4th of July (2005)

by JAMES PATTERSON (with Maxine Paetro)

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” Carolee said with regret. “I’m the good guy, Lindsay. This thing you see here, this Melissa Farley, is complete trash.”

  “Toss the knife over here very carefully,” I said, grasping my Glock so hard that my knuckles were white. Could I shoot Carolee if I had to? I really didn’t know.

  “You aren’t going to shoot me,” she said then.

  “I think you’ve forgotten who I am.”

  Carolee started to speak again, but the resolve gripping my face stopped her. I would shoot her, and she was smart enough to get it. She smiled wanly. Then she tossed the knife underhand onto the carpet at our feet.

  I kicked the knife under a bureau, then I ordered Carolee to the floor.

  “On your knees!” I shouted. “Hands in front of you!”

  I took her down to the ground, told her to lace her hands behind her neck and cross her ankles, frisked her, and found nothing but a thin leather belt around her waist.

  Then I darted my eyes to the woman on the bed.

  “Melissa? Are you okay? Call nine-one-one. Tell them that a violent crime is in progress and a cop needs assistance.”

  The woman reached for the bedside phone even as she kept her eyes on me.

  “He’s got my husband,” she said. “A man is in the bathroom with Ed.”

  Chapter 140

  I FOLLOWED MELISSA FARLEY’S gaze across the shadows to the door to the left of the bed.

  The door opened slowly, and a male walked stiffly into the bedroom, his eyes wild behind blood-speckled glasses.

  I noticed everything as the man came toward me: black T-shirt soaked with blood; belt, stripped from his pants, dangling by its silver buckle from his left hand; ugly hunting knife clutched in his right.

  My mind raced ahead, thinking not where the knife was now, but where it would be next.

  “Drop your weapon!” I screamed at him. “Do it now or I’ll shoot.”

  The man’s mouth formed a grim smile, the chilling look of someone who is ready to die. He continued coming toward me, pointing the bloody knife.

  My vision narrowed so that I could concentrate on what seemed necessary to my survival. There was too much to focus on, too much to control.

  Carolee was behind me, unsecured.

  The man with the knife knew it, too. His lip curled back.

  He said, “G-g-get up! We can take her.”

  I calculated what would happen if I shot him. He was less than ten feet away.

  Even if I got him square in the chest, even if I stopped his heart, the closing range was short.

  He was still coming.

  I leveled my gun, fingered the trigger, and then Melissa Farley scrambled across the bed, launching herself toward the bathroom.

  “No,” I yelled out. “Stay where you are.”

  “I have to go to my husband!”

  I never heard the door open behind me.

  I never heard someone else enter the room.

  But suddenly she was there.

  “Bobby, don’t!” Allison screamed.

  And for one long second, everything stood still.

  Chapter 141

  THE MAN ALLISON CALLED Bobby froze. He steadied himself, and I watched his face seize with confusion.

  “Allison,” he said, “you’re supposed to be home.”

  Bobby! The stutter hadn’t cued me, but now I recognized his face. It was Bob Hinton, the lawyer from town who’d run into me with his bike. I didn’t have time to figure out exactly how he fit into this picture.

  Allison drifted from behind me as if she were in a dream. She walked over to Bob Hinton and put her arms around his waist. I wanted to stop her, but before I could, Hinton reached his arms around her and held Allison tightly.

  “Little sister,” he whispered, “you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t see this.”

  My blood pressure dropped, and the sweat on my hands made the gun’s trigger slippery. I continued to gauge my shot at Hinton.

  I jockeyed for a better angle, and Hinton turned the dazed little girl toward me. I could see that he was dazed himself.

  “Bob,” I said, putting my heart into it. I wanted him to believe me. “It’s your choice. But I’ll blow your head off if you don’t drop that knife and get right down on your knees.”

  Bob stooped, dipping his face behind Allison’s head, turning her into a shield. I knew he would put his blade across her throat next and tell me to throw down my gun. I’d have to do it.

  I didn’t expect the look of terrible sadness that came over his face as he pressed his cheek to Allison’s. “Oh, Ali, Ali, you aren’t old enough to understand.”

  Ali shook her head.

  “I know everything, Bobby. You have to give up. I have to tell Lindsay all of it.”

  A flash of red tore my attention from the haunting tableau in front of me. Melissa Farley half fell through the bathroom doorway. The front of her nightgown was dark with blood.

  “Ambulance,” she panted. “Get an ambulance. Please! Ed is still alive.”

  Chapter 142

  ABOUT TEN MINUTES LATER, sirens wailed and the flashing lights of patrol cars raced up the winding road below. Medevac chopper blades roared overhead.

  Melissa Farley was back in the bathroom with her husband. “Allison,” I said. “Please go downstairs and open the door for the police.” Bob still held Allison tightly in his arms. She turned her round-eyed stare on me. Her lips were quivering as she held back sobs.

