The 6th Target

by James Patterson

  Something dark crossed his features as he came toward me and gently, deliberately, encircled my shoulders with his large hands.

  “I want to come in,” he said, “but I’ll miss my flight. I just had to tell you, don’t give up on me. Please.”

  Joe put his arms around me and pulled me to him. Instinctively, I stiffened, folded my arms over my chest, dropped my chin.

  I didn’t want to look up into his face. Didn’t want to be charmed or swayed, because inside of three minutes, I’d ridden the entire Joe Molinari roller coaster.

  Just over a week ago I’d steeled myself to break away from him because of this damned magic trick of his — now he’s here, now he’s not.

  Nothing had changed!

  I was furious. And I couldn’t let Joe open me up only to let me down again. I looked at his face for the last time, and I pushed away from him.

  “I’m sorry. Really. For a moment I thought you were someone else. You’d better go now,” I sputtered. “Have a safe flight.”

  He was calling my name as I ran as fast as I could up the front steps of my building. I put my key in the lock and turned the knob in one movement. Then I slammed the door behind me and continued to run up the stairs. When I walked into my apartment, I had to go to the window, though.

  I parted the curtain — just in time to see Joe’s car drive away.

  Chapter 99

  MY PHONE STARTED RINGING before I dropped the curtain back across the glass. I knew Joe was calling from the car, and I had nothing to say to him.

  I showered for a good long time, fifteen or twenty minutes under the spray. When I got out of the shower, the phone was still ringing. I ignored this call, too. Ditto the furiously blinking light on my answering machine and the tinny chime of my cell phone paging me from my jacket pocket.

  I tossed my dinner in the microwave. I opened the Courvoisier and had poured out a tumblerful when my cell phone started up its damned ringing again.

  I grabbed it out of my jacket pocket, growled, “Boxer,” fully prepared to say, “Joe, leave me alone, okay?” I felt an inexplicable letdown when the voice in my ear was my partner’s.

  Rich said, “What’s it take to get you to answer the phone, Lindsay?” He was annoyed with me and I didn’t care.

  “I was in the shower,” I said. “As far as I know, that’s still allowed. What’s up?”

  “There was another attack at the Blakely Arms.”

  The air went out of me.

  “A homicide?”

  “I’ll let you know when I get there. I’m a couple of blocks away.”

  “Lock down the building. Every exit,” I said. “No one leaves.”

  “I’m on it, Sergeant.”

  That’s when I remembered the treadmill victim. How could I have forgotten about him?

  “Rich, we forgot to check on Ben Wyatt.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “You called the hospital?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is Wyatt awake?”

  “He died two hours ago.”

  I told Rich I’d see him shortly and called Cindy — no answer. I snapped my phone closed, slapped it down on the kitchen counter so that I wouldn’t throw it through a window. The microwave binged five times, telling me that dinner was ready.

  “I’m going to lose my mind!” I shouted at the timer. “Going to fricking lose it.”

  Screw everything! I left the brandy untouched on the counter and my dinner in the microwave. I dressed quickly, buckled my shoulder holster, and threw on my blazer. I called Cindy and got her, told her what was happening.

  Then I headed out to Townsend and Third.

  By the time I strode into the lobby of the Blakely Arms, I was imagining my next conversation with Cindy. I wasn’t going to take any guff from her, either.

  She was going to move in with me until she had somewhere safe to live.

  Chapter 100

  CINDY WAS WAITING AT THE ENTRANCE to the Blakely Arms, her streaky blond curls blown every which way. Her lipstick looked chewed off.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Again? Is this really happening again?”

  “Cindy,” I said as we entered the lobby, “has there been any talk in the building? Any gossip? Any fingers pointed toward anyone?”

  “Only thing I’ve heard is the nasty sound of people’s nerves snapping.”

  We took the elevator together, and once again I was standing outside an apartment in the Freaky Arms that was bristling with uniformed cops.

