Women's Murder Club [06] The 6th Target

by James Patterson

  “Start talking, Blondie,” he said.

  I rolled toward him and put my arm over his chest, tucked my head under his jaw. “I can’t take this, Joe.”

  “I know, I know how you feel. I want to move here, but it’s not the right time.”

  My breathing slowed as he talked about the current state of the war, next year’s elections, the bombings in major cities, and the focus on Homeland Security.

  At some point, I stopped listening. I got out of bed and put on a robe.

  “Are you coming back?” Joe asked.

  “There it is,” I said. “I’m always asking myself that question about you.”

  Joe started to protest, but I said, “Let me talk.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed, said, “As good as this can be, that’s how bad it is because I can’t count on you, Joe. I’m too old for jack-in-the-box love.”

  “Linds —”

  “You know I’m right. I don’t know when I’ll be seeing you, if I’ll reach you when I call. Then you’re here, and then you’re gone, and I’m left behind, missing you.

  “We have no time to relax together, be normal, have a life. We’ve talked and talked about your moving here, but we both know it’s impossible.”

  “Lindsay, I swear —”

  “I can’t wait for the next administration or the war to be over. Do you understand?”

  He was sitting up now, legs over the side of the bed, so much love in his face I had to turn away.

  “I love you, Lindsay. Please, let’s not fight. I have to leave in the morning.”

  “You have to leave now, Joe,” I heard myself say. “It kills me to say this, but I don’t want any more well-intentioned promises,” I said. “Let’s end this, okay? We had a great time. Please? If you love me, let me go.”

  After Joe kissed me good-bye, I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling for a long time, tears soaking my pillow. I wondered what the hell I had done.

  Chapter 40

  IT WAS SATURDAY NIGHT, almost midnight. Cindy was sleeping in the bedroom of her new apartment at the Blakely Arms — alone — when she was awoken by a woman shouting her lungs out in Spanish on a floor somewhere over her head.

  A door slammed, there were running footsteps, then a hinge creaked and another door slammed, this one closer to Cindy’s apartment.

  Maybe it was the door to the stairwell?

  She heard more shouting, this time down on the street. Men’s voices rose up to her third-floor windows, then there was the sound of scuffling.

  Cindy was having thoughts she’d never had in her old apartment building.

  Was she safe here?

  Was the great buy she got on this place a poor bargain after all?

  She threw back the covers, left her bedroom, and went out to her new airy living room and foyer. She peeked through the peephole — saw no one. She twisted the knob of the dead bolt, left-right-left-right, before going to her desk.

  She ran her hands through her hair, pulled it up into a band. Jeez. Her hands were shaking.

  Maybe it wasn’t just the nightlife in the building. Maybe she was giving herself the creeps because of the story she was writing about child abduction. Since Henry Tyler’s phone call, she’d been surfing the Web, reading more than she’d ever known about the thousands of children who were abducted in the United States every year.

  Most of those kids were taken by family members, found, and returned. But a few hundred children every year were strangled, stabbed, or buried alive by their abductors.

  And the majority of those kids were murdered within the first hours of their abduction.

  Statistically it was far more likely that Madison had been grabbed by an extortionist than a child-molesting, murdering freak. The only problem with that scenario was that it left a huge, chilling question in her mind.

  Why hadn’t the Tylers been contacted about paying a ransom?

  Cindy was halfway back to her bedroom when the doorbell rang. She froze, heart jumping inside her chest. She didn’t know a soul in this building.

  So who could be ringing her doorbell?

  The bell rung again, insistently.

  Clutching her robe, Cindy went to the door and peered through the peephole. She couldn’t believe who was peering back.

  It was Lindsay.

  And she looked like hell.

  Chapter 41

  I WAS ABOUT TO TURN AND GO when Cindy opened the door in her pink PJs, her curls rubber banded into a pom-pom on the top of her head. She was looking at me as if she’d just seen the dead.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Me? I’m fine, Lindsay. I live here, remember? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I would’ve called,” I said, hugging my friend, using the moment to try to get a grip on myself. But clearly Cindy had scanned and memorized the shock on my face. And frankly she didn’t look so good herself. “But I didn’t know I was coming until I was here.”

