The 17th Suspect

by James Patterson

  Before I could follow this thought, a gray-haired man of about fifty entered the room and spoke my name.

  I stood up, saying, “That’s me.”

  “I’m Johnny Hon,” he said.

  We shook hands. I followed the IAD lieutenant to his office and sat in the chair across from his desk. The room was devoid of personality: white walls, plain wooden desk, some framed certificates on the wall. No photos or personal items.

  The lieutenant was all business.

  He said, “I got a call from Chief Jacobi. He speaks very highly of you, Sergeant.”

  “We’ve been through the wars together.”

  “So he said. He was vague about why you wanted to see IAD. Why don’t you lay out the issue for me?”

  I told him that I had come to register a complaint about two homicide investigators from Central Station, giving an almost verbatim recitation of what I’d told Jacobi and Brady this morning. A tipster had called my attention to killings of homeless people that had not been solved by Central Station’s Sergeant Stevens and Inspector Moran, who appeared to be working the cases with an utter lack of urgency.

  I told Hon what I knew about the dead poet at Walton Square, and about my own experience with Stevens and Moran at the Pier 45 and Geary Street murder scenes.

  I said, “I accessed whatever information I could find, Lieutenant. I have Stevens’s report on the three crimes, all in progress. And I’ve also gathered up the reports I filed and an autopsy report on Laura Russell, the Pier 45 victim, from the ME.”

  I reached across the desk and handed him a folder.

  “So, what are you saying exactly, Sergeant? You think Stevens and Moran are goldbricking?”

  “Something like that. Maybe they’re padding their over-time. I don’t know. But I do know that they don’t seem too eager to nail a serial killer who may be executing vagrants and planning to continue his spree.”

  Hon nodded, said, “Do you have any evidence that Stevens and Moran are dragging their feet or scamming the system or committing a crime?”

  “Lieutenant, what could be a legitimate motive for letting these homicides slide?”

  “So, what I’m hearing is that you have nothing but unsubstantiated theory. They could be working feverishly behind the scenes and may even be following a suspect or a lead, and you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

  I said, “They keep telling me to bug off. Why? I may have seen something. I may have a theory.”

  “Could they suspect a political motive? That 850 Bryant is trying to put Central out of the homicide business?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But they’d be wrong. I care about the unworked homicides. I care about a killer who hasn’t been caught.”

  “Okay. I’ll accept that. And how would you have reacted if Stevens and Moran had shown up at your crime scene?”

  I thought about that. I didn’t like the image.

  Hon said, “Sergeant Boxer, you’re taking this case to heart. I know a little about you, and what I know tells me that you’re a very good cop. So let’s just keep this quiet. Let it play out a little longer,” said the lieutenant. “I’ll keep my ear to the ground. If I decide to launch an investigation, I’ll let your lieutenant know. If you learn something I should know, call me.

  “Now I have another meeting,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll show you out.”

  Feeling awkwardly dismissed, again, I thanked Hon, shook his hand, and took the fire stairs down to Homicide.

  Conklin had left for the day.

  I left, too, got into my car, and drove home.

  I was still obsessing, having conversations in my head with Hon, Jacobi, and Brady, all at once and one at a time.

  As in real life, the talking was getting me nowhere.

  CHAPTER 54

  YUKI HADN’T SPOKEN with Marc Christopher since Giftos’s scathing cross-examination of Paul Yates, and she was worried. How would Marc stand up under Giftos’s scorched-earth style?

  She had called Marc and suggested that they meet once more before his upcoming testimony. He’d said, “Let me take you out to dinner. You deserve it, and I would rather have this chat over osso buco.”

  Now she was waiting for him at Mancini’s, a popular after-work Italian restaurant in the Financial District. She hadn’t been here before and now took in the pleasant ambiance of the place, with its clean lines, brick walls, and cove lighting.

