Dead Heat: BookShots (Book Shots)

by James Patterson

  He studies my reaction with his amber eyes, as if I’m one of his clients.

  ‘Too late to worry about that now,’ I tell him tersely, and flash him an acerbic smile.

  ‘My point is that people are never satisfied. Neither is Meyer. Paupers spend their lives wanting to be princes, and princes spend their lives waiting to be kings. And once they’re kings, they want to expand their empires. We’re all human. It’s what we do. Lucas Meyer is no different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He wants to be the best ever. He wants to be remembered for a thousand years. The media and the photo shoots are all distractions to him.’

  ‘Distractions that were causing the moods and the anxiety?’

  Jaffari leans forward very slightly.

  ‘Partly,’ he says, as the breeze picks up over the Guanabara Bay and ripples the calm turquoise of the pool. ‘Meyer told me he was dependent on drugs.’

  Jaffari leans back, unburdened.

  ‘What kind of drugs?’

  The psychologist pauses, calculating.

  ‘You understand that under normal circumstances I would not be able to tell you about this?’

  Under normal circumstances, I’d throw you in a cell, I think.

  I repeat the question. Jaffari shifts in his chair and rolls his shoulders back.

  ‘Performance-enhancing,’ he says. ‘Apparently undetectable. Meyer’s supplier was a step ahead of the testers.’

  ‘Did he tell you who was supplying?’

  ‘Of course not. By the time he realised the drugs were causing anxiety and rage, he was hooked. He began to believe that, before Rio, WADA would find a test to detect whatever he was taking. He became obsessed with the idea that he was going to be caught and that he’d ruin his legacy. He was terrified. The closer he got to the Games, the higher the stakes rose and the more paranoid he became.’

  I watch the blurred horizon, the sea washing into the cloudless sky. I think about Meyer, a colossal man reduced to a paranoid wreck, downing pills to end his misery. Jaffari’s theory is possible. Across the table, Paz catches my eye and I remember she’s due to pick up Felipe from school. I get the feeling Jaffari has spilt as much as he’s prepared to share anyway. I thank him for his time and we walk back through the hotel lobby, feeling that we’re leaving with more questions than answers.

  We are both quiet as I ride with Paz to Felipe’s school. I think about Meyer lying comatose in a bed in the Bonsucesso Hospital. I wonder how long they’ll take to test his blood, and whether the doctors might find something that the drug-testers couldn’t. And I wonder what kind of recovery Lucas Meyer might make – if he makes any kind of recovery at all.

  CHAPTER 10

  I WAKE UP at 3 a.m. the following morning, to find the ceiling of our bedroom spinning and Juliana looking with concern into my opening eyes.

  ‘It’s just a dream, Rafael.’

  The familiarity of her voice wraps around me and pulls me back from the night terrors. I realise that she has gently taken hold of my hand. I’m sweating and my heart is thumping.

  When my pulse begins to slow, she says simply, ‘You were calling out, Rafa.’

  I don’t remember the dream, but I know in my bones it was about Gilmore. Juliana fixes me a glass of orange juice and one for herself, and we sit in bed sipping the drink and listening to the stillness of the night. It’s a familiar routine. It happens during the tough cases. The ones that chew me up. Here I am, days from retirement, and I have never cared more.

  ‘Don’t tell Paz.’

  Juliana’s delicate fingers wrap around my forearm.

  ‘Tell her what? That you care?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Just don’t tell her. It won’t help.’

  We turn out the light and the conversation slows until we drift back into sleep. The second half of the night goes better, and by the time I meet Paz the next morning, the nightmare is a distant memory.

  Like a ship weathering the storm, Casas Pedro has ridden the waves and bobbed back to equilibrium. The Olympic revellers from the opening night are gone and a sense of normality has returned. Paz is looking through the menu, even though she’s eaten here a million times. Thiago, son of the famous Pedro, makes his way to our table and shakes my hand.

  ‘Feijoada?’ he asks, a pencil poised above his waiter’s pad.

  I give it a couple of seconds, to pretend that I’m not such a creature of habit.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘With the fried cheese rolls?’

