12th of Never

by James Patterson

  Blood oozed through his prison jumpsuit. The weight and pressure of the engine block on his lap was likely acting as a lower-torso tourniquet, keeping Fish from bleeding out.

  “Ben?” he asked me.

  “He’s at the hospital.”

  Tears shot out of Fish’s eyes, ran together with the blood on his cheeks, dropped from his chin. Christ. I thought psychopaths didn’t have feelings. I reached over and tugged at the oxygen mask so that it covered his nose and mouth. He took a ragged breath.

  I felt his life leaving him. It didn’t take an MD to see that he was going to die, right here, right now.

  I spoke to him over the noises on the street; men calling to each other, winches and engines grinding and roaring, sirens near and far.

  “I have to ask you some questions.”

  He nodded.

  “Who is Mackie to you?”

  I moved the mask.

  “Ben is. Our. Boy.” He sighed.

  “Yours and Mackie’s?”

  He nodded.

  My thoughts scattered yet again and I did my best to corral them into a cohesive pattern.

  If Fish wasn’t lying or fantasizing, he’d known Morales for at least four years. Mackie Morales was a college girl, then and now. She was dark-haired, slim, definitely his type.

  But instead of killing her, he’d fallen in love with her? Was that right? And they’d had a child together? And then, while he was in a coma, she had gotten an internship at the SFPD?

  If all that was true, Mackie Morales was a plant.

  She’d embedded herself in our squad, the squad that had brought Fish down.

  The idea was within my grasp, but it was slippery and I thought there was more to it that I didn’t get at all.

  I held the mask for Fish so he could get oxygen to his brain. I wanted to know about him and Mackie, how long the escape had been planned, and why, if Fish could love a woman, he had killed so many women so viciously.

  But Stone Phillips wasn’t here and there was no time to do the in-depth Dateline interview. Shouts got louder as a lot of men and machines converged outside the car.

  The rescue team had returned with power tools to extract Randolph Fish from the wreck of the Ford Crown Vicky. It was highly likely that when the engine was lifted, Fish’s blood pressure would plummet and he would die.

  I moved the mask away and said, “Randy? I’ve got something important to tell you. Are you listening to me?”

  Chapter 103

  RANDY FISH HAD all the starch and vigor of a sock puppet. His chin rested on his collarbone. His hands lay limp on the engine block. Could he still hear me?

  “Randy? Are you with me, bud?”

  I called his name several times, and then he exhaled a groan.

  “Randy, listen to me. I’m sorry to have to give you some bad news. Your injuries are severe. Your lower body, your internal organs are crushed. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Your injuries are not survivable.”

  He took in a breath, spoke on the exhale.

  “Need doc …”

  “Doctors want me to tell you that you have very little time.”

  A moment passed and Fish didn’t inhale. Was he still alive? Or had he wandered down the tunnel toward the light?

  “I’m tough,” he said.

  He was making a joke as he faced death, with thoughts of loved ones who might also be dying or dead. I thought of Ben, the little boy who’d survived the horrific crash, and I felt sorry for Randy Fish.

  Which pissed me off.

  Fish was a sexual predator who had maimed, tortured, raped, and murdered his victims, getting off on causing as much pain as he could. He had never confessed and had never expressed remorse. He was filth, a heinous psycho, one of the worst.

  But I needed him to trust me, to tell me where he’d hidden the unrecovered bodies. It wasn’t easy to find the right words.

  “A miracle could happen, Randy. No one is giving up. But to be honest, you probably only have a few minutes left.”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them.

  “You want to get right with people who love you, Randy. You want your son to know that you helped the parents of those dead girls—”

  “Sonoma,” he said thickly.

  “What about Sonoma?”

  “Dow off …”

  Dow off? What was this? Had his mind veered to the stock market?

  Fish’s head dropped forward even farther. He was blacking out, but I squeezed his arm and I think the pain brought him back. He tried hard to give me answers. He spoke in broken sentences punctuated by moans, and somehow, using the GPS on my phone, asking questions that required one-word answers, I was able to get Fish to string together enough words to give me a picture and a map.

