The 20th Victim

by James Patterson

  “Favor to Dave. He’s grief stricken.”

  The two men talked for another few minutes about Ted’s upcoming stay at rehab and how long Joe would remain in Napa. They were making small talk about their families when a nurse came into the room with Ted’s medication.

  Joe made a mental note of the nurse’s name, and after she left, Joe put his card on Ted’s nightstand and shook his hand good-bye.

  He got into the elevator thinking of Scislowski saying, “God, I love that man,” and continued thinking about Ted Scislowski’s story about his life-and-death-and-life operation.

  Dr. Perkins, the nice white-haired doctor with the metal-framed glasses and bright-red tie, had opened Ted Scislowski’s chest, cut away the arteries that had led to his heart attack, and effectively, scientifically killed his patient. After that, he’d reconnected the arteries in a medically precise procedure and, using a heart-lung bypass machine in an almighty-God kind of way, palpated his patient’s heart and brought him back to life.

  Joe had a new thought about Perkins. If he was a killer, he was a very, very smart one.

  Chapter 84

  I’d been puzzling all night about Brady’s call saying that the man who’d been shot in LA was a retired cop.

  I didn’t understand this twist in the Moving Targets’ MO, and I sure didn’t like it. I put my Kevlar vest on under my Windbreaker and kissed Julie and Mrs. Rose good-bye.

  I got to the Hall at eight, alarming the security guard in the lobby with my Halloween mask of a face.

  I said, “I got a few licks in, too.”

  The guard said, “I don’t doubt it for a second, Sergeant.”

  I held my face as I laughed, knowing that there was going to be more of this kind of talk as my bruises spread.

  Upstairs in the squad room, Conklin said, “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

  The repetition made me think otherwise, but I let it pass.

  “Who’s in with Brady?”

  “Detective Noble from LA.”

  “He flew in? Does Brady want us to join them or take Noble to the war room?”

  Conklin said, “War room. I brought churros. Only ate one.”

  He picked up the phone and tapped the keys. My long view from the front to rear of the squad room included the back of Noble’s head and Brady, behind his desk, picking up his landline. He and Conklin had a short exchange about logistics, then they hung up.

  “I’ll set up the room,” said Conklin.

  “Allow me,” I said.

  Conklin said, “I got it,” and went to make coffee. I sighed and walked to Brady’s office, steeling myself against his comments when he saw my face. I introduced myself to Detective Noble, who winced when he stood up to shake my hand and got a good look at me. Brady didn’t even blink.

  Noble and I walked through the empty bullpen to the war room, which was now wallpapered with photos of the sniper victims. Conklin played Inspector Mom, offering refreshments, including churros and just-brewed police department mud with a choice of flavored creamers. Then Detective Noble brought us up to speed on yesterday’s shooting.

  “It’s not in the papers yet,” he said, “but three people were killed yesterday. One was former LAPD narc Barry Pratch.”

  Noble showed us pictures. First one, Pratch was in his dress uniform, possibly for his photo ID. The second photo was nearly identical to those of the other sniper victims.

  Pratch was spread-eagle, facedown in a street that had been cordoned off and banked by cruisers. He wore civvies: jeans, polo shirt, running shoes. His khaki jacket had reinforced shoulders, patches on the elbows—a hunting jacket or what you’d wear to a shooting range.

  I looked up and asked Noble, “Do you know anything about who killed him? Why was he wearing a shooting jacket? Please say you’ve got witnesses.”

  Noble said, “If only. No. The whole thing is odd. Pratch had been with LAPD for a decade but got written up a number of times for suspicious shootings on the job. Rumor had it, never officially stated, that he was using oxy, very likely taken off perps. Maybe he was selling, too. Wouldn’t surprise me,” Noble said.

  Clapper had said similar things about Detective Carl Kennedy. The only difference that I could see was that Kennedy had moved from LAPD to Houston and was on the job when he was murdered. Maybe Pratch and Kennedy had been friends.

