11th Hour

by James Patterson

  “Joe?”

  “No, it’s Lindsay,” I said. “Joe’s wife.” I sat down on a bar stool at the counter.

  There was a long silence as the woman’s mind fumbled for a moment. My head was spinning too.

  “Ohhh. Lindsay. Hi. I — is Joe there?”

  Her voice was softer, sweeter than I had imagined.

  “Joe’s sleeping off his jet lag,” I said. “June, I want to know the truth. Are you and Joe having an affair?”

  I suppose I could have eased into it sideways, asked about the charity event the other night, said that I’d seen the photo and that it made me wonder why Joe hadn’t mentioned the black-tie dinner to me. A less direct approach would have given me room to retreat, but retreat was the last thing on my mind.

  My pulse throbbed in my neck as the question hung on a virtual phone line three thousand miles long.

  Are you and Joe having an affair?

  Finally, the woman sighed.

  She said, “Lindsay, maybe this isn’t the best time to discuss this.”

  “So, when would be a good time, June? What works for you?”

  “I didn’t want it to turn out like this. We didn’t want you to know, but I guess there’s no point in lying anymore.”

  The ground seemed to open beneath me and I dropped into the void. I heard, as if from a long distance away, my voice saying to June, “You didn’t want me to know that you’re sleeping with my husband? You’re aware that I’m pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess that’s all I need to know.”

  “Wait, Lindsay. Joe loves you very much.”

  Her girlish voice was like a frigid wind blowing through my hair. She said, “Joe and I are close, have always been close, but it’s not marriage, Lindsay. It’s just one of those things.”

  I turned the phone off.

  I remember steadying myself with both hands on the counter so that I didn’t fall off the bar stool.

  Was I losing my mind? Had my husband’s mistress just told me that my husband loved me? I had had to hear that from her? That bitch!

  And what did she mean by “just one of those things”? Something inevitable? Chemical? Ordained?

  And Joe.

  How could he have lied to me, cheated on me, made a fool of me and our marriage and everything I felt for him?

  Who was he? Who was this man I had married?

  Joe had said to me last night, Do we ever really know anyone?

  What was I going to do?

  What the hell was I going to do? I had a baby on the way. Our baby.

  Joe’s phone rang in front of me again.

  I stared at June’s name, picked up the phone, clicked to connect, then disconnected instantly. I didn’t want to talk to her and I didn’t want her to leave a message for Joe.

  I grabbed the phone, went to the half bath off the kitchen, lifted the lid off the toilet tank, and dropped the phone into the water. I stared at it. It was ringing again.

  And then it stopped.

  What was I going to do?

  As if a message had floated up from the inky depths of a Magic 8 Ball, I knew.

  Chapter 65

  I TURNED THE doorknob and, using my hip and shoulder as a battering ram, shoved the door open. The racket startled Joe out of his sound sleep.

  I’d wanted to scare him, but I hadn’t thought he would go for his gun. His hand shot under the bed and he was bringing it up when he saw that the intruder was me, a version of me he’d rarely seen. I was so angry.

  “Lindsay. What’s wrong?”

  The shouting began.

  “What’s wrong is you and June Freundorfer. How could you do this to me, Joe?”

  He was sitting up in bed now, looking at me with stark bewilderment.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t bother to lie. She told me everything.”

  “Told you what? Lindsay, we went to a benefit. I didn’t get a chance to tell you about it, but I wasn’t keeping it from you.”

  “A benefit. Isn’t that what it’s called these days? A friend with benefits?”

  “I don’t understand why she called you.”

  “She called you.”

  “I see. So you intercepted the call.”

  I said, “Joe, how could you do this to us?”

  “Lindsay, I’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing.”

  I went into the room, threw open the closet doors. Joe’s suitcase was right there, and as luck would have it, he hadn’t yet unpacked.

  I hauled the bag out of the closet and chucked it onto the floor at Joe’s feet. He stood up and came toward me, his arms open. He was saying stuff, but I had closed myself off from him. I didn’t comprehend him anymore, not what he’d done, not what he was saying. I took pants and a jacket out of the closet, got underwear out of a drawer.

  I wanted to get away from him before I cried.

  “Lindsay. Stop. Just stop. I’m not having an affair with June or anyone else.”

  I whipped around to face him. Adrenaline made me almost blind with rage. I could barely look at him.

  “Why would June lie? She said, ‘It’s just one of those things.’”

  “Our friendship, maybe.”

  “I wish I could believe you, Joe, but you’re a terrific liar. I can’t stand the sound of your voice, so please, just leave. I’ll send your things — wherever you say. Just don’t be here when I get home.”

  I dressed in the bathroom and left the house without saying another word to Joe.

  I felt hollow and sick. I’d never been so betrayed in my life.

  Chapter 66

  WE WERE IN the parking lot off Harriet Street, just behind the Hall. I told Conklin that I wanted to drive.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked me. He was looking at me like I was wearing a live fish on my head.

  “I like to drive.”

  “Okay. When you want to tell me what’s eating you, I’m here.”