  There was an abandoned typewriter factory, Dow Office Machines, in Sonoma. Fish had dumped the girls in the woods behind the machine shop.

  I named the murdered girls whose bodies had not been found and he nodded at each one, but when I said “Sandra Brody,” he shook his head no and then said, “Not mine.”

  A week ago, about eight of us had bushwhacked through the woods with cadaver dogs, dug up old deer antlers, and had our hopes raised, then shattered, so that Fish could smell fresh air.

  He’d been messing with us then.

  Was he screwing with me now?

  “Don’t lie to me. That girl is still missing. She’s just your type. You told us that you had killed her. I need to find her body, Randy. Give her back to us. I’m asking you, please.”

  Deputy Chief Robbie Wilson appeared in the frame of the windshield. He said, “We’re getting you out, Mr. Fish. This could hurt, so brace yourself.”

  Wilson gave me a look that seemed to say, “Sergeant, you brace yourself.”

  The hydraulic cutters chomped through the passenger-door hinges. Heavily gloved hands wrenched the door away. A hook came in from above and Wilson positioned it under the engine block.

  I heard Ron Parker calling, “Wait. Wait.”

  He ran as if he were in a steeplechase, clearing hurdles of twisted metal as he galloped toward the car. The hydraulic winch whined. Metal clanked as the hook got purchase and five hundred pounds of steel began to rise.

  Fish’s face stretched in pain. He looked at me, said, “Love you. Mackie.”

  And then he died.

  Parker was right outside the wreckage when it happened. He was panting, leaning forward, his hands on his knees.

  “I had more questions for him.”

  “Sorry,” I told him. “He took the express train to hell.”

  “Shit. I didn’t get to wish him a good trip,” he said.

  I put my fingers on Fish’s eyelids and closed them. The last person he’d seen in this life was me. I didn’t want him to look at me anymore.

  I was done with Randolph Fish. Done.

  Chapter 104

  RICH CONKLIN BRACED himself inside the rear of the ambulance as it sped over the slick streets toward Metropolitan Hospital. He kept his eyes on Mackie Morales, who looked like she’d been catapulted into a brick wall.

  Air bags deploy at about a hundred miles an hour, and Mackie had gotten the full blunt force of the bag. She had also been whipsawed during and after the collision as the car was dragged along 3rd Street.

  She hadn’t regained consciousness, even though they were traveling in a stream of screaming sirens, the ambulance jerking and swerving around traffic.

  Right now, she was immobilized by a C-Spine collar and strapped to a long board to protect her head, neck, and spine. She could have brain damage, internal bleeding, broken bones—all of it was possible.

  Conklin reached over and squeezed her hand, got no response. He wanted to hold her, tell her she was going to be okay, and somehow make that be true.

  But even as he worried about Mackie, he was completely mystified as to why she had been driving the killer’s getaway car. Had she fired the flashbang into the storage unit? Was she the cop who had bundled
Fish into the passenger seat? Why would she do that?

  What didn’t he know about Morales?

  The ambulance took a hard right on Valencia, a sharp left on 26th Street, then blew into Metro’s ambulance bay. The EMTs had the back doors open the instant the vehicle braked to a stop. Rich jumped down, then ran with the EMTs as they transported Mackie’s gurney into the emergency room.

  The ER was noisy and full. Victims of the multicar crash were being treated in curtained cubicles, and those who weren’t in danger of dying had been parked in wheelchairs and on gurneys wherever space permitted.

  Mackie, on the board, was lifted onto an exam table in a trauma room. Medical personnel crowded in, began assessing the damage.

  The attending physician was about forty, wiry, efficient. Her name was Emily Bruno and she and Conklin had met many times in circumstances like this one.

  Bruno said to Conklin, “What’s the patient’s name? What happened to her? Do you know anything about her medical history?”

