The 6th Target

by James Patterson

  “Yes, many do. That would be one of the schizoid aspects of this disease.”

  “Threatening voices?”

  “Yes.” Friedman smiled. “That would be the paranoia.”

  “Did Mr. Brinkley tell you that he thought people on television were talking to him?”

  “Yes. That’s also a fairly common symptom of schizoaffective disorder — an example of a break from reality. And the paranoia makes him think that the voices are aimed at him.”

  “Could you explain what you mean when you refer to a ‘break from reality’?”

  “Certainly. From the onset of Mr. Brinkley’s disease in his teens, there has always been a distortion in the way he thinks and acts, in how he expresses his emotions. Most important, in how he perceives reality. That’s the psychotic element — his inability to tell what is real from what is imagined.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Friedman,” Sherman said. “Now bringing us up to the recent events that brought Mr. Brinkley to trial. What can you tell us about that?”

  “With schizoaffective disorder, there is generally a precipitate that causes an increase in crazy behavior. In my judgment, that precipitate for Mr. Brinkley would have been when he got fired from his job. The loss of his routine, the subsequent eviction from his apartment, all of that would have exacerbated his illness.”

  “I see. Dr. Friedman, did Mr. Brinkley tell you about the ferry shooting?”

  “Yes. I learned in our sessions that Mr. Brinkley hadn’t been on a boat since his sister died in a sailing accident when he was sixteen. On the day of the ferry incident, there was an additional precipitate. Mr. Brinkley saw a sailboat. And that triggered the event. In layman’s terms, that sent him over the edge. He couldn’t distinguish between illusion and reality.”

  “Did Mr. Brinkley tell you that he was hearing voices on the ferry?”

  “Yes. He said that they were telling him to kill. You have to understand that Fred has a fierce underlying anger about his sister’s death, and that manifested itself in this explosive rage.

  “The people on the ferry weren’t real to him. They were only a backdrop to his delusions. The voices were his reality, and the only way he could stop them was to obey.”

  “Dr. Friedman,” Sherman said, touching his upper lip with the tip of his forefinger, “can you state with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that when Mr. Brinkley obeyed those voices and shot the passengers on the ferry, he did not appreciate the difference between right and wrong?”

  “Yes. Based on my interviews with Mr. Brinkley and my twenty years of experience working with the severely mentally impaired, it is my opinion that at the time of the shooting, Alfred Brinkley suffered from a mental disease or defect that prevented him from knowing right from wrong. I am absolutely convinced of it.”

  Chapter 94

  DAVID HALE PUSHED A NOTE over to Yuki — a cartoon drawing of a large bulldog with a spiked collar and drool dripping from its jowls. The voice balloon said, “Go get ’em.”

  Yuki smiled, thought about Len Parisi taking a wide-legged stance in the middle of this oaken courtroom and shredding Mickey Sherman’s hired shrink to ribbons.

  She drew a circle around the cartoon, underscored it. Then she stood, speaking before she reached the podium.

  “Dr. Friedman, you’re quite well known as an expert witness, isn’t that right?”

  Friedman said that he was and that he’d testified for both prosecution and defense teams over the past nine years.

  “In this case, the defense hired you?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “And how much were you paid?”

  Friedman looked up at Judge Moore, who peered down at him. “Please answer the question, Dr. Friedman.”

  “I was paid about eight thousand dollars.”

  “Eight thousand dollars. Okay. And how long were you treating Mr. Brinkley?”

  “Mr. Brinkley wasn’t technically my patient.”

  “Oh,” said Yuki. “Then let me ask you, can you diagnose someone that you’ve never treated?”

  “I’ve had three sessions with Mr. Brinkley, during which time I also gave him a battery of psychological tests. And yes, I can assess Mr. Brinkley without treating him,” Friedman sniffed.

  “So based on three interviews and these tests, you believe that the defendant was unable to understand right from wrong at the time of the killings?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You didn’t give him an X-ray and find a tumor pressing against a lobe of his brain, did you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So how do we know that Mr. Brinkley wasn’t lying and skewing the test results so he wouldn’t be found guilty of murder?”