  “Go ahead, darling,” Carolee said from where she lay on the floor. “It’s all right.”

  Ten steps away from me, Bob’s face sagged; his expression was that of a beaten man. He squeezed Ali’s shoulders, and I gasped involuntarily. Then he released the child.

  As soon as Ali was safely out of the room, my anger exploded.

  “Who are you two? What made you think you could get away with this?”

  I stepped over to Bob Hinton, ripped away the knife, and ordered him to put his hands against the wall. I Mirandized him as I frisked him.

  “Do you understand your rights?”

  His laughter was shrill but sardonic. “Better than most,” he said.

  I found glass-cutting tools and a camera on Hinton, which I removed. Then I forced him to the ground and sat on the edge of the king-size bed, holding my gun on him and Carolee.

  I didn’t even blink until I heard heavy footsteps rumbling up the stairs.

  Chapter 143

  IT WAS AFTER THREE in the morning, and I was back at the police station. Chief Stark was with Bob Hinton in the interrogation room, where Bob was describing in detail the many homicides that he, Carolee, and Keith had committed in Half Moon Bay.

  I sat with Carolee in the chief’s office, an old Sony tape recorder between us on Peter Stark’s messy desk. A detective brought cups of coffee into the room in a cardboard box, then he took a position inside the doorway as I interviewed Carolee.

  “I think I’d like to talk to my lawyer,” Carolee said flatly.

  “You mean Bob? Can you wait a few minutes?” I snapped. “He’s giving you up right now, and we’d like to get it all down.”

  Carolee gave me a bemused smile.

  She flicked a strand of hair from the front of her black silk turtleneck, then folded her manicured hands in her lap. I couldn’t help but stare.

  Carolee had been a friend. We’d traded confidences. I’d told her to call me if she ever needed me. I idolized her daughter.

  Even now, she was dignified, articulate, seemingly sane.

  “Maybe you’d like a different lawyer,” I said.

  “Never mind,” she said. “It’s not going to matter.”

  “Okay, then. Why don’t you talk to me?”

  I switched on the tape recorder, spoke my name, the time and date, my badge number, and the subject’s name. Then I rewound the tape and played it back to make sure the machine was working. Satisfied, I leaned back in the chief’s swivel chair.

&n
bsp; “Okay, Carolee. Let’s hear it,” I said.

  The lovely-looking woman in her Donna Karan perfection took a moment to organize her thoughts before she spoke for the record.

  “Lindsay,” she said thoughtfully, “you need to understand that they brought it upon themselves. The Whittakers were making child pornography. The Daltrys were actually starving their twins. They were part of some freaking religious cult that told them their children shouldn’t eat solid food.”

  “And you didn’t think to get Children’s Services involved?”

  “I reported it again and again. Jake and Alice were clever, though. They stocked their shelves with food, but they never fed the children!”

  “And Doc O’Malley? What about him and his wife?”

  “Doc was selling his own child on the Internet. There was a camera in her room. That stupid Lorelei knew. Caitlin knew. I only hope that her grandparents get her the help she needs. I wish I could do it myself.”

  The more she talked, the more I understood the depths of her narcissism. Carolee and her cohorts had taken on the mission of cleaning up child abuse in Half Moon Bay—acting as the whole judicial package: judge, jury, and executioners. And the way she described it, it almost made sense.

  If you didn’t know what she’d done.

  “Carolee. You killed eight people.”

  We were interrupted by a knock on the door. The detective cracked it open a few inches, and I saw the chief outside. His face was gray with fatigue. I stepped out into the hallway.

  “Coastside hospital called,” he told me. “Hinton administered the coup de grâce after all.”

  I stepped back into the chief’s office. Sat down in the swivel chair.

  “Make that nine, Carolee. Ed Farley just died.”

  “And thank God for that,” Carolee said. “When you people open the barn at the back of the Farleys’ yard you’re going to have to pin a medal on me. The Farleys have been trafficking in little Mexican girls. Selling them for sex all across the country. Call the FBI, Lindsay. This is a big one.”

  Carolee’s posture relaxed even as I grappled with this new bombshell. She leaned forward confidingly. The earnestness in her face was absolutely stunning.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you something since I met you,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter to anyone but you. Your John Doe? That terrible shit had a name. Brian Miller. And I’m the one who killed him.”

  Chapter 144

  I COULD HARDLY ABSORB what Carolee had just told me.

  She’d killed my John Doe.

  That boy’s death had been on my mind for ten full years. Carolee was my sister’s friend. Now I tried to grasp that John Doe’s killer and I had been traveling on adjacent paths, paths that had finally converged in this room.

