12th of Never

by James Patterson

  They were cracking crab legs with their hands, putting shells in a bowl.

  “Hang on a sec,” Morales said. She reached over, knocked a bit of crab off his chin.

  Rich grabbed her wrist, kissed her palm, released her hand, and went on with his story. Mackie colored, smiled up at him, and he smiled back at her.

  “So the old-timer is reading Outdoor Life,” Richie said, “and the imam sees him and jumps off the bench and starts running toward the cruiser. Now, understand, this sergeant knows nothing about this. He hears the door open behind him, jerks his head around, sees this guy in Middle Eastern clothes dive into the backseat.”

  Morales was shaking her head and laughing into her napkin.

  Rich said, “And we can see all this going down and there’s nothing we can do. The old-timer goes flying out of the car, screaming that there’s a suicide bomber in his car, and ‘Everyone run.’”

  Morales was laughing with tears in her eyes. “Richie, no, please.”

  “Yeah, and we get the imam out of the backseat and calm the cop down and we get the info and turn it over to the FBI. And they tell us that the intel involved New York City, and we never hear another word about it.

  “And that, since you asked, is the funniest thing that ever happened to me on the job.”

  “Good story.” Morales dried her eyes, looked at him, and said, “This is nice, Rich. I’m getting a little bit crazy about you.”

  He couldn’t stop looking at her. Was he available? He wasn’t sure. It was too soon after his breakup with Cindy to get involved and yet he really, really liked Morales.

  He said, “Let me see a picture of Benjamin.”

  She went for her purse, which was looped onto the back of her chair, opened her wallet, and pushed the photo toward him.

  “Oh, man. He is a good-looking boy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where is his father?”

  “So you want me to tell you about the funniest thing that ever happened to me on the job?”

  She grinned.

  He said, “Come here.”

  He pulled her into a hug, her hair tickling his nose, her arm going around him, both of them still sitting at the table. He kissed the top of her head and said, “We’ve got time to get into the deep stuff.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I want this to take a lot of time.”

  Richie held her, thought how good this felt, and that he couldn’t wait for more.

  Chapter 92

  IT WAS THE end of another torturous night in the Saint Francis pediatric oncology wing. As light slashed through the windows, Joe and I were still waiting for something good to happen. Dr. Sebetic and his colleagues had stuck pins and needles into our daughter, ran her small body through imaging machines, sent her fluids out to labs, but nothing had yet been concluded. I’m a good interrogator, but I got nothing from the medical staff.

  And so two days after we checked Julie into Saint Francis, the death sentence that would not quit still hung over her precious head.

  Right then, Joe was sleeping beside me in our private hospital room and Julie was dozing fitfully in her incubator, within arm’s reach of the bed.

  Neither of them stirred when my phone rang.

  Brady said, “How’re you all doing, Boxer?”

  He actually said “ya’ll,” his voice sugared with a trace of drawl from his years in Florida.

  I told him there was still no news and then asked, “You need something, Lieutenant?”

  “Someone wants to talk to you. Here’s a hint. He’s with the FBI. A very big cheese. I’ve been told he’s got a private line to Washington in his pocket.”

  Brady patched me through to Parker’s phone, after which Parker and I went a few rounds. As before, Parker told me that if I didn’t help him with this world-class dirtbag, Randy Fish, the case would always be half closed, half solved, and the remains of the dead girls would never be buried in their family plots.

  That would be a crime, to be sure, and that’s the part that always got to me.

  “I ran the new names he gave me through Missing Persons and they’re all Fish’s type. Every one of them is a dark-haired young female going to college on the West Coast. We’ve got another girl from San Francisco, Debra Andie Lane, eighteen. We had never connected her to Fish until he told me he’d killed her.”

  “How exactly am I going to help you, Ron? You’ve got the FBI at your disposal. I’m a midlevel homicide cop. On leave. And all he’s done is mess with me.”

  “The fish man asks for you. All the time. He has conversations with you when you’re nowhere around. You can help with the force of your personality. By withholding and giving praise. Dial it up, cut it off; that’ll work with him.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Yes, if there’s any chance in the world.”