  He tossed me the keys and a minute later I headed the squad car south into clotted morning traffic, toward Parnassus Heights, an affluent neighborhood near the Haight.

  Beside me, Conklin filled me in on the tip he’d gotten, that Harry Chandler and his son from his first marriage, Todd, did not get along.

  Conklin had done some research and learned that when Todd was quite young, he had changed his last name to Waterson, his mother’s maiden name, and although Todd had never lived at the Ellsworth compound, he had had access to the place while Chandler was living there with his second wife, Cecily, and for a few years after.

  “Todd Waterson? The TV guy? I had no idea he was Harry Chandler’s son.”

  “Little-known fact.”

  “Well, news to me, anyway. I’ve seen his show. He’s pretty entertaining. What’s his story?”

  “Brainy, big paycheck, and a discreet personal life. I found no gossip about him on the Web.”

  Todd Waterson’s house was on Edgewood Avenue, an unexpectedly shielded and wooded street.

  At Conklin’s direction, I drove through the gated entrance and up a generously landscaped private driveway. I braked in front of the detached garage, took a look at what three million could buy in this neighborhood.

  Todd Waterson’s house was a sprawling, three-level stucco contemporary with Craftsman influences. There were decks and terraces with panoramic views of the bay and the city. The property was secluded and quiet. Very.

  The front door opened as we got to the threshold. Todd Waterson was waiting for us. He was five foot seven in his socks, wearing frayed jeans and a sweatshirt with a PBS logo. He had sandy-colored hair and a face populated by forgettable features: a thin line of a mouth and his father’s gray eyes.

  “I’m Sergeant Lindsay Boxer,” I said. “This is my partner, Inspector Richard Conklin.”

  “Hello, and by the way, what’s this about?”

  I said, “We’re investigating crimes committed at the Ellsworth compound.”

&nb
sp; “Let me have your numbers, okay? I can’t do this right now.”

  “It can’t wait, Mr. Waterson.”

  “All right. Come in,” he said. “But let’s make it fast, all right? I have to leave for the studio and I can’t be late.”

  Chapter 67

  CONKLIN AND I followed Todd Waterson across his gleaming wooden floors under an airy cathedral ceiling. The walls were at hard angles, cut by beams and banks of floor-to-ceiling windows. Large photos of Waterson interviewing celebrities hung on the milk-white walls.

  Waterson indicated where we should sit, and as we did, he said, “Just to cut to the chase, I haven’t seen or spoken with my father in five years.”

  “Where were you last weekend?” I asked him.

  “That’s what you want to know?” Waterson asked. “What am I — some kind of suspect? That’s really funny.”

  “I thought you wanted to cut to the chase,” I said, not laughing.

  “I was out and about. I spent all my nights here.”

  “Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?”

  “Wait a minute. Before I give you names and numbers, what are you getting at and what does it have to do with me?”

  “Seven heads were disinterred from your father’s back garden.”

  “So I’ve heard. I haven’t set foot in that place in five years. Not since I had my final fight with my father.”

  “You mind if I ask about that fight?”

  “I sure do.”

  Conklin took the baton. Conklin wasn’t pregnant. He hadn’t just told his spouse to vacate the premises. He wasn’t even mad.

  I sat back and let him drive the interview.

  “We’re checking out your father,” Conklin said.

  “Okay.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s narcissistic. He’s a womanizer. He can be cruel.”

  “You say he’s a womanizer. All the heads in the garden belonged to females.”

  “Is that right? So you’re asking could my father, the man I just described as cruel, be responsible for those heads?”

  “That’s right,” Conklin said.

  Rich had on his good-natured good-cop smile. You had to love Conklin, and in a way, I did. He said to Waterson, “Do you think your father is capable of murder? He’s been accused of it before.”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. He’s capable of a cutting put-down. He’d like to fuck every woman in the world to death, but that’s all I know. I stay away from him. But now I’m repeating myself.”

  “Okay,” Conklin said. “And where were you last weekend?”

  Todd Waterson started to laugh.

  “Let me get my book.”

  Waterson got out of the chair and went to his desk. I stared out the window at Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, a swath of green that cut through the city. I was thinking about Joe. Thinking about what he had done. How would I ever forgive him, and if I couldn’t, how could I raise our child alone?

  How sad for our baby.

  Todd Waterson returned to his seat, opened his iPad, tapped it, said to Conklin, “What’s your e-mail address?”

  Conklin gave it to him.

  Waterson tapped his iPad a few more times, then shut it down. “That’s a list of where I was and who I was with. Anything else?”

  Conklin said, “And why don’t you have any contact with your father?”

  “He’s a homophobe,” said Waterson. “He disapproves of my lifestyle. That’s where the cruelty comes in. Are we done?”

  We thanked the guy for his cooperation and left his house.

  “Okay,” said Conklin. “So, theorizing here, Todd Waterson is what? A gay guy who hates his father, so he decides to kill women. He becomes a serial killer and corpse mutilator who sneaks into his father’s backyard and buries the heads of his victims with some of their doodads. Later, he digs them up and decorates them with numbers and fluffy flowers.”