  Marc had called to say that he was running late in traffic. Yuki sipped ice water and answered e-mail, and when she looked up, the maître d’ was leading Marc to the table. He apologized for his lateness, bent to kiss her cheek, and sat down beside her.

  Marc had always appeared boyish, but he looked younger still this evening. He wore a baby-blue sweater under his blazer. His hair had recently been cut, and his long lashes and dimples completed the look of youthful innocence.

  Over drinks and fritto misto Marc said, “I can’t quite believe this trial is for real. It’s like I’m watching a movie about someone else’s life. Online, on TV, everywhere, people are talking about me, what happened, what I said and did. This very personal thing that happened to me is both virtual and hyperreal.”

  Yuki understood Marc’s inside and outside perspective. His future turned on a verdict by strangers. He would be vindicated. Or, if the jury went with the defense, Marc would be branded a liar for the rest of his life.

  She said to Marc, “You read the transcript. What are your thoughts on Paul’s testimony and Giftos’s cross?”

  “I found Paul completely credible,” Marc said. “I could see exactly how it happened. He was scared. He ran. I commend him for slapping the gun out of Briana’s hand. If I’d done that …”

  “What about Giftos’s cross-examination?”

  “Well, as I read it, it was pure hell for Paul. His testimony was honest, but when it came to the gun identification, he choked. I don’t know if I could identify her gun, either.”

  Yuki said, “It was a smooth move by the defense. Not probative, and yet Giftos got it in.”

  Marc shook his head. Then he said defiantly, “Giftos can’t shake me. I know what happened.”

  It was brave talk. Did he mean it? Or was he talking tough to himself? Yuki had never seen him looking so vulnerable. She felt for him, and she wondered again what was wrong with Briana. Was she a predator who had never been called out before? Or had she, like untold numbers of men in top jobs, taken her executive position at the agency as license to be sexually abusive?

  After a long pause Marc asked, “Do you think Briana is going to testify?”

  Yuki said, “It’s generally not a good idea to put the defendant on the stand. But in this case I think she has to speak to the jury. If she does, I’ll be ready for her.”

  There was no point telling Marc what she was thinking: After Marc gave his testimony, Giftos was going to do his damnedest to gut him.

  CHAPTER 55

  MARC WENT SILENT and stared at his wineglass.

  Yuki wondered if he was worried about what Briana would say on the stand. More likely, he was worried about his own performance. He looked scared.

  She reached over and patted his hand.

  “You did a perfect job when you testified to the grand jury. You can do this,” she said.

  Marc’s trance was broken and he gave her a direct, confident gaze.

  “I know. We can do this.”

  She was glad that she had persuaded Red Dog to let her try this case. If she won, Marc would be vindicated. Men who’d been sexually assaulted would be more free to say so and to pursue justice in the courts.

  Dinner arrived and it was delicious. She had duck breast; he had braised short ribs. She and Marc went off topic and for the first time didn’t strategize about the trial.

  Yuki told him about the break she had taken from the DA’s office and what it was like to come back.

  “Exhilarating,” she said with a smile.

  He confided that he was in line for Brian
a Hill’s job.

  “I’ve been told off the record that it’s mine if I want it,” Marc said. “I don’t think that would look or feel good. I’ll probably go to another agency when this is over. Maybe I’ll relocate—to another country.”

  They each had a second glass of wine, but when the waiter came to take a dessert and coffee order, Yuki said, “No, thanks.”

  Marc asked for the check, and Yuki said, “Are you sure, Marc? I can expense this.”

  But he handed his card to the waiter and said to Yuki, “I’ll give you a ride home, okay?”

  “I drove,” she said.

  “Then I’ll walk you to your car.”

  Yuki’s Acura was parked on California. Marc kept to the street side of the sidewalk, and when the car was in sight, he reached across her shoulders to straighten the collar of her coat.

  Yuki looked up at him, and then his arm was around her and pulling her close to him.

  “You have no idea how much I like you,” he said.

  Yuki demurred, but Marc lowered his face and came in for a kiss. She was shocked and offended, and she pushed him away, saying, “Hey, Marc, no.”

