11th hour wmc-11

by James Patterson

  “Oh, hello! I know who you are. I’m Connie Kerr. Come in.”

  I think maybe my mouth actually dropped open. I knew her. I didn’t know her personally, but about twenty years ago, Constance Kerr had been a kind of celebrity on the pro tennis circuit. She’d been a lanky girl with a powerful serve and a very long stride.

  Conklin said his name and mine, introduced Cindy Thomas without identifying her role in this escapade, and all three of us stepped into Constance Kerr’s home.

  It was a garret, a hidey-hole under the eaves of this Victorian house. The room had odd angles, and a closet and a small kitchen had been sectioned out of the ten-by-twelve-foot room. A fold-out bed was put up against the center of the longest wall, and there was a desk under the one window. A laptop computer was open on the desk and a three-foot-high stack of yellow manuscript boxes stood on the floor.

  A heavy gray blanket was affixed to the top of the window frame and hung down over the glass, making a dense, light-blocking curtain.

  I moved the blanket aside.

  I could see the trophy garden and the back of the Ellsworth mansion, including the door that led from the kitchen and out to the brick patio where six days ago I’d seen a pair of skulls displayed like a monstrous art project.

  The former tennis star was speaking to Conklin. “I watched you take charge of the crime scene, of course. I enjoyed that very much. I know you’re trying to help Harry.”

  There was standing room only in Connie Kerr’s little flat, but she had the air of a Nob Hill dowager holding a tea party.

  “May I get you refreshments?” she said.

  Chapter 79

  We turned down the offer of refreshments and arrayed ourselves around the small room.

  I leaned against the kitchenette counter, Cindy grabbed the only chair, and Conklin took up a position against the door. Connie Kerr stood like a flagpole at the center of the room.

  “How can I help you?” she said.

  “Harry Chandler,” I said. “How do you know him?”

  “Oh, well. Harry. I was his girlfriend a long time ago. He was a star and I was blinded by his light. It was just a fling,” she said, laughing, “but I really had fun and I have no regrets.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Don’t hold me to the exact day, but I’m sure I haven’t seen him in twenty years or more.”

  “But Harry lets you live here?”

  “He doesn’t know that I’m here. But he wouldn’t mind. I’m no trouble. I live like a little mouse.” She laughed again, a shrill, crazy kind of laugh. “I’m working on a book, you know. I’ve written ten novels so far and I’ve just started another. They’re thrillers. Murder mysteries.”

  “Do you use your real name?”

  Cindy asked. “Cindy, is it? I’ll use my name when I’m published. I think the story I’m working on now has a real chance of getting into print.”

  Connie Kerr took us on a tour of her fairly wild imagination, showing us loosely connected plot diagrams that she’d drawn on brown butcher’s paper and taped to the walls.

  As she talked about her characters, she used broad gestures, did pirouettes, clasped her hands to her chest as though she were still a young girl and not a fifty-year-old squatter in someone’s abandoned digs.

  Had this eccentric mystery writer witnessed a crime through her window? Or had she gone beyond writing about murder and actually committed it?

  “What can you tell us about the heads we found in the garden?” I asked.

  “I know that they make a whopping good mystery,” she said.

  She was grinning and clapping her hands when my partner broke her mood.

  “We don’t like mysteries,” Conklin said. “Ms. Kerr, here’s the thing. We’re going to need you to come with us down to the Hall and make a statement. Officially.”

  Kerr’s radiant smile left her face. “Oh no. I really can’t leave the house. I never do.”

  “You never go outside?” Conklin asked.

  Kerr shook her head vigorously.

  “How do you get food?”

  “A friend brings me what I need and leaves it for me on the back steps.”

  “Who is this friend?”

  “I don’t have to say.”

  “Let me put it another way. Can this friend vouch for your whereabouts last weekend?” I asked her.

  “You don’t understand. I live alone. Nobody ever sees me. You’re the first guests I’ve had here — ever.”

  Conklin said, “We’ve got seven dead people, Ms. Kerr. Not fiction. Truth. I think you know what happened to them.”

  “I did nothing. I saw nothing. What can I say to make you believe me? I’m the last person you should ever suspect, Mr. Conklin.”

  Conklin said, “Do you have a coat?”

  “A coat?”

  “Here,” he said, taking off his jacket and putting it over her shoulders. “It’s raining outside.”

  Chapter 80

  Constance Kerr sat at the table in the interrogation room. She was tense, had her arms wrapped across her chest; she seemed like a trapped cat waiting for the door to crack open so that she could dart the hell out.

  We knew very little about Kerr. She’d left the world stage long ago and could be anybody now: a certifiable dingbat, a witness, a killer, or all of the above.

  I didn’t believe that she knew nothing about the crimes committed at the Ellsworth compound, and we were going to try to hold her until she told us something we could believe.

  Conklin had a rapport with Kerr, so I just sat back and watched, thinking what a good guy he was and also that he was a really good cop.

  He said, “Connie, look at me. I know you want to help us find out who did this heinous stuff at the Ellsworth compound.”

  “If only I could. Honestly. The first time I knew anything was wrong was when the police showed up. But, Inspector Conklin, I read on the Internet about the index cards and I was struck by the number. Six hundred thirteen!”