  Conklin nodded to Cindy, then introduced me to Aiden Blaustein. He was a tall white kid, about twenty-two, wearing black-on-black-on-black — torn jeans, Myst T-shirt, vest, a patched leather jacket, and choppy black hair that was short in back, falling across panicky brown eyes.

  Conklin said, “Mr. Blaustein is the victim.”

  I heard Cindy say, “Cindy Thomas, the Chronicle. Would you spell your name for me?”

  I exhaled. The kid was alive and unhurt but obviously scared half out of his mind.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” I asked Blaustein.

  “Fuck if I know! I went out for a six-pack around five,” he said. “Ran into an old girlfriend and we got a bite. When I came home, my place had been totally trashed.”

  Conklin pushed open Blaustein’s front door, and I walked inside the studio apartment, Cindy trailing behind me.

  “Stay close —” I said.

  “And don’t touch anything,” she finished.

  The apartment looked like an electronics shop that had been trampled by a rhino on crack. I took a quick count of a desktop computer, three monitors, a stereo, and a forty-two-inch plasma-screen television that had been reduced to shards. Not stolen — destroyed! The desk was banged up, probably collateral damage.

  Blaustein said, “It took me years to get all this together just the way I like it.”

  “What kind of work do you do?” Cindy asked.

  “I design Web sites and games. This stuff cost probably twenty-five.”

  “Mr. Blaustein,” I said, “when you went out, did you leave your door open?”

  “I never leave my door open.”

  “Mr. Blaustein left the music on when he left the apartment,” Rich said. His voice was matter-of-fact, but he didn’t look at me.

  “Did anyone complain to you about the music?” I asked.

  “Today?”

  “Ever,” I said.

  “I’ve gotten nasty phone calls from one person,” Blaustein said.

  “And who was that?”

  “You mean, did he tell me his name? He didn’t even say hello. His opening line was ‘If you don’t turn off that shit, I’m gonna kill you.’ That was the first time. We’ve had these shouting matches a couple of times a week for a while now. All the time, cursing me. Cursing my children.”

  “You have kids?” I asked, unable to imagine it.

  “No. He cursed any future children I might have.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Me? I know swearwords this dude never heard before. Thing is, I would’ve recognized the guy’s voice if I’d heard it before. My ears are, like, good enough to be insured by Lloyd’s of London. But I don’t know him. And I know everyone who lives here. I even know her,” he said, pointing to Cindy. “Third floor, right?”

  “And you’re saying no one else in the building complained about your sound system?”

  “No, because A, I only work during the day, and B, we’re allowed to play music until eleven p.m. Besides which, C, I don’t play the music loud.”

  I sighed, unclipped my cell phone, and called the crime lab. I got the night-shift supervisor on the line and told him we needed him.

  “You have someone you can stay with tonight?” Rich was asking Blaustein.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, you can’t stay here. Your apartment’s a crime scene for a while.”

  Blaustein looked around the wreck of his apartment, his young face sagging as he cataloged the
destruction. “I wouldn’t stay here tonight if you paid me.”

  Chapter 101

  CINDY, RICH, AND I CONNECTED THE DOTS during the elevator ride down to the lobby.

  “The dogs, the piano, the treadmill . . .” Rich was saying.

  “The Web-meister’s apartment . . .” Cindy added.

  “It’s all the same thing,” I said. “It’s the noise.”

  “Yep,” Rich agreed. “Whoever this maniac is, noise makes him a little bit violent.”

  I said, “Rich, I’m sorry I snapped at you before. I had a bad day.”

  “Forget it, Lindsay. We close this case, we’ll both feel better.”

  The elevator doors slid open, and we stepped out again into the lobby. At the moment, the space was packed with about two hundred freaked-out tenants, standing room only.

  Cindy had her notepad out and moved toward the board president as Conklin used his body as a plow. I drafted behind him until we reached the reception desk.