  ‘Is there any other way?’

  Paz rolls her eyes.

  ‘How have you lived so long, Carvalho?’

  Thiago smiles, and so do I.

  Paz orders orange juice and toast. When Thiago is gone, she lights up a cigarette from her crushed pack of Belmonts.

  ‘Sleep well?’

  I look at her through the haze of smoke.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  She takes a lungful of nicotine and leans back in her plastic chair, looking around at the other diners.

  ‘I can’t understand how Gilmore and Meyer would have known each other? They’re not teammates; they play different sports for different countries.’

  ‘Different continents,’ I agree.

  Paz blows out smoke and frowns. Then she slips her fingers under the sleeve of her black vest and pulls at her bra strap, the way she always does when she’s thinking.

  ‘Maybe Jaffari’s right about the performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe Gilmore was taking the same drug and they were both suffering side-effects and confiding in each other. You know, trying to work out how to deal with them?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘How would either of them know that the other one was taking the drug? They wouldn’t advertise it. Jaffari said the main side-effect is paranoia. Therefore they’re not going to talk over the phone about it. No way.’

  Paz takes another drag on her cigarette, narrows her eyes and raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Do you think Jaffari’s right?’

  ‘It’s all speculation,’ I tell her. ‘A lot of assumptions. Who knows if he’s right? Maybe they were plotting to kill the President.’

  ‘With a javelin?’

  ‘Just keeping our options open, Paz.’

  Paz stubs out her cigarette as she spots Thiago approaching with the food. He arrives fully loaded and places toast and juice in front of Paz. The rest is for me.

  ‘Jesus, Rafael.’

  I smile. We eat. The feijoada stew tastes good: chunks of pork and beef falling apart as soon as my fork touches them.

  ‘Maybe it’s a coincidence,’ Paz says suddenly.

  ‘Maybe what is?’

  She points to the table next to us. A man and a woman are sharing breakfast. Early twenties, I’d guess. They’re well dressed. The woman is watching people passing by, the man is thumbing his phone, the way all young people seem to do these days. Then I see what Paz means. The woman is eating toast and drinking juice. The man has a plate of feijoada. Just like us.

  ‘What are the odds?’ Paz asks me. ‘And what are the odds of Gilmore’s attack and Meyer’s attempted suicide, and the phone call between them, all being a coincidence, too? Can we rule that out altogether?’

  I think about it for a minute. I think how much easier my life would be, if I could explain the problem away as one of life’s weird and wonderful quirks. But I can’t.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘We’re ruling out coincidence.’

  Suddenly the table rattles as Paz’s phone vibrates with an incoming call.

  ‘Hello?’

  She listens for twenty seconds, and is already pushing her chair back by the time she hangs up.

  ‘Someone’s shooting at the crowd in the arena,’ she says. ‘We’ve got to go now.’

  PART 3

  WITT AND ZOU

  CHAPTER 11

  THE NATIONAL SHOOTING centre is twenty minutes from Casas Pedro. Fifteen, the way Paz is
driving.

  ‘Oliver Witt,’ Paz says and pushes the pedal closer to the floor. ‘Heard of him?’

  I tell her I haven’t.

  ‘He’s a target-shooter. A good one. Only he’s not aiming at the targets right now, so they’re evacuating the stadium.’

  ‘Have there been any casualties?’

  ‘He’s been shooting into the air, punching holes in the roof. He hasn’t hit anyone yet. Nobody’s quite sure what he’s doing.’

  When we arrive, people are spilling out of every exit and escaping down the long, narrow road that runs behind the shooting galleries. The building stretches far into the distance and is organised in the simplest way imaginable. The exits are on our side of the building. The ranges are on the other. People come in one side, and competitors fire out of the other, except for Witt, who is firing wherever he damn well likes. Every few seconds another shot rings out, and people in the emerging crowd duck and scream.

  Outside the main entrance, a Policia Militar SWAT team is kitting up with enough weapons to start a small war. Whatever Oliver Witt is trying to achieve, he’s on a suicide mission, just as Gilmore had been. I push through the crowd.