  He released his hold and tried to laugh it off. “I’m sorry. I’m just nothing but wide-open feelings right now. I have no defenses at all.”

  “That’s not good,” she said.

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t plan that. It was an impulse.”

  She said, “I have to get home. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Yuki walked on ahead, unlocked her car, and, after buckling in, gunned her engine. She drove up California without looking into her rearview mirror and turned north onto the straightaway of Sansome.

  Those last minutes with Marc had really thrown her and changed her feelings and her perspective on him. She was thinking now that his invitation to go out for dinner rather than meet in her office had been calculated. That, in fact, he had planned this or something like it.

  Marc’s boyishness, the charm, this was his stock-in-trade. It was easy to imagine him as a flirt or as a rape victim. She thought back on the recording she’d seen so many times, which showed him being violated by Briana Hill. James Giftos had said that the recording started while the sex was already in progress. His theory of the case, Briana’s version, was that Marc had staged a rape game.

  Was that true? Did Giftos know something that she didn’t know? Was that why he had put off his opening statement until she’d presented her case?

  Yuki’s phone rang. It was resting in the cup holder in the console beside her.

  She picked up.

  Marc said, “Yuki, please forgive me, okay? I was inappropriate and I’m embarrassed. I won’t do that again.”

  “Okay, Marc. All is forgiven. Good night.”

  She clicked off and dropped the phone back into the cup holder. For the first time since she’d met Marc Christopher, Yuki had a sense of foreboding, like she had entered a tunnel and a bright light filled her vision.

  Like a train wreck was looming, directly ahead.

  CHAPTER 56

  MICHAEL WAS LOITERING with purpose on the Embarcadero near the Ferry Building when he spotted her almost by chance.

  Was it her?

  He’d been wrong before.

  His eyes locked on her features and he felt a contraction, a tightness that started in his groin and shot up the center of his body to his throat. It was as if he were zipped up.

  The older woman was accompanied by an animated, stoop-shouldered younger man, who gestured expansively as he talked. He had the look of a junkie transported by the rush of a meth high.

  The woman laughed. She was enjoying his company. She was dressed appropriately for a walk through the fog on a chilly night. Her coat was old but looked sturdy. She had a canvas carryall slung over her shoulder, and on her head she wore a knit cloche hat in several shades of green.

  The pair of weirdos was on the move, taking a leisurely stroll. Michael fixated on her familiar rolling gait as she and her piece-of-shit companion continued past him.

  He waited until they’d covered twenty-five paces, about two car lengths, then followed the couple as they cleared the smattering of pedestrians around the Ferry Building, crossed the street, and turned onto Mission, one of the main arteries through the South of Market neighborhood.

  The traffic was sparse after 9 p.m. A wind blew through the canyon of office buildings, what Michael thought of as Wall Street by the Bay. He jammed his hands into his new well-used thrift-shop coat and gripped the gun butt with his gloved hand. It felt good. Like a handshake with a friend.

  Up ahead the woman and her companion stopped under a streetlight and embraced, before the round-shouldered man crossed the street and the woman continued walking along Mission, crossing Spear. Michael kept his eyes on her while humming a made-up tune to the cadence of her unhurried walk.

  And then, almost as if he had willed it, she stopped and reached into her bag, poked around inside it, and pulled out a wrapped sandwich. She was busy, intent on removing the clinging wrapper, her body limned in the glow of the streetlights. And not another soul was on that sidewalk. They were alone.

  Michael closed the gap between them and called out her name. She looked up, watched him pull the gun from his pocket and point it at her.

  She looked into his face and almost smiled. No fear.

  That pissed him off.

  “I thought it was you,” she said, holding her sandwich.

  “Well,” Michael said. “For once you’re right. Any last words?”

  “God help you,” she said.