  “He couldn’t do that,” Friedman said. “You see, the test questions are like a built-in lie detector. They’re repeated in many different ways, and if the answers are consistent, then the patient is telling the truth.”

  “Doctor, you use those tests because you can’t really know what’s in the patient’s mind, can you?”

  “Well, you also make a judgment based on behavior.”

  “I see. Dr. Friedman, are you aware of the legal term ‘consciousness of guilt’?”

  “Yes. It refers to actions a person may take that show the person is aware what he or she did was wrong.”

  “Well put, Doctor,” Yuki said. “Now, if someone shoots five people and then runs away, as Alfred Brinkley did, doesn’t that show consciousness of guilt? Doesn’t it show that Mr. Brinkley knew what he’d done was wrong?”

  “Look, Ms. Castellano, not everything a person does when he’s in a psychotic state is illogical. People on that ferry were screaming, coming at him with intent to harm him. He ran. Most people finding themselves in that situation would have run.”

  Yuki stole a look at David, who gave her an encouraging nod. She wished he’d beam her something to nail Friedman with because she didn’t have it.

  And then she did.

  “Dr. Friedman, does gut instinct play any part in your assessment?”

  “Well, sure. Gut instinct, or intuition, is made up of many layers of experience. So, yes, I used gut instinct as well as formal psychological protocol in my assessment.”

  “And did you determine whether or not Mr. Brinkley is dangerous?”

  “I interviewed Mr. Brinkley both before and after he was put on Risperdal, and it is my opinion that, properly medicated, Mr. Brinkley is not dangerous.”

  Yuki put both her hands on the witness box, looked Friedman in the eye, ignored everything and everyone in the courtroom, and spoke from the fear she felt every time she looked at that freak sitting next to Mickey Sherman.

  “Dr. Friedman, you interviewed Mr. Brinkley behind bars. Check your gut instinct on this: Would you feel comfortable riding home in a cab with Mr. Brinkley? Would you feel safe having dinner with him in his home? Riding alone with him in an elevator?”

  Mickey Sherman leaped to his feet. “Your Honor, I object. Those questions should be taken out and shot.”

  “Sustained,” the judge grumbled.

  “I’m done with this witness, Your Honor,” Yuki said.

  Chapter 95

  AT 8:30 THAT MONDAY MORNING, Miriam Devine took the bundles of mail from the hallway console and brought them into the breakfast nook.

  She and her husband had just returned home to Pacific Heights last night after their cruise, ten fabulous days in the Mediterranean, where they were mercifully cut off from phones and television and newspapers and bills.

  She wanted to keep the real world at bay for at least a couple of days, keep that vacation feeling a little longer. If only she could.

  Miriam made drip coffee, defrosted and toasted two cinnamon buns, and began her attack on the mail, stacking catalogs on the right side of the kitchen table, bills on the left, and miscellaneous items across from her coffee mug.

  When she found the plain white envelope addressed to the Tylers, she shuffled it to the
bottom of the “miscellaneous” pile and continued working, writing checks and tossing junk mail until Jim came into the kitchen.

  Her husband drank his coffee standing up, said, “Christ. I don’t want to go to the office. It’s going to be hell even if no one knows I’m there.”

  “I’ll make meat loaf for dinner, sweetie. Your favorite.”

  “Okay. Something to look forward to anyway.”

  Jim Devine left the house and closed the front door behind him. Miriam finished dealing with mail, rinsed the dishes, and phoned her daughter before calling her next-door neighbor Elizabeth Tyler.

  “Liz, honey! Jim and I just got back last night. I have some mail for you that was delivered here by mistake. Why don’t I drop over so we can catch each other up?”

  Chapter 96

  I STOOD WITH CONKLIN in the Tylers’ living room. It was only fifteen minutes since their neighbor Miriam Devine had dropped off the handwritten note from the kidnappers.

  It had had the effect of an emotional nuclear bomb on Elizabeth Tyler and was having a similar effect on me.