  “Well, thanks for your faith in me, but I’m done with the fish man. Please. Cross me off your call list until further notice.”

  I told Parker that yes, I was sure, said good-bye, and flung myself back onto the bed.

  Joe opened his eyes, ran his hand over his stubble. “Done with what?”

  I told him.

  He rolled toward me, put his arm over my waist. “Give it some thought.”

  “No.”

  What was there to think about? I had to stay near Julie. I had to be right here if a life-or-death decision had to be made.

  “Julie is getting the best of care, Lindsay. I’ll be here all day and we’ll both be here all night. I’ll call you, I promise, the second I know anything. You don’t function well when you can’t take action. You’re driving yourself crazy and I hope you’ll understand that I love you and I say this in the kindest possible way. You’re driving me a little crazy, too.”

  “Really.”

  “Randy Fish is a very big deal, and whatever you can do to clear the case, that’s what you should do.”

  We argued in whispers for several minutes, but when Joe talked about giving peace of mind to those lost girls’ families, he pushed my buttons, as Ron Parker had done.

  “You’re going to nail him this time,” Joe said. “I just know it.”

  “You know me, Joe. I’m sure as hell going to try.”

  Chapter 93

  I MET CONKLIN up on Bryant, in front of the Hall. He had the keys to a squad car and also an extra coffee and a chocolate brownie, which I gladly accepted.

  “Where to?” he asked, folding his lanky frame behind the steering wheel.

  It was about noon when we got on the freeway. A cold front was forming, and the marine layer filled the roadbed from shoulder to shoulder. I knew every twist, turn, and lane change by heart, and so the slow drivers and the fog didn’t worry me.

  I just wanted to get there, let Randy Fish do his thing, and get back to my family.

  Two hours later, under a dull afternoon sun, we parked in the Atwater penitentiary’s north lot. Conklin and I met Ron Parker at the front gate, then a group of us trudged down cement steps, through echoing corridors, through a gauntlet of profanity-spewing prisoners, and at last confronted Randolph Fish, who was seated behind a triple layer of Plexiglas.

  Fish looked bad—bruised, small, and broken. If you didn’t know better, you’d think that he was as dangerous as a sparrow.

  “Tell me about Debra Lane,” I said.

  Fish didn’t look at Parker or Conklin or the menacing, muscle-bound guards.

  “Debby Lane,” he said to me, “was a cute girl, but she had no fight in her, Lindsay. She wouldn’t talk to me. She didn’t bargain. She just screamed until I couldn’t take it.”

  I stared at him. I’m pretty sure my face was frozen in horror as Fish complained about his teenage victim.

  “She just screamed and screamed,” Fish said again. “I hardly touched her. I wanted to, but I just ended up cutting off her air. She was a bad choice, I have to admit.”

  Conklin was also looking at Fish, but without expression. However, out of the killer’
s sight, my partner was clenching his fists, punching his thighs. I knew he was flashing on the remains of Fish’s victims, wanting to do something illegal to get Fish’s head on straight. Knock out a few teeth. Shatter a few bones.

  Well, that’s what I was thinking, anyway.

  Fish told me, “I locked up Debby’s body in a self-storage facility out by Pier 96. I was going to dispose of her later, but you changed my plans for me, Lindsay. You remember. You caught me outside the movie theater. Where you and I met for the first time.”

  “Why should we believe you?” I said. “You’re a good liar, Randy. First class. In fact, when have you ever told the truth?”

  “It’s in my best interest to help you, Lindsay. Because I want something—and telling you the truth is how I’m going to get it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to prove to myself that I can change.”

  I looked into his deep brown eyes, something a lot of women had done while begging for their lives. Despite Ron Parker’s magical belief in me, I had no leverage. Fish would take us to Debra Lane’s body. Or he wouldn’t.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Chapter 94

  WE WERE BRINGING up the rear of the Randy Fish motorcade, the cherubic serial killer and his armed guards bumping along ahead of us on the patchy road.