  ‘Let’s get in there,’ I tell Paz. Maybe I can get to Witt before the SWAT team. Inside, the place smells of fresh paint and burned cartridges. The corridor is tight, with breeze-block walls closing in on both sides. We’re swimming against a tide of people still trying to escape. I recognise a face in the crowd jostling past me. It’s the blonde woman who was talking to the Russian team at the wrestling venue. I turn on my heel to get a better look as she passes and collide with Paz, who is running fast to catch up with me.

  ‘Did you see that?’

  Paz thrusts a Kevlar vest at me.

  ‘See what?’

  I decide the conversation about the Russian girl can wait.

  ‘What’s the point of this?’ I ask, fastening the protective vest around me. ‘Witt is an Olympic shooter. If he aims at us, a vest won’t help.’

  ‘Try not to annoy him, then.’

  Paz tries to raise a smile, but falters as the sound of gunfire cracks through the air. We scan the arena. The rows of blue seats in front of us are deserted. Coats, bags and food cartons are lying abandoned in the stands.

  ‘Why didn’t the other competitors shoot him?’ Paz asks. ‘They were all armed.’

  Down below, athletes have grabbed what equipment they could and have run. Piles of kit bags and tripods tell the story of a sharp retreat.

  ‘Because they were terrified, probably. They’re not cops, Vitoria. They’re not soldiers. They shoot at paper targets, and the targets don’t usually shoot back.’

  The air cracks again and we drop to the floor.

  ‘Where is he?’

  I can’t see, so I don’t answer. Instead, I stand up and call his name.

  ‘Oliver?’

  My voice echoes around the place. Time is pressing. The SWAT team won’t be much longer. Witt emerges from the shadow of a huge scoreboard. He is at the far end of the gallery, little more than a black dot walking along the green no-man’s-land between the shooting positions and the targets. He’s holding a long-barrelled pistol at his side and raises his arm towards me as he approaches. My blood runs cold, but I hold it together. There’s no point running now.

  ‘Oliver Witt?’

  He keeps walking, and as he comes closer, I can hear him muttering to himself. I remember what Jaffari said about drugs bringing on psychosis, and I wonder if it could explain Witt’s behaviour. He fires off a couple of rounds, smashing two giant TV monitors at the far end of the gallery. Then he aims the gun at me again. I remember reading about Olympic pistols. They have tiny magazines. Five bullets. Maybe six. I can’t remember. I start counting anyway. Two down. Three to go. Or maybe four.

  He’s moved close enough that I can make him out properly. He is not a handsome man. He’s carrying a little too much weight and his face looks podgy. His eyes look a little small and his lips are thin, compared to the roundness of his face. He hasn’t shaved and he looks as though he hasn’t slept.

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ I tell him. ‘We need to talk, because my colleagues are on the way. They’re armed and they’re itching to shoot you – you understand?’

  In front of us, he sinks to his knees, the way a footballer does when he scores a great goal. Except that he’s sobbing, and he turns the shaking barrel of the pistol towards his own temple.

  ‘Maybe I can save them the trouble.’

  A look in his eyes tells me he’s not bluffing. It’s a look of despair. Hopelessness. I sense Paz tensing up beside me, fearing the worst.

  ‘I was the policeman who shot Tim Gilmore,’ I say. I’m not sure why I tell him this, except that it feels like the right thing to do. Maybe it will change something up. Because what could be worse? ‘I don’t want to see another athlete die.’

  A momentary wash of interest floods into Witt’s previously lifeless eyes. It’s enough to make him pause, which is enough to encourage me to keep talking.

  ‘I had to make a choice,’ I say, freewheeling. ‘There was no other way to stop him, and I couldn’t let him carry on. He was out of control. Kind of feels like you’re out of control right now.’

  The more I talk, the more Witt listens. I step out from behind the row of chairs and move slowly down the concrete stairway towards where he is kneeling. I reach the bottom of the flight and sit down on a plastic seat in the front row. I don’t want to walk any closer because I don’t want him to feel threatened. More to the point, I don’t want him to put a bullet in me.

