20th Victim: (Women’s Murder Club 20) (Women's Murder Club)

by James Patterson

  “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.

  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?

  I turned back to Clapper. “A sniper,” I said. “A damned good one.”

  Clapper was on to the next. He said, “Look over here, Boxer. I’d like to get into that closet.”

  CHAPTER 17

  CLAPPER AND I didn’t need a search warrant to collect evidence in plain sight.

  But incriminating evidence found inside a closed room, or drawer or anything with a lid, would be inadmissible in court if, say, a Baron friend or associate was suspected of having committed a crime. So a closed door was off-limits without a search warrant.

  However, there was a loophole: “exigent circumstances.”

  If we had reason to believe that another shooter, or possibly an injured person, was hiding in that closet, we had to check it out. It was reasonable, and I felt duty-bound to clear this room of an armed individual before the CSIs entered it.

  I pulled my gun, said to Clapper, “On the count of three. One.”

  Clapper pulled his gun.

  “Two.”

  I stood to one side of the door as he said, “Three,” then flipped on the light switch and jerked open the door, using it as a shield.

  My heart was pounding hard and fast as, leading with my weapon, I took in all four walls of the closet. I saw nothing but shelves and cubbyholes stuffed with padded envelopes.

  “Clear,” I said. “Thank God.” I put my gun away. We gloved up and went in.

  A metal cabinet about five feet tall by three feet wide by two feet deep stood at the back of the closet with the doors open. Inside were more padded mailers, some loose glassine envelopes with white powder inside.

  Clapper stood beside me. He said, “If they were running a mailbox fentanyl business, we’re talking about big money here.”

  I felt sick with a letdown that was hard to understand, let alone explain. I had been feeling sympathy for the Barons. Now I saw what Clapper saw: an addictive drug, a mailbox business. And if the drug was fentanyl, it was addictive and deadly. If the Barons were dealing, I cared a lot less. Still. I’m a cop. Two people were dead on the floor behind me.

  I said, “What the hell, Charlie? Possibly millions in drugs and nothing was stolen. These people were professionally assassinated—but why?”

  “What’s your theory?” he asked me.

  “I see two options. This was a calculated hit, planned and executed by a pro, motive unknown. Or … maybe it was a psycho with a high-powered rifle playing God this morning.

  “Either way, shooter braces his rifle on the top of his car, takes a look through the sight. He sees two people he can take out with little to no chance of getting caught. Bang. Bang. Hit man or thrill killer gets back into his car and takes off.”

  Clapper said, “And now he’s on his couch, waiting for headline news.”

  I didn’t like it either way. Joe would say, “You’ve been on the case for a half hour, Linds. Take it easy on yourself.”

  Clapper said, “I’ve got guys out on the road looking for shell casings, a cigarette butt, something.”

  “I’ll check on that warrant,” I said.

  CHAPTER 18

  CONKLIN TEXTED ME: Judge Hoffman signed the ticket.

  “We’re good, Charlie,” I said to Clapper. “We own this place.”

  I left the Barons’ house by the side door as a half dozen CSIs, carrying kits, lights, cameras, and other accessories of their trade, headed up the front walk.

  I remembered that I needed a ride back to the Hall and was about to text my partner when the medical examiner’s van arrived. I waited to exchange a few words with Claire, but the doctor who climbed down from the van was not a busty black woman with a wry comment about the crispy critters in her cold room. This doc was white, dainty, with streaked blond hair and purple eyeglass frames.

  I introduced myself, and the pathologist told me her name, Dr. Mary Dugan, and that she was on loan from Metro Hospital until Dr. Washburn returned.

  I asked, “I just saw Claire a couple of hours ago. Do you know what this is about?”

  “All I know is that Lieutenant Brady called the hospital asking for a pathologist to sub for Dr. Washburn. And here I am.”

  It made sense that Claire was probably sacked out at home and would ca
ll me when she woke up. I told Dr. Dugan that as soon as she retrieved the slugs from the victims, she should get them to Clapper.

  “No problem,” said Dugan.

  I gave her my card and was looking up the street when I heard my name. There, behind the tape, was Cindy waving to get my attention.

  I waved back and ducked under the tape, and Cindy took me by the arm, saying, “Richie said you could use a ride.”

  I laughed out loud. “What a great guy.”