  Noble said, “Pratch was about to get canned, so he took early retirement three years ago. But listen to this. He was going after the shooters. And he killed two of them. He was hunting down drug dealers like he was still on the job.”

  “What does this mean to you?” I asked Noble.

  “My theory is that Pratch took out two of the snipers and would have kept going. But someone, a third shooter, capped him first. Dead men don’t shoot.”

  Noble went on to tell us about the shooters’ bodies.

  One of the dead men had been found on the roof of a two-story office building. The other had been standing outside an apartment house. Neither of the snipers had been identified yet. But LA’s overworked Forensics Unit had photos, prints, and expended bullets, and would ID the dead men as soon as they could.

  “Which could be weeks,” Noble said.

  We refilled our coffee cups and kicked it around.

  Why had a disgraced police officer killed two trained assassins? How had he known them, and how had he known where they would be? Was he one of them? Had he gone straight and decided that shooting drug dealers was dead wrong? Or had he had Moving Targets in his sights from the beginning and joined them? Maybe he’d seen a way to redeem himself by bringing them down.

  All good theories, but where was the key to the answer?

  Would we ever know?

  Noble had said, “Dead men don’t shoot.”

  Correct. And they don’t talk, either.

  Chapter 85

  Brady stiff-armed the door and burst into the war room, saying, “Barkley was just seen entering the Sleep Well in Portola.”

  I knew the place. The Sleep Well Motel was pinkish in color with a traditional motel design: a square-U-shaped building enclosing a parking area, which faced San Bruno Avenue.

  Brady snapped out his orders. “Take Lemke and Samuels. I can’t raise Nardone. Boxer, you’re first officer. SWAT’s on the way.”

  I followed Brady down the center aisle with Conklin right behind me. Lemke and Samuels were at their desks. Lemke’s jutting lower jaw made him look like an old pit bull. Samuels was round shouldered with glasses and could pass for an accountant. People underestimated him. They were wrong to do so. They were both good cops, inseparable, and now Lemke had a halo because one of his snapshots at the Barons’ funeral had turned out to be Barkley.

  Conklin conveyed Brady’s orders.

  Samuels forwarded their phones to Brenda, and the two of them grabbed their jackets. We were all hoping for another crack at Barkley. I wanted him alive and in the box because he was all we had—and he might be a key to the whole Moving Targets operation.

  The four of us jogged down the fire stairs to Bryant and signed out a couple of squad cars. Conklin took the wheel of ours and we went to Code 3, switching on our sirens and flashers, Conklin stepping on the gas.

  I reported in, requesting a dedicated channel, and signed off. A minute later four-codes streamed over the speaker. Officer needs emergency help. Send ambulance. Requested assistance responding. A second request, send ambulance.

  Traffic parted ahead of us, and within ten minutes we were on the main road through Portola, a working-class neighborhood on the edge of the city. We flew past the small businesses—shoe repair shop, bakeries, grocery store, a couple of restaurants—and then I saw the blinking neon sign up ahead.

  SLEEP WELL MOTEL. VACANCIES. FREE WI-FI.

  By the time we arrived, the motel’s parking lot was filled with law enforcement vehicles and cops on foot who were attempting to clear the area of bystanders.

  My job as primary responder was to stabilize the scene
, secure it for CSI, and determine what had happened for the record and for the lead investigator, who, please God, wouldn’t be me. I reached out to Clapper and filled him in. “We need prints right away.”

  “In a motel room. Wish us luck.”

  “All the luck in the world.”

  I looked past the cruisers, ambulances, and guest vehicles, trying to get a fix on what the hell had gone down. Where was Nardone? Brady had said Barkley had been seen. Given time spent relaying orders and driving through noon traffic, it was a fair bet that Barkley was long gone.

  I was out of the car before Conklin fully braked. I hobbled on my twisted ankle to the ambulance that was taking on a patient. The paramedic wouldn’t let me inside.

  “He’s got a head injury. Please. Get out of our way.”

  “What’s his name? What’s his name?”

  “Glenn Healy. Officer Healy.”

  “Where are you taking him?”

  “Zuckerberg San Francisco General.”