  ‘I can help you,’ I say earnestly. Something about the way he’s holding himself changes. Whatever he had been planning to do, he’s un-planning it in front of my eyes. ‘Tell me what I can do to help?’

  He looks at me, eye-to-eye. Man-to-man.

  ‘And put the gun down, for Christ’s sake,’ I tell him. ‘You’re going to hurt somebody if you’re not careful.’

  I silently pray that he’ll hear the warmth in my tone. Slowly Witt pulls the long pistol away from his temple. His trembling hand arcs gradually away from his head, and for a moment I am looking straight down the barrel into the gun’s black heart. Witt leans slightly to one side and places the gun gently on the floor. I take a lungful of air and realise that I’ve been holding my breath for a long time. The oxygen hits my bloodstream and I feel my muscles unclench.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask him softly. ‘What’s going on?’

  He shakes his head slowly, as if he can make no more sense of it than I can. Then he rolls his shoulders and takes a breath, and slowly brings his gaze up from the floor until he is staring straight at me. I can see a confession in his watery, red-rimmed eyes. Witt knows something, and I’m about to know it, too. But as he draws breath to speak, I watch in horror as at least six of his front teeth disappear, smashed out by a bullet from somewhere over my shoulder. The whip-crack of a firing pistol registers milliseconds afterwards, sharp and violent. It is a perfect shot, entering through his open mouth and severing his spine, forcing bone and sinew and skin and blood to fuse and flail, then push out of the back of his neck.

  For a moment Witt’s body holds, balanced in the praying position, and I can see his final confused and horrified emotions playing across his undamaged face. Then gravity finds a weak spot and pulls him face-down onto the cold green floor. A second shot cracks violently through the air behind me and I hear a second body hit the floor. The dead-weight slap of skin on unforgiving concrete chills my blood. I pull myself from my seat and spin, my heart cold with fear and my head full of Vitoria Paz.

  CHAPTER 12

  DETECTIVE VITORIA PAZ has been my partner for three years. Most mornings she’s outside my house before eight. There isn’t a month goes by that Juliana doesn’t invite her over for Sunday lunch. Felipe, her boy, calls me Uncle Rafa. So when I hear the second shot crack through the air in the arena, I turn fast, dreading what I’m going to see.

  Wha
t I see is the back of Paz’s head. Intact. She’s still on her feet. Just behind her, in the doorway that leads back to the deserted corridor, is the slumped shell of a woman. She is Asian. Chinese, maybe. Paz is already climbing towards her and I debate for a moment whether to follow her or whether to head down towards Oliver Witt. I’m not sure who’s the hero and who’s the villain. Besides, I don’t imagine there will be much I can do for either of them.

  A combination of duty and curiosity forces me up the steep steps behind Paz. I watched Witt die. I saw the back of his skull. I watched the life extinguish from his eyes as he fell. The woman who shot him had been behind me and I have no idea whether she’s alive or dead.

  Paz slows up before she’s reached the shooter, which is a sure sign that she’s beyond help. I understand why when I reach Paz’s shoulder. The Asian woman is crumpled into the doorway. Her legs are splayed out at an unnatural angle, her knees twisted. Only the door jamb has kept her from falling completely. There is a high-powered competition rifle at her feet and a long-barrelled pistol still hanging from her right hand, her finger caught in the trigger.

  ‘Competitor,’ Paz says, straightening an identity lanyard around the woman’s neck.

  ‘That figures,’ I say, looking back over my shoulder at Witt lying dead on the floor from one perfect shot. A pool of blood is gradually blooming around him.

  ‘Chinese,’ Paz reads. ‘Zou Jaihui. Twenty-four years old.’

  Paz takes her time examining the athlete’s head. Her face is intact, but from behind it’s a different story. She’s missing a chunk from the back of her neck and the base of her skull. ‘She shot him with the rifle and killed herself with the pistol,’ Paz says. ‘That much is obvious.’

  I nod.

  ‘So what do you think?’

  Paz pauses.

  ‘Maybe she was competing somewhere else in the arena, heard the commotion and decided to be a hero?’