  But I knew that by taking Cindy up on this offer, I was essentially giving her a green light to grill me for twenty-five minutes in the car.

  She was going to be disappointed.

  “Fine, Cindy. Thanks.”

  An attractive man elbowed his way through the gathering crowd toward me. He was about thirty, was wearing expensive, classic-cut clothes, and had the intensity of a reporter hot on a scoop. He pushed past Cindy, interrupting us to say, “Sergeant, I’m Jeb McGowan from the Chronicle. Can you tell us what happened here?”

  Cindy looked at me, switched her eyes toward McGowan, and gave off a subzero vibe.

  “Mr. McGowan? I can’t discuss an investigation in progress.”

  “Sergeant, it’s all right. I’m only asking for a quote.”

  “Sorry. No can do.”

  It hadn’t taken long for news of the Barons’ deaths to get out. A news chopper chattered overhead. An ABC7 News van rolled up the street and stopped at the tape.

  Cindy said, “My car’s a block away. Follow me.”

  I followed, got into her car, strapped in, and got ready to keep Cindy at arm’s length all the way back to the Hall. In fact, although she huffed and puffed, everything I told Cindy was off the record.

  I said that the fatal shootings this morning had added two young orphans to the world, and that we had no suspects or witnesses to the murders. I did not tell her about the probable millions in drugs inside the supply closet. Their value was still to be determined.

  My thoughts shifted to what Cindy had told the Women’s Murder Club this morning: That a veteran ballplayer had been shot through his windshield while leaving a Taco King last Friday. That the word Rehearsal had been scrawled on the rear window of the victim’s very expensive vehicle. That anonymous yet reliable sources had reported to Cindy that Jennings had been dealing drugs.

  Jennings’s execution was similar in style to the Barons’ murders. Now I wondered if that drive-through murder had been a rehearsal for the killings this morning. Was there a drug connection between Roger Jennings and the Barons?

  There was a lot to do before I would have answers.

  But this I knew: my long weekend in Napa Valley with Joe seemed so long ago and far away, it might have occurred in a dream.

  CHAPTER 19

  CONKLIN AND I waited in the little area outside Jacobi’s former office, now Brady’s part-time corner on the fifth floor.

  His door was closed and his assistant was at her desk. She looked up and said, “He’ll only be a minute.”

  Conklin took chairs for us in a row along the wall and used the time to catch up.

  “CPS has the Baron kids, DeeDee and Christopher,” he told me. “Ramona’s sister, Bea, is on a cruise. Her ship docks in Athens in four days, then she’ll fly home, pick them up. Telling her was awful. She refused to believe me, and when she did, the satellite dropped the call. Awful, terrible, painful.”

  “Did Gretchen have any ideas who wanted the Barons dead?”

  “She said that they had friends and haters, and it was hard to tell the difference.”

  “Oh. That’s great.”

  Rich took his phone out of his shirt pocket, tapped until his notes came up. He showed me the screen, scrolled down, saying, “Gretchen had a guest list. About a hundred and fifty people attended their movie premiere party last month, not counting the band and the help.”

  I scoffed. We both knew we could spend weeks checking alibis from the Barons’ circle of associates and never get a clue. Or we could get too many clues that went nowhere.

  I said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky with the neighborhood canvass ….”

  Brady opened his door, stuck his head and shoulders out. “Come on in,” he said. “Sit yourselves down.”

  The look on his face told me something was up. Conklin and I took seats on the sofa positioned at a right angle to Brady’s desk. I was agitated and tried not to show it.

  Brady said, “Clapper found a pill presser in the basement of the Baron house. It was still in a crate. He found hazmat suits, scales, glassine envelopes, a few ounces of product still in shipping envelopes addressed to them. The Barons were about to go big-time in the fentanyl business.”

  He got up from his seat, scrunched up the blinds, and looked out at the traffic on Bryant.

  I said, “So what are you thinking, Brady?”

  “Boxer, don’t worry yourself. You, either, Conklin. The homicide is still your case. I’m worried about the way fentanyl is spreading, mixed into the heroin supply, killing tens of thousands because it’s probably fifty to a hundred times more powerful than morphine, and multiple times stronger than heroin, at a fraction of the price. You know how this works?”

  He didn’t wait for us to say.