  “Did you write that number, Connie? If you did and can tell me what it means, that would be tremendous.”

  “No, no, but six hundred and thirteen is verging on a Guinness world record for a serial killer. Elizabeth Bathory, the bloody lady of Cachtice, had over six hundred girls killed in her castle in Hungary. The exact number is uncertain. Well, it happened in the early sixteen hundreds…”

  “Interesting. But I’m thinking four-hundred-year-old murders aren’t that relevant to our current investigation.”

  He gave her a nice smile and she responded earnestly.

  “No, really. This could be the clue you’ve been waiting for. Please check it out.”

  I couldn’t get a handle on Kerr’s mental state. Was she crazy? Or crazy like a fox? I needed to know.

  I told Conklin that I’d be back in a minute, and when I was outside the room, I called psychologist Dr. Frank Cisco. Cisco answered his phone, said he was in the building and that he’d come upstairs. A few minutes later, we met in the stairwell.

  Frank Cisco was a consultant to the SFPD, on call when a cop was in trouble, and he advised the DA’s office as well. He was a big man with a lot of thick white hair. Today he was wearing a busy plaid sports jacket, gray slacks, and pink orthopedic shoes.

  Frank was a sweet man, gave you the feeling you could say anything to him in confidence. He hugged me and said, “What’s new, Lindsay?”

  “A ton,” I said, hugging him back.

  A few days ago, I had called Cisco and asked him to review our short list of cops who were considered possible suspects in the vigilante-cop case. I didn’t ask him to leak confidential information, just to look at the personnel files and let us know which cops, in his opinion, were likely to go on a shooting spree.

  He’d said it would be unethical for him to finger suspects based on a hunch. Fine. I got it.

  Now I said, “Frank, this isn’t about the shooter cop. I need your help on a different case altogether.”

  H
e looked relieved, and as we walked back to the interrogation rooms, I told him what little I knew about Constance Kerr.

  Chapter 81

  I knocked on the door to Interview 1 and when Conklin stepped outside, I asked him to get Kerr to go through the whole story again for Frank’s benefit.

  Frank and I went into the observation room and watched the interview.

  Connie asked Conklin, “When can I go home?”

  Conklin said, “I just want to make sure I’ve got your story straight.”

  Kerr told the story again, but this time she added new details about the morning the heads were found: her routine on awakening, her rituals and habits, how she’d made up the wall bed and brewed a special Manchurian tea. Finally she got to the part where she heard the sirens and peeked through her back window.

  Then, weirdly, she began telling the story from the third-person point of view.

  “She saw the caretakers and the police standing outside the back door and the skulls were there and she thought, Mercy. This is a day like no other.”

  “What are you doing, Connie?” Conklin asked her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Who’s the she who thought the day was like no other?”

  “I was trying it on as if Emma had seen it — you know, Inspector, the character in my current work. Emma is very perceptive, but naturally she doesn’t know any more than I do. I would love to hear your theory of the case. I think you could really help me with my book.”

  I said to Frank, “What are your thoughts? Is she playing us?”

  “She’s playacting for sure, but her nuttiness neither confirms nor eliminates her as the killer. I will say this. Based on my ten minutes of observation, I think she’s going to great lengths to hide something. Could be related to this case, could be something else she doesn’t want anyone to know.”

  I laughed, said, “Brilliant analysis, Frank. Thanks a lot.”

  He laughed too. “Yeah, what did you expect? That I can unwrap her crazy little mind in ten minutes?”

  On the other side of the glass, Conklin was still trying to pry something useful out of Connie Kerr.

  “Connie, your friend who brings you food. Who is it?”

  “Ahhh,” she said dramatically. “Is he a man with a past? Or is it a lady friend she doesn’t want to expose?”

  “Connie, this isn’t helping you.”

  “I don’t have to tell you all my secrets. And I won’t. If I’m not under arrest, I want to go home. You can’t keep me here without probable cause.”

  Conklin sat back and said without any malice, “You’re wrong, Connie. I can book you for trespassing, for theft of services, for obstruction of justice.”

  “Listen,” Kerr said, slapping the table and leaning toward Conklin. “You’re wrong about the trespassing and all the rest. Tommy Oliver knows that I live in number six and he’s known it for years. I’m sure he has told Harry Chandler.”

  “Tommy Oliver? Is that T. Lawrence Oliver? Harry Chandler’s driver?”

  “Yes. Tommy hooked up my electricity. He fixed the locks.”

  “Okay. We’re holding you as a material witness while we check out your story, talk to a few people, and so forth. The law gives us forty-eight hours.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can. I’m doing it. Please stand up.”

  “I demand to make my phone call.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Of course. By the way, we don’t have single-occupancy accommodations here, so you’re going to be sharing a cell with some other ladies. If you remember something helpful about the boneyard underneath your window, please reach out to me, Connie. I’ll be happy to talk to you anytime.”

  Chapter 82

  While Conklin brought Connie Kerr to booking, I invited Frank Cisco to the break room for leftover cookies and stale coffee. He accepted.