  “Come in, and for God’s sake, sit down,” she said, staring at me anxiously as I made for the couch.

  Cardboard cartons were stacked against the walls, and layers of Bubble Wrap wafted around my feet.

  “What’s happened, Lindsay? As Yuki would say, ‘You look like you’ve been dragged through a duck’s ass.’ ”

  I managed a weak laugh. “That’s about how I feel.”

  “What can I get you? Tea? Maybe something stronger.”

  “Tea would be great.”

  I fell back onto the sofa cushions, and a few minutes later, Cindy returned from the kitchen, pulled up a footstool to sit on, and handed me a mug. “Talk to me,” she said.

  No joke, Cindy was a perfect paradox: all pink ruffles and curls on the outside, never leaving home without lipstick and the perfect shoes, but inside that girlie-girl was a bulldog who would get a grip on your leg and hang on until you had no choice but to tell her what she wanted to know.

  I suddenly felt idiotic. Just seeing Cindy changed my mood for the better, and I no longer wanted to open myself up and talk about Joe.

  “I wanted to see your apartment.”

  “Give. Me. A. Break.”

  “You’re relentless —”

  “Blame it on my choice of career.”

  “And proud of it.”

  “Ab-solutely.”

  “Bitch.” I found myself laughing.

  “Go ahead. Get it off your chest,” she said. “Give me your best shot.”

  “Calling you a bitch was my best shot.”

  “Okay, then. What gives, Linds?”

  I covered my face with a throw pillow, shutting out the light, feeling myself tumbling down. I sighed. “I broke up with Joe.”

  Cindy grabbed the pillow away from my face.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Be nice, okay, Cindy? Or I’ll throw up on your rug.”

  “Okay, okay, so why did you do that? Joe’s smart. He’s gorgeous. He loves you. You love him. What’s wrong with you?”

  I pulled my knees up and hugged them tight with my arms. Cindy sat down next to me on the couch. She put an arm around me.

  I felt as if I were holding on to a skinny tree while being lashed by a tidal wave. I’d been crying so much lately. I thought I might be losing my mind.

  “Take your time, honey. I’m here. The night is young. Sort of.”

  So I gave in, blurted out the story about my totally embarrassing trip to DC and how I felt about the whole mood-swinging affair with Joe. “It really, really hurts, Cindy. But I did the right thing.”

  “It’s not just because you got your feelings hurt when he wasn’t home and you saw that girl?”

  “No. Hell no.”

  “Oh, God, Linds, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Lie down here. Close your eyes.”

  Cindy pushed me gently onto my side, put a pillow under my head. A moment later, a blanket floated over me. The light went off, and I felt Cindy tuck me in.

  “It’s not over, Linds. Trust me. It’s not over.”


  “You’re wrong once in a while, you know,” I muttered.

  “Wanna bet?” Cindy kissed my cheek. And then I was swept along by whatever dream featured me in a starring role. I sunk into a deep hole of agonized sleep, waking only as sunlight streamed through Cindy’s bare windows.

  I forced myself to sit up, swung my legs off the couch, saw the note from Cindy on the coffee table saying she’d gone out for rolls and coffee.

  Then the day hit me for real.

  Jacobi and Macklin were having a staff meeting this morning at eight. Every cop on the Tyler-Ricci case would be there — except me.

  I scribbled a note to Cindy, stuck my feet in my shoes, and raced out the door.

  Chapter 42

  JACOBI ROLLED HIS EYES when I edged past him, slipped into a seat in the back of the squad room. Lieutenant Macklin gave me a short, glancing stare as he summarized the meeting so far. In the absence of any information regarding the whereabouts of Madison Tyler and Paola Ricci, we were assigned to interview registered sex offenders.