  CHAPTER 57

  MICHAEL FELT THAT his gun was an extension of his arm.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The gun cracked, the bullet thudded into her chest, and his arm thrummed with the shock. He was electrified with a thrill that was monumentally more satisfying than what he’d felt the other times he’d fired his gun.

  He watched all of it, committed every minute move to memory. She screamed, dropped the sandwich, and clapped her chest with her hand. She sucked in her breath and stared into his eyes. He read her expression.

  Disappointment.

  That was good. It was how he’d felt his whole life.

  “Have some more,” he said.

  He fired again and she dropped, falling sideways, disillusionment frozen on her face. She was the picture of eternal sadness. But she was still alive.

  She wheezed and looked up at him.

  She tried to speak, but nothing could be more irrelevant to him than her words. She’d told him so many times, It’s not what you say that counts. It’s what you do.

  He pumped three more rounds into her, watching her jerk and twitch with each shot until he put the final bullet in her head. At last she lay still on the sidewalk. She was dead. DEAD.

  He wanted to take a moment to do a war dance, to scream out his relief and pleasure, to revel in the pure ecstasy of the best moment of his life.

  But he’d promised himself that night while he was standing in the rain on Geary, as the police cars screamed up to the body, that he would make no more mistakes.

  He knew what to do. He scooped up the shell casings, chasing one into the gutter, then clutching them in his fist, he walked quickly two blocks southwest to the intersection at Beale. There a small paved plaza filled a niche between two office buildings. It was an arty little space, organized with a grid of small trees standing in concrete planters.

  Two people were in the plaza. A man sat on the edge of a planter, his head bent as he spoke into his phone. A woman leaned against a building wall, smoking a cigarette, maybe waiting for someone or just deep in thought.

  Michael spotted the trash can between two planters and walked nonchalantly toward it. It took only seconds to stuff the coat and gloves into the black plastic bag lining the can, and to transfer the gun and spent shells to the pocket of the black jacket that he wore under the coat.

  He left the plaza, disappearing into the fog and shadow o
n Mission.

  What a wonderful night.

  What a wonderful fucking night.

  If he missed her at all, it was because now he had to find another target. And he had an idea who that would be.

  That bitch who’d taken his picture on Geary.

  Sergeant Lindsay Boxer. He remembered.

  She was like his mother. Shaming him for drinking milk from the carton. For taking a few bills from her purse. For his magazines. Shaming him, in front of his sister, their neighbors, his own friends.

  And Sergeant Boxer had done the same with the flash of her camera. Exposing him, nailing him there on the street.

  She would have to pay for that.

  CHAPTER 58

  WHILE THE DISHWASHER hummed and sloshed, Joe and I folded laundry at the kitchen table.

  I was on autopilot. My hands turned the jumble of shirts and towels into warm cotton packets, but I was thinking of other things. Among them was my mother’s Limoges vase, which Julie had pulled off a table, smashing it into ungluable shards. I also kept rerunning my cringeworthy meeting with IAD’s Hon, and the cherry on top was that I was weak and headachy, a little bit queasy. It was an overall sick feeling that was becoming harder to ignore.

  Joe said, “That’s it? No woo-hoo?”

  “Aw, geez, Joe, sorry. Say it again. Please?”

  He said, “I got a call from the new head of antiterrorism at the Port of San Francisco.”

  “Wow. About a job?”

  Joe said, “Yep. There’s a new guy, Benjamin Rollins. Ex-marine. He’s looking for a hands-on risk assessment pro, freelance or on staff, to be decided. He’s known to be kind of a dick, but I think I’d like him.”

  I said, “He’s ‘kind of a dick’ but otherwise fantastic?”

  “Correct,” said Joe. “This isn’t about love. It’s about money.”

  “Three cheers for money.”

  Joe cheered. I laughed and we went back to folding.

  Actually, this breaking news was fantastic. A few months back Joe had been badly injured in a bomb blast, but he was healing well. It wouldn’t be long before Julie would be going to preschool, and Joe needed a job. Even though my thoughts were scattered, I could focus on that.