  I remembered canvassing the Devines’ house the day of the abduction. It was a cream-colored clapboard Victorian almost identical to the Tylers’ house, right next door. I’d spoken to the Devines’ housekeeper, Guadalupe Perez. She’d told us in broken English that the Devines were away.

  Nine days ago, I couldn’t have imagined that Guadalupe Perez would have picked up an envelope that had been slid under the door and that she would have stacked it with the rest of the Devines’ mail.

  No one could have known, but I felt heartsick and responsible anyway.

  “How well do you know the Devines?” Conklin asked Henry Tyler, who was furiously pacing the perimeter of the room. There were pictures of Madison on every wall and surface — baby pictures, family portraits, holiday snapshots.

  “It’s not them, okay? The Devines didn’t do it!” Tyler shouted. “Madison is gone!” he yelled, holding his head with both hands as he paced. “It’s too late.”

  I dropped my eyes back to the sideboard and the block letters on the plain white bond that I could read from five feet away:

  WE HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER.

  IF YOU CALL LAW ENFORCEMENT, SHE DIES.

  IF WE FEEL ANY HEAT, SHE DIES.

  RIGHT NOW, MADISON IS HEALTHY AND SAFE, AND WILL STAY THAT WAY AS LONG AS YOU KEEP QUIET.

  THIS PHOTO IS THE FIRST. YOU WILL RECEIVE A NEW PICTURE OF MADISON EVERY YEAR. YOU MAY RECEIVE A PHONE CALL. SHE MAY EVEN COME HOME.

  BE SMART. BE QUIET.

  ONE DAY MADISON WILL THANK YOU.

  The photo of Madison that came with the note had been printed out on a home-style printer within an hour of the time she was abducted. The girl seemed clean and unharmed, wearing the blue coat, the red shoes.

  “Could he know that we didn’t get the note? Could he know that we didn’t mean to defy him?”

  “I just don’t know, Mr. Tyler, and I can’t really guess —”

  Elizabeth Tyler interrupted me, the cords of her neck standing out as she strained to talk.

  “Madison is the brightest, happiest little girl you can imagine. She sings. She plays music. She has the most wonderful laugh.

  “Has she been raped? Is she chained to a bed in a basement? Is she hungry and cold? Is she hurt? Is she terrified? Is she calling out for us? Does she wonder why we don’t come for her? Or is she past all that now and is safe in God’s hands?

  “This is all we think about, Officers.

  “We have to know what has happened to our daughter. You have to do more than you ever thought you could do,” Elizabeth Tyler told me. “You must bring Madison home.”

  Chapter 97

  A PLASTIC BAG WITH THE KIDNAPPER’S NOTE INSIDE was positioned on my desk so that Conklin and I could both read it.

  IF YOU CALL LAW ENFORCEMENT, SHE DIES.

  IF WE FEEL ANY HEAT, SHE DIES.

  We were still rocked by those words, unable to shake the sickening feeling that by actually working the Ricci/Tyler case, we might have brought about Madison’s death.

  When Dave Stanford arrived at noon, we turned the kidnapper’s note over to the FBI. Jacobi ordered a pie from Presto Pizza. Conklin pulled up a chair for Stanford, and we opened our files to him.

  An hour later, it still all came down to one lead: the Whittens in Boston and the Tylers in Pacific Heights had the Westwood Registry in common.

  We divvied up the client names that Mary Jordan had copied from the Register and started making phone calls. By the time the square box was in the round file, we were ready to go.

  Conklin and Macklin went in Stanford’s car. And Jacobi and I paired up, partners again for the day.

  It was good seeing Jacobi’s homely mug beside me, his expanding heft in the driver’s seat.

  “Pardon me for noticing, but you look like you’ve been keelhauled,” he said.

  “This goddamned case is making me sick. But since you mention it, Jacobi, I’m wondering about something. Did it ever occur to you to lie to me when I look like hell?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “I guess that’s one of the things I love about you.”

  “Ah, don’t get mushy on me now.” He grinned, took a hard right onto Lombard, and parked the car.