  Conklin said, “This is MacKenzie Morales, twenty-six, single mother, and I don’t know her medical history. She drove the car into that semi outside the ballpark. Two fatalities so far. I’ve got to talk to her.”

  Dr. Bruno threw a loud, exasperated sigh.

  “Okay, you know the drill, Conklin. Stand back. Turn off your phone. Don’t get in anyone’s way.”

  Conklin said, “Understood.”

  He stood about eight feet back from the table as the nurses cut off Mackie’s blue cop uniform while she was still strapped to the board, checked her airway, her breathing, examined her head.

  Conklin saw the great purple bruises on her torso, the angry abrasions on her arms and chest, a seat-belt bruise from shoulder to waist.

  Dr. Bruno flashed a light into one of Mackie’s eyes and said, “Concussion,” but the rest of her words were lost as Morales batted the doctor’s hand away and opened her eyes on her own.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “You were in a car accident,” Bruno said. “Do you remember it?”

  Conklin saw the memory light up Mackie’s eyes. And then the impact of the thought came to her in a rush. She heaved upward and tried to sit up, totally impossible to do, strapped as she was to the board.

  “Where’s my baby?” she screamed.

  Conklin went to her and said, “Mackie, Ben’s okay. I saw him. He’s going to be fine.”

  Did she recognize him?

  “Mackie, it’s Richie. It’s me.”

  “Oh, fuck,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  Chapter 105

  CONKLIN TRIED TO keep the shock off his face. Mackie looked feral. She’d been severely traumatized. Maybe she actually didn’t know him.

  He said it again. “Mackie, it’s me. Richie. Conklin.”

  “Where’s Randy?”

  Where’s Randy? The sexual predator? The homicidal maniac? That Randy?

  Morales was highly agitated, trying to release herself from her restraints even as the nurses tried to soothe her, listen to her heart, hook her up to air and fluids.

  “Oh, God,” she screamed out. “Everything hurts. Give me something for the pain.”

  Dr. Bruno was shouting, “I need CTs, stat,” when Conklin interrupted, said, “Emily, before you take her anywhere, give her anything, I need two minutes.”

  “What are you asking me, Conklin? We’re not wasting the golden hour.”

  “I’m asking for two minutes. This woman filled up your ER tonight. We’ve got bodies in the morgue. I need to talk to her while I can.”

  Dr. Bruno said, “I’m walking out of the room to call radiology. When I come back, you’re done.”

  Conklin returned to Morales, who was crying, her voice guttural, unrecognizable. “Oh, my God, oh, my God. Put me out, please, give me something.”

  “Mackie,” Conklin said. “Talk to me.”

  “You’re kidding,” she shouted. “I hurt like a son of a bitch. Tell them to put me out.”

  “Why were you driving that car?”

  “Why? Because I was breaking Randy out. Don’t you get that, you moron? We were running off with Ben. It was finally our time.”

  Conklin muzzled his outrage. He liked this girl, really liked her, but clearly he didn’t know her. Whatever he’d been thinking about her was a reflection of what he wanted her to be.

  She grabbed his wrist. It was like being clapped into an iron wristband.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Mackie.”

  “Oh, no, oh, no.”

  “Talk to me now. What’s your connection to Randy Fish?”

  “Damn you. You want your dying declaration, Richie? Here’s the whole enchilada. I killed that Whole Foods woman. Harriet Adams.”

  “Say that again?”

  “Yeah, and I killed the streetcar driver, too, okay? It was me. It was a real fucking rush, believe me.”

  Conklin’s bullshit meter was going off. It was impossible to pull off a murder that someone else dreamed. Mackie was delusional. She was concussed and probably had bleeding in her brain.

  He glanced at the corner of the ceiling. Saw the red light on the video camera. It was recording.

  Mackie gave a shrill scream of pain.

  Conklin pulled up a chair so that he was sitting right near her head. “Make me believe you,” he said. “Because what you’re telling me is hard to understand.”

  “Then listen. I watched you interview the professor. I typed your notes, remember that?”