  “It’s traditional for the condemned to have a cigarette, isn’t it, Lindsay?”

  “Hell, yes,” I said. “As many as you want.”

  I reached on top of a filing cabinet for a carton of Marlboros. I broke open the box and placed a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches beside Carolee’s elbow with a casualness I had to fake.

  I was desperate to hear about the boy whose lost life I’d been carrying with me in spirit for so many years.

  “Thank you,” said Carolee, the schoolteacher, the mom, the savior of abused children.

  She peeled cellophane and foil from the mouth of the packet, tapped out a cigarette. A match sparked, and the smell of sulfur rose into the air.

  “Keith was only twelve when he came to my school. Same age as my son, Bob,” she said. “Lovely boys, both of them. Tons of promise.”

  I listened intently as Carolee described the appearance of Brian Miller, an older boy, a runaway who gained her confidence and eventually become a counselor at the school.

  “Brian raped them repeatedly, both Bob and Keith, and he raped their minds, too. He had a Special Forces knife. Said he’d turn them into girls if they ever told anyone what he’d done.”

  Tears slipped from Carolee’s eyes. She waved at the smoke as if that was what had made her tear up. Her hand shook as she sipped at her container of coffee.

  The only sound in the room was the soft sibilance of the magnetic tape spooling between the reels of the Sony.

  When Carolee began speaking again, her voice was softer. I leaned toward her so that I wouldn’t miss a word.

  “When Brian was finished using the boys, he disappeared, taking their innocence, their dignity, their self-worth.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “Look, I reported it, but by the time Bobby told me what had happened, time had passed. And the police weren’t so interested in my school for runaways. It took years to get Keith to smile again,” Carolee went on. “Bob was even more fragile. When he slashed his wrists, I had to do something.”

  Carolee fooled around with her watchband, a dainty, feminine gesture, but fury contorted her features, an anger that seemed as fresh now as it had been a decade ago.

  “Go on,” I said. “I’m listening to you, Carolee.”

  “I found Brian living in a transient hotel in the Tenderloin,” she told me. “He was selling his body. I took him out for a good meal with lots of wine. I let myself remember how much I’d once really liked Brian, and he bought it. He believed that I was still his friend.

  “I asked him nicely for an explanation. The way he told it, what he had with the boys was ‘romantic love.’ Can you believe it?”

  Carolee laughed and tapped ashes into an aluminum foil tray.

  “I went back to his place with him,” Carolee continued. “I’d brought his things with me: a T-shirt, a book, some other stuff.

  “When he turned his back, I grabbed him. I slashed his throat with his own knife. He couldn’t believe what I’d done. He tried to scream, but I’d cut through his vocal cords, you see. Then I whipped him with my belt as he lay dying. It was good, Lindsay. The last face Brian saw was mine.

  “The last voice he heard was mine.”

  An image of John Doe #24 came to me, animated now into a living person by Carolee’s story. Even if he was everything she said he was, he’d still been a victim, condemned and executed without a trial.

  The final coincidence, and it was a killer, was that Carolee had scrawled “Nobody Cares” on the hotel wall. It was in all the newspaper stories. Ten years later, the clippings were found in Sara Cabot’s bizarre collection of true crime stories. She and her brother had ripped off the catchphrase.

  I flipped a notepad across to Carolee’s side of the desk and handed her a pen. Her hand was shaking as she started to write. She cocked her pretty head. “I’m going to put down that I did it for the children. That I did it all for them.”

  “Okay, Carolee. That’s fine. It’s your story.”

  “But do you understand, Lindsay? Someone had to save them. I’m the one. I’m a good mother.”

  Smoke curled around us as she held my gaze.

  “I can understand hating people who have done terrible things to innocent children,” I said. “But murder, no. I’ll never understand that. And I’ll never understand how you could have done this to Allison.”

  Chapter 145

  I WALKED ALONG THE dreary alley called Gold Street until I reached the neon sign, Bix, in huge blue letters. I entered through the brick-lined doorway and the blue-note chords of a baby grand thrilled me.

  The high ceilings, the cigarette smoke hanging above the long sweep of mahogany bar, and the art deco fixtures and trappings reminded me of a Hollywood version of a 1920s speakeasy.

  I stepped up to the maître d’, who told me that I was the first to arrive.

  I followed him up the stairs to the second floor and took a seat in one of the richly upholstered horseshoe-shaped booths overlooking the jumping bar scene below.

  I ordered a Dark & Stormy—Gosling’s Black Seal rum and ginger beer—and was sipping it when my best bud in the world came toward me.

  “I know you,” Claire s
aid, sliding into the booth, wrapping me in a huge hug. “You’re the gal who went and solved a whole buncha murders without any help from her homegirls.”

  “And lived to tell the tale,” I said.

  “Just barely, the way I heard it.”