  The rear doors closed, sirens shrieked, and the bus moved onto the main road. Someone called out to me.

  “Sergeant Boxer. Over here.”

  Sergeant Robert Nardone was sitting on the third step of a staircase running from the parking area to the second floor. Cleaning supplies and toiletries were heaped around Nardone’s feet as if Mr. Clean and Bed Bath & Beyond had purged their trucks, haphazardly flinging samples across the area.

  My eyes were drawn to an overturned housekeeper’s cart that had crashed into a vintage Buick some twenty feet from the foot of the stairs. That explained the toiletries.

  But I still couldn’t picture what had happened here.

  Nardone would have to tell me.

  I asked him, “Bob, are you all right?”

  “We lost him, Boxer. Bastard stole our car and booked.”

  Chapter 86

  Nardone was pale and had a nasty abrasion down the left side of his face, and he was holding his left arm tightly to his chest.

  Any minute now paramedics would load him into an ambulance, but I held on to hope that before then I’d get his statement. I’d known Sergeant Robert Nardone for years. He had a sharp eye, worked hard, and was angling for a job in Homicide. Although he’d been injured, he was sitting up, speaking, and seemed to be tracking the scene as it devolved.

  I said, “Nardone. Are you okay?”

  “Good enough.”

  “The guy who did this. Was it Barkley?”

  “I forgot to ask for his ID.”

  Sarcasm was a good sign. Nardone had a gift for it.

  I brushed little bars of soap, bottles of shampoo, sponges, and a spray bottle off a step and sat down beside him. I now had a wide view of the parking lot.

  Tourists, paying guests, and local looky-loos meandered across the two hundred square feet of asphalt, stepping on possible evidence and getting in the way of the cops who were doing their best to clear and cordon off the area. No one was taking witness names or statements. A lot rested on what Nardone had to tell me.

  EMTs with lights flashing and sirens whooping filed into the area, and civilian drivers leaned on their horns as they tried to leave.

  I told Nardone I was concerned that Barkley had hijacked a police cruiser. An armed criminal driving a patrol car could speed without being stopped, could pull drivers over, and if he could get them to step out of their vehicle, he could rob them, kill them, take their car. That stolen black-and-white made Leonard Barkley more dangerous than before.

  Nardone gave me his car’s tag number and I called it in, requesting an APB, forthwith. And now I saw another victim. Standing beside the second bus, Lemke and Samuels talked to a patient who was strapped onto a gurney. She was sobbing, and I saw blood running down an arm.

  I turned back to Nardone. “Who is she?”

  “Housekeeper. Accidental casualty.”

  He’d dropped the bravado and was fixing me with a hurt look in his eyes.

  “He kicked the shit out of us, Boxer, and took everything but our skivvies. Healy got the worst of it. Way worse.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Please start at the beginning.”

  Nardone sighed and gingerly touched his face with his fingertips.

  When he was ready, he said, “Healy was driving. We were looking for a coffee shop when I saw a guy looked like Barkley cross the road, heading to the motel. I was pretty sure it was him, but the picture I have of Barkley, the dude had a beard.”

  “Yep. He shaved. Go on.”

  “So we pulled in the lot and saw him take the stairs to the second floor and enter room 208. You can see it at the head of the stairs. We parked over there, where we could watch the room, and I called in a sighting of a suspect wanted for questioning, and we requested backup.”

  “But he saw you, right?”

  “Yeah. He peeks through the curtain, then opens the door, and I see him assessing his next steps. He’s going to either bolt for the elevator at the end of the building. Or he’s going to vault over the railing. Healy and I get out of the car, draw our weapons, and I yell, ‘Stay where you are. Show us your hands.’

  “That’s when the cleaning woman comes out of room 206 and slow-walks her cart along the second-floor walkway, blocking our view of the suspect. She’s wearing earbuds and she’s humming. I can’t see around her, and she doesn’t hear me.”

  “And then?”