  Her angry expression collapsed. She begged him, “Richie, I need drugs. I hurt so bad.”

  A nurse was at the exam table.

  “We’re going to roll you onto a stretcher, dear. We’ll be very careful.”

  Conklin shook his head, said, “Another minute. We need one more minute.”

  He turned away from the nurse and back to Morales.

  “Who are you protecting, Mackie?”

  Her face changed again, tightened into a scowl, and then she laughed. It was like the bark of a small dog confronting a larger one—manic, hysterical, definitely no mirth in it.

  She said, “You would think I was covering for someone, you jerk. You underestimated me, Inspector. I watched your interviews with Professor Judd, then after I made his dreams come true, I went to the aquarium and shot him.

  “Look at the video. Look at the fucking video. I’m on it. In a baseball cap. We looked at that tape together and you never connected the dots. What a laugh. What? Why are you looking at me that way?

  “Oh. You don’t get me, right? You never did. I was playing you, Richie. I did it for Randy and he is proud of me. Now get me drugs. I want to die in peace.”

  Conklin stood up, attached Mackie’s wrist to the stretcher with a restraint, and said, “MacKenzie Morales, you’re under arrest for murder—”

  She said, “You didn’t read me my rights. You can’t use what I said.”

  “You gave me your dying declaration, and it’s all been recorded on disk. But I hope you don’t die, Mackie. You shouldn’t get off so easy. You shouldn’t get off.”

  Chapter 106

  I WAS SLEEPING in our bed in the oncology wing when a booming voice paging Dr. Sebetic ended in a feedback squeal that rudely woke me. I groaned, reached for Joe, but he wasn’t there.

  I rolled over and saw that the baby’s incubator was no longer at our bedside. Seeing that empty spot dropped me into unadulterated, heart-stopping, blinding terror.

  What had happened while I slept?

  Where was my baby?

  I was on my feet when Joe rounded the doorway to our room. He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and paper slippers, and was holding two containers of coffee.

  “Hey. I’ve got something for you,” he said. “If you want a shower, go now. We’ve got a meeting with Dr. Sebetic in fifteen minutes.”

  “Where’s Julie?”

  “She’s in the baby room. Go. Splash some water
on yourself.”

  I stood in the tiny stall under the hot spray, not moving, just letting the water work on me. The baby was in her incubator. We were going to meet with Dr. Sebetic and he was going to give us a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. And whatever he said, we were going to deal with it.

  Still, I didn’t like the freaking odds.

  Joe rapped on the shower door.

  “Let’s go, Lindsay. We don’t want to keep the doctor waiting.”

  I dried off with a towel the size of a dinner napkin, then dressed in yesterday’s smoky jeans and one of Joe’s clean Tshirts. If paper shoes were good enough for Joe, they were good enough for me. I opened a packet and put them on.

  After brushing my teeth and hair, I went out into our room, drank down my coffee in one long gulp, then said to my husband, “Are you ready?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  We went into each other’s arms and held on tight. I gathered strength from my husband and I asked God to please let her live. Joe dropped his head to my shoulder and I put my hand in his hair.

  Then Joe released me. “We’re late,” he said.

  Chapter 107

  DR. SEBETIC WAS in his forties, stood 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighed about 170, had red hair, black-framed glasses, and wore a sporty green plaid tie with his lab coat. He had seemed distracted each time we had met with him, but he was a hematologist and oncologist of distinction, and that was all that mattered.

  The doctor looked up when we entered his office, said hello, and offered us chairs across from him at his desk. He called out to the hallway, “Nurse Kathy, please bring in Baby Girl Molinari.”

  The nurse called back, “Coming right up, Doctor,” then came into the room with our baby. Julie was swaddled in a blanket, wearing a pink stocking cap, and waving her fists.

  “She had a good breakfast,” Nurse Kathy said.

  I stood up, took Julie from the nurse, thanked her, and sat back down. Then I held the baby up so that Joe could kiss her, took her back, kissed her cheek, wiped my tears off her face, nestled her in my arms.