three black-and-whites, CSI’s van, and an ambulance. Incongruent crackles and screeching of car radios, dogs barking, horns honking, underscored that shit had happened.

  CSIs waited at their vehicle for a go-ahead. Uniforms taped off the walkway to the house and set up a secondary perimeter, kept traffic moving. The front door of the house at 181 San Anselmo Avenue opened, and Charles Clapper, the CSI director, stepped out and waved us in.

  Conklin and I started up the walk—but were stopped by high-pitched screams. Two young children, a girl of about four and a boy of maybe six, both in pajamas, tore out of the backyard and crossed the lawn toward the street. Conklin and I captured them, while a pretty woman in a pink, bloodstained tunic over jeans called out, “Christopher. DeeDee. Come to Gretchen right now.”

  DeeDee had wrapped herself around my knees. I picked up the little girl and she hugged my neck, hard. Rich held on to her bawling bigger brother until their nanny, also crying, disentangled them and gathered them to her.

  Conklin introduced the nanny, Gretchen Linder, who was distraught. Very.

  “We’re not allowed—that man told us to sit outside and wait. This is—oh, my God. Their parents. These poor kids. I saw Ramona die. I saw…I’m in charge of them. I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Should I take them to my place?”

  It was kind of her to want to take the children home. But that wouldn’t happen.

  Richie said, “We need to take your statement. See that gray Ford next to the ambulance? What do you say I take you all to the police station? We’ll figure out what’s best for the kids, short term. And you can help us figure out what happened here.”

  Linder nodded. She put her hands over her eyes and sobbed, then wiped her face with her sleeve.

  With Richie right behind her, she shepherded the children to the squad car.

  Chapter 15

  I’ve never seen a room like this inside a house,” I said to Clapper.

  Clapper and I stood together in the foyer of the Barons’ house, staring into a screening room that took up most of the ground floor. Wall fixtures threw soft light on a half dozen sectionals arranged in a horseshoe angled toward the wall of large TV screens. Photos of Paul Baron with entertainers he’d produced hung over the back bar.

  I said, “It feels corporate.”

  “Like a first-class airport lounge.”

  At the far end of the screening room, two pairs of wide-open French doors revealed an open-space family/kitchen/dining room, remains of breakfast still on the table.

  I asked, “Where was the point of entry?”

  Clapper shook his head and said, “The doors and windows were all secured, except the front door. The nanny opened that and shut off the alarm.”

  “What, then? An inside job?”

  Charlie Clapper is not only a former homicide investigator, but he’s a meticulous CSI. He said, “Here’s what I know so far.

  “The basement level is the recording studio, accessed by the elevator over there,” he said, pointing to the door under the rising staircase, “and the stairs at the back of the kitchen.”

  He continued, “The studio is like a big, soundproof safe with professional recording equipment. No windows. A fire door with a bar lock leads to the outside. Air comes through vents from up here. There’s no way to get into that room from the outside unless someone opens the door for you.”

  “So you’re thinking someone let the killer in?”

  “Patience, Boxer. Let’s go upstairs. Four bedrooms and baths, and the Barons had an office off the master. That’s where they were shot dead, one bullet each.”

  “Murder-suicide?”

  “Crossed my mind, but there’s no weapon in the room.”

  “A locked-room murder mystery in real life?”

  Clapper grinned. “Hello, Agatha Christie. But I don’t think so. You met Gretchen Linder?”

  “Conklin’s taking her and the kids back to the Hall.”

  Clapper said, “Here’s what she told me. That she came to work this morning, quarter to nine on the dot as always. Front door was locked. She used her key and disarmed the alarm. Called out, ‘Hellooooo.’ No answer. She didn’t see the kids, or anyone, so she went upstairs. Ramona was still breathing. Gretchen called 911. By the time we arrived, Ramona had expired. I kept the EMTs from destroying the scene. From the temperature of Paul’s body, I’d say he was shot at around eight thirty, give or take. Likely the shooter knew when the nanny was due to arrive.”

  I said, “How about giving me the tour?”

  Together Clapper and I climbed a winding staircase, walked down a long hallway, passing open doors to the kids’ rooms, bedrooms, and baths.

  Clapper paused at the entrance to an open room at the end of the floor.

  “Grab the walls and stay with me,” he said.

  Chapter 16

  Clapper and I paused at the threshold to the Barons’ office.

  At the center of the room was a sturdy, antique partners desk, made for two people to work facing each other. Behind the desk was a wall of casement windows. There was art on the opposite wall, a large TV screen, an exercise bike, and a water cooler, but my eyes turned quickly to the deceased.

  Clapper said, “Paul Baron took a shot to the back of his head.” The dark-haired man in plaid and jeans had fallen across his desk, facing the doorway. He had bled copiously over the desk and everything on it. Coffee and blood mixed together and dripped onto the carpet.

&nb
sp; Continuing, Clapper said, “Looks to me like Ramona saw her husband fall toward her. She stood up, and that gave the shooter a good clean shot to her chest.”

  I followed his line of reasoning.

  Ramona had dropped and toppled out of her chair, and was lying faceup on the carpet with her eyes open, blood spilling across her chest. I stooped down to get a closer look. She was wearing tights, a pink V-neck sweater, several diamond rings, diamond stud earrings, and a gold chain with a ruby cabochon pendant hanging just above the neat bullet hole through her sternum.

  As with Ramona’s husband, it looked like one shot had taken her out. The shooter had to have been trusted and standing only feet away. Did he or she have a house key? Know the alarm code? Had Gretchen—had she done this?

  It didn’t matter how many times I’d seen murder victims, it always hurt. What plans had this couple made? What would happen to their children? How had it come to be that this was their day to die?

  I was staring at the small, bloody handprint on Ramona’s cheek—looked like it belonged to DeeDee, who was about my own daughter’s age—when I heard Clapper say, “Boxer. Boxer. Look at me.”

  I looked up. He was holding up two fingers of his right hand. He moved his hand back and forth until I focused, then he pointed to the multipaned windows beyond the desk, kept pointing until I saw two bullet holes surrounded by crazed tempered glass. On the floor beneath was a spray of tiny shards.

  “There. See that?”

  This time I couldn’t miss it. The two shots must have come through the windows. But we were on the second floor. How the hell had the shooter managed two perfect kill shots from outside the house?

  I “grabbed the wall,” meaning I walked carefully around the murder tableau and looked out through the windows. There was a pretty brick patio below but no ledge outside the window, no purchase for a shooter to stand and take his shots.

  Could the shots have been fired from a neighboring house? Or, more likely, from the top of San Anselmo, two streets over?