  Someone yelled, “Quiet!” and when the rumble died, I said, “I’m Sergeant Boxer. I don’t have to tell you that there have been a series of disturbing incidents in this building —”

  I waited out the heckling about the police not doing their jobs, then pushed on, saying that we were going to reinterview everyone and that no one was permitted to leave until we said it was okay.

  A gray-haired man in his late sixties raised his hand, introducing himself as Andy Durbridge.

  “Sergeant, I may have some useful information. I saw a man in the laundry room this afternoon whom I’d never seen before. He had what looked like a dog’s bite marks on his arms.”

  “Can you describe this man?” I asked. I felt a new kind of tension in my gut. The good kind.

  “He was about five six, muscular, brown hair going bald, in his thirties, I think. I looked around already, and I don’t see him here.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Durbridge,” I said. “Can anyone here pin a name on that description?”

  A petite young woman with caramel-colored bedspring curls waded through the crowd until she reached me.

  Her eyes were huge, and her skin was unnaturally pale — something was frightening her half to death.

  “I’m Portia Fox,” she said, her voice quavering. “Sergeant, may I speak with you privately?”

  Chapter 102

  I STEPPED OUTSIDE the Blakely Arms with Portia Fox.

  “I think I know that man that Mr. Durbridge was referring to,” Ms. Fox told me. “He sounds like the guy who lives in my apartment during the daytime.”

  “Your roommate?”

  “Not officially,” the woman said, casting her eyes around. “He rents my dining room. I work during the day. He works at night. We’re like ships crossing, you know?”

  “It’s your apartment, and this man is a sublet, is that what you’re saying?”

  She bobbed her head.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Garry, two Rs, Tenning. That’s what’s printed on his checks.”

  “And where is Mr. Tenning now?” I asked.

  “He’s at his job with a construction company.”

  “He works in construction — at night?” I asked. “You have a cell phone number for him?”

  “No. I used to see him every day for about a year in the Starbucks across the street. Sometimes we’d say hello, share a newspaper. He seemed nice, and when he asked if I knew of a place he could rent cheap . . . well, I needed the money.”

  This child had let a stranger move into her apartment. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to report her to her mother. Instead I asked, “When do you expect Mr. Tenning home?”

  “Around eight thirty in the morning. Like I said, I’ve always left for work by the time he comes in, and now that I’ve got a coffeemaker at work, I don’t go to Starbucks anymore.”

  “We’re going to want to search your apartment.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, pulling her key out of her handbag and offering it to me. “I really want you to. My God, what if I’m sharing my place with a murderer?”

  Chapter 103

  “JUST LIKE MINE,” Cindy said as we walked into Portia Fox’s apartment. The front door opened into a large living room facing the street — roomy, sunny, furnished in office-girl modern.

  There was a galley-style kitchen off the living room, but where Cindy’s dining room was open, Ms. Fox’s had been boxed in with plasterboard walls and a hollow-core door.

  “He stays in there,” Ms. Fox told me.

  “Any windows in his room?” I asked.

  “No. He likes that. That’s what sealed the deal.”

  It was too bad that the dining room had been walled off, because now we’d need either permission from Tenning to enter it or a search warrant. Even though Tenning wasn’t on Fox’s lease, he paid rent to her, and that gave him legal standing.

  I put my hand on the doorknob to Tenning’s room on the off chance that it would turn, but no surprise — the door was locked.

  “You have a friend you can stay with tonight?” I asked Ms. Fox.

  I put a patrolman outside the apartment door while Portia gathered up some things.

  I gave Cindy my keys and told her to go to my place. She didn’t even fight me.

  Then Rich and I spent another two hours questioning the tenants of the Blakely Arms. We returned to the Hall at ten p.m.

  As grim as the squad room was during the day, it was worse at night, the overhead lighting giving off a deadening white illumination. The place smelled of whatever food had been dumped into the trash cans during the day.