  We were alone for the moment, sitting across from each other at an old table, and what had started as a consultation suddenly felt like a therapy session. I guess that’s because after Jacobi and I got shot on Larkin Street, I’d had to see Frank for a couple of months or lose my job.

  I’d been furious that the department sent me to a shrink to determine my mental fitness, but even though I was insulted, I had gotten a lot from my sessions with Frank. Actually, he was a great therapist.

  Now he asked me, “What’s going on with you, Lindsay?”

  “I’m pregnant,” I said.

  “Heyyy. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  I dipped my head. I didn’t want to tell him that Joe had cheated on me, that I had thrown him out, that working non-stop meant I didn’t have to concentrate on how I was going to provide for my baby without my husband.

  “Oh, man. If you could see your face. I gotta ask again. What’s going on, Lindsay?”

  Frickin’ mind reader.

  “This case,” I said, “is a bear. We’ve got seven victims, their heads buried on the property of a big movie star, and we can’t find the bodies. Were they murdered? Or is this a very creepy art installation? We don’t know.

  “And here’s what else is strange, Frank. With all the publicity this case has generated, no one is banging at our door asking, Is my daughter one of those victims?”

  “That is remarkable,” Frank said.

  “We’re going to close this case. We’re determined to do it. But the real pressure inside the SFPD is about the shooter cop.”

  Frank sighed, ran his hands through his hair, said again, “Oh, man.”

  I wasn’t deterred. I brought him up to date on the shooter cop’s activities.

  “The shooter killed three drug dealers on a back road — ”

  “And torched their car.”

  “Right. Two days after that, he killed a dealer in a shopping-center parking lot.”

  “I read that. You’re sure it was the same shooter?”

  “The ballistics matched to another of our stolen guns.

  What you didn’t read is that Jackson Brady thinks Jacobi is the shooter.”

  “Come on. Brady believes that? ”

  “Conklin and I were assigned to tail Jacobi, and he caught us sitting outside his house. Now Jacobi hates me. And we’re no closer to finding a killer who has probably worked himself up and is ready to kill again.”

  Frank told me not to put too much pressure on myself, said that stress wasn’t good for the baby.

  “Maybe you should take yourself off the case.”

  “I can’t, Frank. I just can’t.”

  He nodded, told me that I could call him day or night if I needed him. I thanked him, and then he asked if we could go to my desk so he could use my computer.

  “I’m expecting a big document by e-mail,” he told me. “It’s waiting for me in the cloud. Do you know what that is?”

  I smiled, said, “It’s a public server. Do you have an access code?”

  “I wrote it on the inside of my eyeglass case.”

  “Come with me,” I said.

  I gave my chair to Frank and made fresh coffee as he did his work. When he’d put his reading glasses back in his jacket pocket, I walked him out and thanked him for his help with Constance Kerr.

  “Any time. Take care, Lindsay. I mean it.”

  I returned to my computer and went to open what I expected to be an avalanche of mail that had come in over the last few hours.

  When I touched the mouse, the screen lit up, and instead of my usual desktop screen, a document I’d never seen before appeared. It took me a moment to figure out that it was the personnel file of a cop, William Randall. I knew his name, but I didn’t know much about him.

  Frank Cisco, either accidentally or on purpose, had left this document for me to read. Or maybe Dr. Freud had made him do it.

  I saved Sergeant William Randall’s file to my computer and went looking for Conklin.

  Chapter 83

  “Okay, let’
s have the whole story,” Brady said to me and my partner. We were in Brady’s office with the door closed and the blinds down. Brady was both aggravated with us and hopeful we’d gotten a new angle on the case. He didn’t sit down.

  “How’d you hear this about Randall?”

  “I can’t tell you my source,” I said. “I just can’t.”

  “Fine. Actually, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your source, Boxer. What do you have on him?”

  I took a printout of Randall’s file and put it on Brady’s desk, turning it around so he could read along as I pointed out the highlights.

  “William Randall has been with the SFPD for twelve years. He got bumped up to Narcotics in ’04 and did a stint as part of a task force for the DEA. He moved to Vice in ’09. His oldest son, Lincoln Randall, almost OD’d on heroin the next year. It’s possible that this was the boy’s first time trying hard drugs.”

  “His son almost OD’d. Go on,” Brady said. He sat down and began tapping the underside of his desk with his foot.

  “Randall found him lying in the street, got him to a hospital. His life was saved, but the kid’s brain took a bad hit. He was a bright boy, but now he has the mind of a baby.”

  “So are you saying the kid’s overdose is Randall’s motive?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Randall has a good, clean record in the department and a sad personal story. Our working theory is that he’s on a one-man crusade to take out dealers who sell drugs to kids.”

  “But here’s the thing, boss,” Conklin said. “Meile and Penny both interviewed Randall. He has an alibi for the Morton Academy shooting. He says he was home with his wife and family when Chaz Smith went down. Mrs. Randall vouched for her husband, said, ‘Will was at home. He’s always home after work.’ The top cops bought it.”

  “And so why exactly do you like him for the shootings? Put me out of my misery, will you, Boxer?”

  “He’s obsessed with drug dealers. Obsessed with them.”

  “How do you know that?”