  “And then fucking Barkley lunges, grabs her, and shoves her and her cart down the stairs. I’m in front and she bowls me over. Strike! I fall on top of Healy, who hits his head against the railing. Now all three of us are in a pile, right? Disoriented. Out of breath. The suspect, assumed to be Barkley, grabs Healy out of the pile, pushes him against our car, and yells into his face, ‘I’m the good guy, you dumb shit.’”

  “Aw, jeez.”

  Nardone swallowed, coughed, and then he continued.

  “I’d lost my gun while rolling down the stairs with four or five hundred pounds of people and a cleaning cart on top of me. I hear Barkley gut-punching Healy, who’s grunting and trying to get free of him. Then I see that Barkley has bent Healy over the hood and he’s patting him down, saying, ‘Give me the keys.’

  “And then the keys jingle. He’s got them.”

  Chapter 87

  Nardone wanted to tell the story as much as I wanted to hear it, but he was running out of gas.

  There were some small plastic bottles of water among the litter of toiletries. I got one from under the cart and brought it back to Nardone.

  He thanked me. Sipped from the bottle.

  Then he said, “I tried to shove that poor woman off me. But she’s dead weight. Unconscious. By the time I’m out from under her, I find Healy lying in his vomit, bleeding from the side of his head. Our guns are gone. The dude has also stripped off our shoulder mikes. I didn’t even feel him do it. But now I’m on my feet, and I see him get into our car and pull out. My phone is in the car.”

  “And your badge?”

  “I have mine, but he ripped Healy’s off his shirt pocket. I gotta say this, Sergeant, and not as an excuse. We didn’t have a chance. The dude is MMA or something.”

  “If it’s Barkley, he’s a Navy SEAL.”

  “That explains it.”

  “You did your best, Bob.”

  Paramedics approached with a gurney. Nardone protested. They insisted. Paramedics won.

  Out on the street in this light commercial area, horns blared, hydraulic brakes squealed, uniforms closed a lane and tried to control traffic. If the runaway psycho was Barkley, he had PTSD. Now he had weapons and a badge and a police cruiser. And he thought he was the good guy. The mayhem could set him off.

  Conklin came over and said, “I spoke with Cappy.”

  McNeil and Chi had been assigned to watch the Barkley house, in hopes that Barkley would need clean underwear and maybe a conjugal visit. But according to them, Barkley hadn’t shown up and Randi had been followed whenever she left it.

  I called Brady, told him w
e needed to move Barkley’s wife, put her in protective custody. He said he’d get a warrant.

  I got into our squad car, turned on the radio, checked in with dispatch.

  Specialist Hess told me, “Good news, Sergeant. The cruiser was found on San Bruno, near Cliff’s Auto Body. Abandoned, engine left running.”

  “Were there guns inside?”

  “No guns. No nothing.”

  Barkley had given us back the car. Good news. I no longer had to worry about him flipping on the siren and driving at 100 mph to parts unknown.

  But that wasn’t enough.

  Where was Barkley?

  Maybe he was across the street, watching us.

  Chapter 88

  By two that afternoon I was settling Randi White Barkley into her safe house in Parkside, which in my humble opinion was several grades above the shack she and Barkley called home.

  It had two freshly painted, sunny rooms, comfy furniture, an ocean breeze, and a park only a few blocks away. Barkley Barkley, her large Rottweiler mix, climbed onto a white sofa and fell asleep.

  He felt at home, but Randi complained while uniforms secured the windows and checked the door locks. She didn’t know that we had court orders allowing us to set up hidden cameras, bug the landline, and hack into her laptop.

  Randi asked, “Is this actually legal?”

  “Yes, and again, Randi, it’s for your protection.”

  “Protection from whom? My husband?”

  “Consider this. Say he gets in here to visit you. We tell him to come out with his hands up. He resists arrest. There’s shooting. You both die.”

  Randi shrugged. “We knew that could happen from the beginning. We have a pact with death. Don’t you?”

  She paused to watch my face. I pictured my young daughter. My getting shot was always a painful possibility.

  Randi read my expression and sneered, “Yeah, I thought so.”

  She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. From where I stood, I could see that it was empty.