  “Patrick Calvin,” I read from our list as Conklin and I got into the squad car. “Convicted sex offender, recently released on probation after serving time for the sexual abuse of his own daughter. She was six when it happened.”

  Conklin started the car. “There’s no understanding that kind of garbage. You know what? I don’t want to understand it.”

  Calvin lived in a twenty-unit, U-shaped stucco apartment building at Palm and Euclid on the fringe of Jordan Park, about a mile and a half from where Madison Tyler lived and played. A blue Toyota Corolla registered to Calvin was parked on the street.

  I smelled bacon cooking as we crossed the open patio area at the front entrance, climbed the outside stairs, knocked on Calvin’s aggressively red-painted door.

  The door opened, and a tousle-haired white male no more than five foot three stood in the doorway, wearing plaid pajamas and white socks.

  He looked about fifteen years old, making me want to ask, “Is your father home?” But the faint gray shadow on his jowls and the prison tats on his knuckles gave Pat Calvin away as a former inmate of our prison system.

  “Patrick Calvin?” I said, showing him my badge.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m Sergeant Boxer. This is Inspector Conklin,” I said. “We have a few questions. Mind if we come in?”

  “Yes, I mind. What do you want?”

  Conklin has an easy way about him, a trait I frankly envy. I’d seen him interrogate murdering psychos with a kind of sweetness, good cop to the max. He’d also taken care of that poor cat at the Alonzo murder scene.

  “Sorry, Mr. Calvin,” Conklin said now. “I know it’s early on a Sunday morning, but a child is missing and we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Get used to this, Mr. Calvin,” I said. “You’re on parole —”

  “You want to search my house, is that it?” Calvin shouted. “This is a goddamned free country, isn’t it? You don’t have a warrant,” Calvin spat. “You have shit.”

  “You’re getting awful steamed up for an innocent man,” Conklin said. “Makes me wonder, you know?”

  I stood by as Conklin explained that we could call Calvin’s parole officer, who would have no problem letting us in. “Or we could get a warrant,” Conklin said. “Have a couple of cruisers come screaming up to the curb, show your neighbors what kind of guy you are.”

  “So . . . mind if we come in?” I asked.

  Calvin countered my scowl with a dark look of his own. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said.

  And he stepped aside.

  Chapter 43

  CALVIN’S PLACE WAS SPARSELY DECORATED in early Ikea: lightweight blond wood. There was a shelf of dolls over the TV — big ones, little ones, baby dolls, and dolls in fancy dresses.

  “I bought them for my daughter,” Calvin snarled, dropping into a chair. “In case she can ever visit me.”

  “What is she now? Sixteen?” Conklin asked.

  “Shut up,” Calvin said. “Okay? Just shut up.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Conklin said before he disappeared into Calvin’s bedroom. I took a seat on the sofa and whipped out my notebook.

  I shook off the image of a young girl, now a teen, who’d had the terrible misfortune to have this shit as a father, and asked Calvin if he’d ever seen Madison Tyler.

  “I saw her on the news last night. She’s very cute. You could even say edible. But I don’t know her.”

  “Okay, then,” I said, gritting my teeth, feeling a sharp pang of fear for Madison. “Where were you yesterday morning at nine a.m.?”

  “I was watching TV. I like to stay on top of the current cartoon shows so I can talk to little girls on their level, you know what I mean?”

  At five ten, I’m a head taller than Calvin and in better shape, too. Violent fantasies were roiling in my mind, just as they had when I’d arrested Alfred Brinkley. I was stressing too much, too much . . .

  “Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?”

  “Sure. Ask Mr. Happy,” Pat Calvin said, patting the fly of his pajama bottoms, grabbing himself there. “He’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  I snapped. I grabbed Calvin’s collar, bunching up the flannel tight around his neck. His hands flew out as I lifted him off his chair, thumped him against the wall.

  Dolls scattered.

  Conklin came out of the bedroom as I was about to thump Calvin again. My partner pretended that he didn’t see anything crazy in my face and leaned casually against the door frame.