  I threw a container of cold coffee into the garbage and turned on my computer as Rich followed suit. I called up a database, and although I was prepared for a long search for Garry Tenning’s life story, everything we needed flashed onto my computer screen in minutes.

  There was an outstanding warrant for Tenning’s arrest. It was a small-potatoes charge of failure to appear in court for a traffic violation, but any arrest warrant was good enough to bring him in.

  And there was more.

  “Garry Tenning is employed by Conco Construction,” Rich said. “Tenning could be patrolling any of a hundred job sites. We won’t be able to locate him until Conco’s office opens in the morning.”

  “He have a license to carry?” I asked.

  Rich’s fingers padded across his keyboard.

  “Yep. Current and up-to-date.”

  Garry Tenning owned a gun.

  Chapter 104

  THE NEXT MORNING a heavy gray torrent came down on San Francisco like one of the forty days of the flood.

  Conklin parked our squad car in a vacant construction zone on Townsend in front of Tower 2 of the Beacon, a residential high-rise with retail shops on the ground floor, including the Starbucks where Tenning and Fox had met.

  On a clear day, we would have had a good view of both the front doors of the six-story redbrick Blakely Arms and the narrow footpath that ran from Townsend along the east side of the building, leading back to the courtyard and rear entrance.

  But today’s rain nearly obliterated our view through the windshield.

  Inspectors Chi and McNeil were in the car behind us, also peering through the downpour. We were scanning the locale for a white man, five six with thinning brown hair, possibly wearing a uniform and probably packing a Colt revolver.

  Unless he changed his pattern, Tenning would stop at the Starbucks, then cross Townsend, arriving “home” sometime between 8:30 and 9:00.

  We were guessing that Tenning would take the footpath to the rear entrance of the building, use a key to the back door, and take the fire stairs, avoiding tenants.

  I watched through the blurred windows as pedestrians in trench coats, their faces shielded by black umbrellas, stopped at the Walgreens, dropped off laundry at Fanta dry cleaners, scurried for the Caltrain.

  Rich and I were both dangerously sleep deprived, so when a man matching Tenning’s description crossed Townsend, no coffee
in hand, I couldn’t be sure if he was our guy — or if I just wanted him to be our guy. Really, really badly.

  “In the gray Windbreaker, black umbrella,” I said.

  A light changed to green, and the stream of traffic obscured our view long enough for the suspect to disappear in the crush of pedestrians on the far side of the street. I thought maybe he’d slipped down the Blakely Arms’ back alley.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I think so,” Conklin said.

  I called Chi, told him we were about to make our move. We let a couple of minutes pass — then Conklin and I put up our collars and made for the front entrance of the Blakely Arms.

  We rode an elevator to the fifth floor. Then I used Portia Fox’s key to unlock her front door without opening it.

  I drew my gun.

  When Chi and McNeil arrived, Conklin breached the door to Fox’s apartment. The four of us stepped inside and checked each of the outer rooms before approaching Tenning’s private space.

  I put my ear to the flimsy door, heard a drawer closing, shoes falling one after the other onto the uncarpeted floor.

  I nodded to Conklin, and he knocked on Tenning’s door.

  “SFPD, Mr. Tenning. We have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Get the hell out of here,” an angry voice called back. “You don’t have a warrant. I know my rights.”

  “Mr. Tenning, you parked your car in a fire zone, remember? August fifteenth of last year. You failed to appear in court.”

  “You want to arrest me for that?”

  “Open up, Mr. Tenning.”

  The doorknob turned, and the door whined open. Tenning’s look of annoyance changed to anger as he saw our guns pointed at his chest.

  He slammed the door in our faces.

  “Kick it in,” I said.

  Conklin kicked twice beside the knob assembly, and the door splintered, swung wide open.

  We took cover on both sides of the door frame, but not before I saw Tenning standing ten feet away, bracing his back against the wall.

  He was holding his Colt .38 in both hands, pointing it at us.

  “You’re not taking me in,” he said. “I’m too tired, and I’m just not up for it.”