  “You buy it on the dark web, dead cheap with crypto. Middlemen, that is, folks like the Barons, cut it with lactose or something, press it into pills, and mail out little envelopes through the US Postal Service or a courier service. And the customers? They’re caught in the perfect storm between heroin drying up and that nice, cheap opioid high. No needles. Just snort it up and nod off. The more deadly it is, the more they want it.”

  Brady had been a narc with the Miami PD. This was hitting him personally.

  “That’s all,” Brady said. “Try to get a lead on who killed the Barons. Talk to Chi and McNeil about that baseball guy who got killed last week. See if there’s a link.”

  Before he could say “Keep me posted,” his cell phone buzzed. He read the text and said, “Ah, sheet.”

  He typed a few words, put down his phone, leaned across the big old desk.

  “Get this. Guy dropped off his kid at school in LA. Took a shot between his eyes and dropped dead. No other casualties.”

  I said, “What time?”

  Brady said, “I didn’t ask. Just before the school bell. Eight thirty?”

  I said, “That’s the same time the Barons were shot. To the minute.”

  CHAPTER 20

  CLAIRE TEXTED ME as I was driving home.

  I stopped at the light on Turk Street and Webster Street and returned the text, asking Claire, Where are you? Are you ok?

  I’m in my office. Call me.

  I pulled over and phoned her. She picked right up.

  “Where’d you go, Claire? I got no answer from the mysterious Dr. Dugan.”

  There was a pause, then, “Where are you?”

  “Turk and Webster.”

  “Can you come back, Lindsay? I need to talk to you.”

  I was about ten minutes out from the Hall. I said so, made a couple of left turns, a right, then a left on Bryant, and found my usual spot on Harriet Street waiting for me.

  During those return ten minutes I tried on all kinds of reasons for why Claire needed to see me, and while some were ridiculous, the one that seemed most reasonable and possible was that she’d quit her job.

  That crack house–turned–incinerator was a sick nightmare. Claire dealt with death every day, yet this case was singular. The victims were probable longtime addicts, so there was little chance that friends and family members were calling Missing Persons. And even if they did, Claire was at a dead end. No answers to what had happened, how or why, no fingerprints, no way to get those bodies home.

  Maybe this fire had been Claire’s final straw.

  I locked the car, buttoned my coat, and took the short walk to the medical examiner’s office. The lights shined through the glass. I saw that the receptionist had gone home, but there were a few people s
itting in the waiting room. One of them was a cop I knew. I knocked on the glass and Diaz got up, reached behind the reception desk, and buzzed me in.

  A moment later Claire opened the door to reception and leaned out, saying to me, “After I get outta of these bloody scrubs and wash up, want to go have a beer?”

  I nodded. Good idea.

  We went to MacBain’s, the bar and grill across Bryant and down the street, named for a valorous homicide captain who’d owned the place and whose portrait hangs over the bar. RIP. At six thirty MacBain’s was packed with Hall of Justice workers and one departing pair of lovebirds who’d left an empty table by the jukebox.

  We grabbed it.

  A sappy pop vocal was on loud, making my teeth vibrate, but at least we had a table. Syd MacBain, our waitress, stopped by and dropped off dinner menus.

  Claire said, “Wait a sec,” handed back the menus.

  “Two Anchor Steams and a bowl of chips,” I said.

  Syd left, and I imagined a cone of silence dropping over our table so we wouldn’t be disturbed. In a way, it worked. The Cheers-like ambiance of the place faded. I asked Claire about the fire victims, a way in for her to say, “This damned job is just too damned much, Lindsay,” but she didn’t.

  She said, “I’ve been coughing.”

  I nodded. I knew that.

  “I have lung cancer.”

  I was sure I was hearing her wrong. I couldn’t believe what she had told me. I asked her to say it again, and she did. “I have lung cancer.”

  I shook my head, No, no, no.

  “Probably from the disinfectant or the X-rays or whatever fumes I breathe doing autopsies—or all of the above.”

  “Claire. You know this for sure? You’ve had tests?”

  Sydney brought the beer, the chips. We didn’t even acknowledge her when she said, “Will there be anything else?”

  Claire said, “I had a biopsy. Today I saw my oncologist. It’s a carcinoma. It has to come out. I haven’t told Edmund. Jesus. I keep thinking about Rosie.”