  I was alarmed at how close I was to the edge. What I didn’t need now was a complaint for police brutality. I released Calvin’s pajamas.

  “Nice photo collection you have, Mr. Calvin,” Conklin said conversationally. “Pictures of little kids playing in Alta Plaza Park.”

  I shot a look at Conklin. Madison and Paola were snatched from the street just outside that park.

  “Did you see my camera?” Calvin said defiantly. “Seven million megapixels and a 12x zoom. I shot those pictures from a block away. I know the rules. And I didn’t break any of them.”

  “Sergeant,” Conklin said to me, “there’s a little girl in one of those pictures, could be Madison Tyler.”

  I got Jacobi on the phone, told him that Patrick Calvin had photos we should look at more closely.

  “We need two patrolmen to sit on Calvin while Conklin and I come in to write up a warrant,” I said.

  “No problem, Boxer. I’ll send a car. But I’ll have Chi take care of the warrant and bring Calvin in.”

  “We can handle it, Jacobi,” I said.

  “You could,” Jacobi said, “but a child matching Madison Tyler’s description was just called in from Transbay security.”

  “She’s been seen?”

  “She’s there right now.”

  Chapter 44

  THE TRANSBAY TERMINAL on First and Mission is an open-air, rusty-roofed, concrete-block shed. Inside the cinder-block shell, half-dead fluorescent lights sputter overhead, throwing faint shadows on the homeless souls who camp out in this oppressive place so that they can use the scant facilities.

  Even in daytime this terminal is creepy. I felt an urgent need to find Madison Tyler and get her the hell out of here.

  Conklin and I jogged down the stairs to the terminal’s lower level, a dark, dingy space dominated by a short wall of ticket booths and a security area.

  Two black women wearing navy-blue pants and shirts with PRIVATE SECURITY SERVICES patches sewn to their pockets sat behind the desk.

  We flashed our badges and were buzzed in.

  The security office was glassed in on two sides, painted grimy beige on the other two, and furnished with two desks, unmatched file cabinets, three exit doors with keypad access, and two vending machines.

  And there, sitting beside the stationmaster’s desk, was a little girl with silky yellow hair falling over her collar.


  Her blue coat was unbuttoned. She had on a red sweater over blue pants. And she wore shiny red shoes.

  My heart did a little dance. We’d found her.

  Oh, my God, Madison was safe!

  The stationmaster, a big man, fortysomething with gray hair and matching mustache, stood up to introduce himself.

  “I’m Fred Zimmer,” he said, shaking our hands. “And we found this little lady wandering all by herself about fifteen minutes ago, weren’t you, honey? I couldn’t get her to talk to me.”

  I put my hands on my knees and looked into the little girl’s face. She’d been crying, and I couldn’t get her to look me in the eyes.

  Her cheeks were dirt streaked and her nose was running. Her lower lip was swollen and she had a scrape along the side of her left cheek. I threw Richie a look. My relief at seeing Madison alive was swamped by a new concern for what had been done to her.

  She looked so traumatized that I was having a hard time matching up her face to the image of the little dazzler I’d seen playing the piano on videotape.

  Conklin stooped to the little girl’s level.

  “My name is Richie.” He smiled. “Is your name Maddy?”

  The child looked at Conklin, opened her mouth, and said, “Mahhh-dy.”

  I thought, This little girl has been scared to death.

  I took her small hands in mine. They were cold to the touch, and she stared right through me.

  “Call EMS,” I said softly, trying not to frighten her further. “Something’s wrong with this child.”

  Chapter 45

  CONKLIN AND I WERE PACING RESTLESSLY outside the hospital’s emergency room when the Tylers rushed in and embraced us like family.

  I was feeling high. One part of this frightening, god-awful story was over. And I was hoping that right after she saw her parents, Madison would come back to herself. Because I had some questions for her — starting with, “Did you get a good look at the guys who kidnapped you?”

  “She was sleeping when we last looked in on her,” I told the Tylers. “Dr. Collins just stopped by and said he’ll be back in . . . let’s see . . . about ten minutes.”