  Over the next five hours, we tracked down and interviewed four Westwood Registry clients and their nannies. By the time the sun was lighting up a swath of pink cotton-candy clouds across the western sky, we had joined Macklin and the others back at the Hall.

  It was a short meeting because our combined twenty-five man-hours had yielded nothing but praise for the Westwood Registry and their imported five-star nannies.

  At around seven p.m. we told one another we’d pick it up again in the morning. I crossed Bryant, got my car out of the lot, and headed toward Potrero Hill.

  Streetlights were winking on all across the city as I parked outside my home sweet home.

  My hand was on the car-door handle when something eclipsed the light coming in from the passenger-side window, throwing me into shadow.

  My heart hammered as I swung my head around and a dark figure came into view. It took a few seconds for my brain to put it all together. Even then, I doubted my eyes.

  It was Joe.

  Chapter 98

  IT WAS JOE. It was Joe.

  There was no one in the world I wanted to see more.

  “How many times have I told you . . .” I said, heart racing, getting out of my car on the street side, slamming the door.

  “Don’t sneak up on an armed police officer?”

  “Right. You’ve got something against telephones? Some kind of phobia?”

  Joe grinned sheepishly at me from where he stood on the sidewalk. “Not even a hello? You’re tough, Blondie.”

  “Ya think?”

  I didn’t feel tough, though. I felt depleted, vulnerable, close to tears, but I was determined not to show any of that. I scowled as I drummed my fingers on the hood of my car, but I couldn’t help noticing how great Joe looked.

  “I’m sorry. I took a chance,” he said, his smile absolutely winning. “I just hoped to see you. So anyway, how have you been?”

  “Never better,” I lied. “You know. Busy.”

  “Sure, I know. You’re all over the newspapers, Wonder Woman.”

  “More like, wonder if I’m ever going to solve a case,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “And you?” I said, warming up to Joe through and through. I stopped drumming my fingers and leaned a little bit toward him. “How’s it going with you?”

  “I’ve been busy, too.”

  “Well, I guess we’re both keeping out of trouble.” I locked the car, but I still didn’t take a step toward him. I liked having that big hunk of metal between us. My Explorer as chaperone. Giving me a chance to think through what to do with Joe.

  Joe grinned, said, “Yeah, sure, but what I meant was I’ve been busy trying to get a new life.”

  Wha
t was that? What had he just said?

  My heart lurched and my knees started to give. I had a flash of insight — Joe looked and sounded great because he’d fallen in love with someone else. He’d dropped by because he couldn’t tell me the news on the phone.

  “I haven’t wanted to call you until it was final,” he said, his words dragging me back to the moment, “but I can’t move the damned request through the system fast enough.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I put in for a transfer to San Francisco, Lindsay.”

  Relief overwhelmed me. Tears filled my eyes to the brim as I stared at Joe. Images flashed, nothing I could help or stop, snatches of our months of high-flying romance, but it wasn’t the romantic part that I remembered most. It was those homey moments, with Joe singing in the shower, me sneaking a peek in the mirror at his receding hairline when he didn’t know I was looking. And the way he crouched over his cereal bowl as if someone might take it from him because he’d grown up in a house with six brothers and sisters, and none of them had the exclusive rights to anything. I thought about how Joe was the only person in my life who would just let me talk myself out and didn’t expect me to be the strong one all the time. And okay, yeah, I flashed on the way he handled my body when we made love, making me seem small and weightless, and how safe I used to feel when I fell asleep in his arms.

  “I’ve been given assurances but nothing definite . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at me. “God, Lindsay,” he said, “you have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

  The wind coming off the bay blew the tears off my cheeks, and I was filled with gratitude for the unexpected gift of his visit and the night ahead. I still had an unopened bottle of Courvoisier in the liquor cabinet. And massage oil in the nightstand. . . . I thought about the delicious coolness of the air and how much heat Joe and I could turn up just lying together, before even reaching out our hands to touch.

  “Why don’t you come upstairs?” I finally said. “We don’t have to talk on the street.”