  I swore as our right front wheel slammed into a pothole on Amador Street, jarring my teeth and snapping my last nerve.

  Conklin muttered, “Sorry.”

  A thermos rolled off the front seat into the foot well, and as I bent to pick it up my partner jerked the wheel and I banged my head into the underside of the glove compartment.

  “Hey!” I said.

  “The road is like Swiss cheese, Linds. I’m doing my best.”

  “Do better.”

  It was getting late, sometime after five, and as the sun bled out, I felt a strong pull to be with Joe and Julie. Yesterday at this time, I’d been checking in with Martha’s dogsitter, then heading down to the basement cafeteria for mac and cheese with Joe.

  My heart and soul were at Saint Francis.

  But I was also being pulled toward a self-storage locker down the street, on the outskirts of nowhere. We hit a good length of road and Conklin gunned the engine. We sped past a rendering plant on our right and a cement factory on our left. Straight ahead, a spotlighted American flag flew at the entrance to the USA U-Store-It facility.

  On Parker’s tail, we took a right turn into the asphalt-paved lot lined with rows of garage-type storage units, with their alternating red, white, and blue roll-up doors. We braked next to Parker’s SUV, in front of a red unit marked with the number 23.

  We got out of the car and watched as the transport van containing the prison guards and a chained and shackled Randy Fish was unlocked and unloaded.

  Parker tacked a notice to the wall, then took a bolt cutter to the padlock and rolled up the door. Fish swung his head around, saw me, then grinned and said, “Hey, Lindsay. It’s great that you’re here. This is going to be a very big moment for you.”

  I looked at him, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. I might tell him that he disgusted me, that the next time I saw him, I hoped he’d be strapped to a gurney, looking at the people whose daughters he had killed, parents who had come to witness his last breath.

  Randy Fish didn’t read my mind, or, if he did, he didn’t care what I was thinking. He looked excited, but under control. Like one of those guys on the show Storage Wars who had just won an abandoned unit at auction for cheap, and suspected that a ‘64 Corvette was inside, all its original parts in mint condition.

  I followed Fish’s gaze, but it was getting too dark to see into the shadows.

  Conklin left my side, turned on our headlights, and the storage unit brightened. Everyone turned to face the locker as if an alarm had gone off.

  No one coughed or fidgeted or said a word.

  We were all waiting for Randy Fish to produce the body of a teenage girl who wouldn’t stop screaming.

  Chapter 95

  RANDY FISH STEPPED forward, his chained hands in front of him, sweeping his gaze from side to side as he took in the contents of the storage unit.

  I saw dinged-up, mass-produced furnishings; a well-used desk; a table with a metal top; a rolled-up carpet; and stacks of cardboard cartons, about a hundred of them, each about eighteen inches long by fourteen inches high and wide. What I didn’t see was a freezer, or a fifty-five-gallon drum, or anything big enough to hold a body. Even the carpet was too thin to conceal a person. I didn’t smell decomp, either.

  “I remember now. There’s a map in one of those,” Randy said, indicating the stack of boxes with his chin.

  “Map?” Parker said. The anger in his voice was almost palpable. “You said you put Debra Lane in here.”

  “I was confused. It’s like a dusty attic inside my head, Ronnie. I thought ‘body.’ Now I’m thinking ‘map.’”

  “Map to what? Where’s this map?”

  “Those cartons,” said Fish. “My books are in the boxes and the map to where I left the girls is in one of my books.”

  “You’ve got three seconds to tell me which carton, which book,” Parker said. “Or I’m gonna cancel this outing and send you back to the smallest, darkest hole in the block. No privileges, Fish, and that includes no phone calls, no access to vending machines, no mail, and especially no books—for whatever remains of your miserable life.”

  Fish said, “Sweet-talking me isn’t going to help, Ronnie. I don’t know which box. I was in a coma for two years, remember? I could have some brain damage. Maybe if I can look at the labels on the boxes, it’ll come to me.”

  Parker stepped behind Fish, hoisted him by his elbows, and manhandled him into the unit.

  “I need more light,” Parker yelled.

  Six squad cars and cruisers rolled into the storage facility. Conklin waved them in and organized them in a semicircle, with their headlights pointing toward Randy Fish’s storage locker.

  Car radios chattered, doors opened and closed, cops leaned against their vehicles to watch what might be an extraordinary event in the history of law enforcement.

  Conklin followed Parker and Fish into the locker, swept a box of pots and pans off a table. Then he began taking down cartons, putting them on the table, and ripping each one open. I joined Conklin, took out books, turned them upside down, opened them, shook them out, dropped them to the floor.

  I glanced at Fish. He looked like a guest at a wedding, wearing a nice smile as he watched the proceedings. I got the feeling that even now, he was manipulating the police, manipulating me.

  “I drew the map on the back of a sales slip, put it between pages in a book,” Fish said. “I think that’s what I did.”

  I got into a good rhythm—opened a book, shook it out, dropped it, repeat. But I didn’t lose sight of Fish, and every time I edged near the cheap pine desk, a muscle twitched in his temple.

  Conklin reached for another carton of books.

  “Hang on,” I said to my partner.

  I went to the desk, placed my hand on it, and said to Randy Fish, “Am I getting warm?”

  “Warm doesn’t cut it, Lindsay. I’ll let you know when you’re smokin’.”

  I pulled at the desk drawers, all of which opened except for the one on the lower right. That drawer was locked. I rifled through the open drawers, came up with nothing. Then Conklin went to the squad car. He brought back a short crowbar and jimmied open the locked drawer.

  I went right at that file drawer. It was full of old records, songs from the fifties and sixties. I took out the records, looked at each one in the light of the high beams, peeked into the sleeves, then passed them to Conklin so that he could take another look.

  Fish was watching me and he was humming a tune, one of the “oldies but goodies” that my mom used to sing when cooking dinner or driving us in the car.

  Parker said, “Shut up,” and gave Fish a shot to the back of his head wit
h the heel of his palm. Fish fell at my feet just as I put my hands on the last record in the drawer.

  The old 45 was by the crooner Johnny Mathis. Fish had been humming the song—“The Twelfth of Never.”

  The vinyl record was inside a sleeve. I pulled it out and a piece of paper came out with it and fluttered to the ground. I reached for the paper—a U-Store-It receipt with a rough map of the West Coast inked on the back.

  As I bent down, I was eye to eye with the Fish Man. I held up the map so he could see it.

  “Am I smokin’ now, Randy?”

  “You’re red-hot,” said the Fish Man.

  Chapter 96

  FISH HADN’T GIVEN me anything, but by humming “The Twelfth of Never,” he’d let me know that the map to his dump sites was inside the record sleeve.

  I felt a flutter of hope, even elation. Good, Randy. Prove to yourself that you can change.

  But now, Fish was laughing. Had he taken us on another flier into his twisted mind? Was he screwing with me again?

  I asked him, “What’s the joke, Randy?”

  “I’m just enjoying myself,” he said. “It’s okay for me to have a few laughs, isn’t it, Lindsay? You don’t have to play bad cop with me. I’m your pal.”

  Parker hauled the killer to his feet, and he wasn’t too gentle about it. Since Parker was doing a perfect bad cop, he’d left me free to wonder what that 1950s love song meant to Fish. “The Twelfth of Never” was about a man’s love for a woman. I remembered one of the first lines.

  I need you, oh my darling, like roses need rain.

  Did Fish love an actual person? Or was this psycho-killer love? Did Randy Fish “love” women so much that he had to be the last man to touch them, talk to them, own them …

  I straightened out the map Fish had drawn on the back of the receipt. Conklin came up behind me and said, “So let’s take a look at the latest bullshit.”

  Parker handed Fish off to one of the uniformed cops and joined us in the huddle. We scrutinized the x’s and tiny handwritten notations. I was pointing out previously unknown locations where bodies might have been dumped—when something inexplicable happened.