  It was my turn to look at him as if he had a fish on his head.

  He said, “Makes no sense to me either.”

  I gave him the car keys and we drove back to the Hall in silence.

  Chapter 68

  I’D LIKE TO say that the day improved, but that would be a lie. I had nothing in my tank but vapors and I tried to put in a day’s work on that.

  Joe called a number of times, but I let the calls go to voicemail and I didn’t call him back.

  Conklin and I cleared Todd Waterson by noon and I called Claire three times in six hours asking if she had facial-reconstruction results on the heads from the Ellsworth compound.

  I even paid her a personal visit, talking to her over the shot-up dead body of a gangbanger.

  “Lindsay, it takes time. Dr. Perlmutter is giving us every minute she has, but she gets called in on other jobs. And the DNA cannot be rushed.”

  “I can’t get any traction on the case.”

  “It’s been five days. You’re acting like it’s been five months.”

  I got coffee out of the vending machine in the breezeway, climbed the back stairs, and settled in for the duration.

  Conklin and I worked the tip line until nine that night. Sad to say, nothing of consequence washed up, just useless flotsam from people who had nothing better to do than screw with the police or indulge their paranoid delusions.

  I shared a pizza with Conklin, went back to work, finally quit at ten. Half an hour later, I opened my door to a dark apartment and a note from Karen saying she had walked and fed Martha.

  I listened to Joe’s voicemails. I took a long shower. I drank warm milk. I put on some soft music. I didn’t sleep that night.

  I mean, I really didn’t sleep. I lay in the big bed, stayed on my side of it, and listened to Martha’s gentle snoring from her puffy bed on the floor.

  At about two, I turned on the TV.

  I watched infomercials — Jewelry TV, then the Coin Vault — learned a few things about numismatic proof coins in original packaging, just what to leave my grandchildren. I switched to the Zumba body, the Shark vacuum cleaner, and then the world’s best bra ever!

  I turned off the box, but my eyes stayed wide open and I replayed Joe’s messages in my mind.

  The first several times he’d called me, he’d been mad. He’d shouted, said that he’d told me the truth, that June had lied, and that my believing her showed I had a profound lack of faith in him. That it was insulting.

  He said that he loved me and that I should pick up the phone. “Call me, Lindsay. I’m your husband.”

  Next few messages, he said was sorry for yelling. He realized why I was angry and said he wasn’t mad anymore. He wanted to talk to me and he would tell me about every moment he’d spent with June in the last two years.

  “There were not very many moments, Lindsay, and none of them were naked. None.”

  The last time he called, he sounded empty. He left me the name of the hotel where he was staying, said to call him if I wanted to talk or if I wanted to listen.

  I didn’t want to do either.

  It was almost seven o’clock when I got up to make myself a cup of tea. When the phone rang, I picked it up, said, “Hello?”

  But it wasn’t Joe.

  It was Conklin.

  “A body washed up in Big Sur an hour ago,” Conklin said. “A surfer, apparently.”

  “Marilyn Varick was a surfer.”

  “Yeah. This DB is a man. And he’s got a head.”

  “So how does this have anything to do with our case?” I asked.

  “The guy who called the police said there was a card lying in the sand next to the body. On it was the number six thirteen.”

  I stood flat-footed in my kitchen then adjusted my thinking about the remains at the house of heads. I guess I’d thought the killings were over.

  “Richie, about Chandler and his boat. We always thought that body dumps were a possibility.”

  “Could he really be so dumb as to dump a body with all this attention on him?”

  �
��Let’s ask him.”

  Chapter 69

  CONKLIN AND I were in Interview 2, the smaller of Homicide’s two no-frills interrogation rooms, sitting across the table from Harry Chandler and his lawyer, Donna Hewett.

  Hewett was a good general counsel, known for her work on estates and trusts, and was reportedly a pretty good tax attorney too. But Hewett was not a criminal defense lawyer and that told me that Chandler didn’t expect to get charged.

  Was he bluffing?

  Was Harry Chandler so bold or so crazy that he would kill while under the laser focus of national news coverage?

  Or was Chandler’s conscience clean?

  Donna Hewett patted her hair, put her briefcase on the floor, and asked, “Is my client under arrest?”

  “Not at all,” Conklin said. “Our investigation is ongoing and as new information surfaces, we follow up. We just have a couple of questions, Mr. Chandler. Where were you yesterday?”

  Chandler smiled.

  He was wearing a blue cashmere sweater, sleeves pushed up. I saw no cuts or bruises on his hands.

  He said, “I’ve started taking notes so I can have seamless alibis in case you two pop up without warning.”

  He took his phone out of his pants pocket and tapped the face, then started listing where he’d been and at what times.

  “Kaye and I left the Cecily at around eight yesterday morning, went to breakfast at the Just for You Café in Dogpatch. I had waffles. She had eggs Benedict. Our waitress was Shirley Gurley.”

  Pause for a movie-star smile.

  “What were her parents thinking? After that, Kaye and I went shopping at the farmers’ market and loaded up on produce because we were about to take a little cruise.”

  “And where did you go?” Conklin asked.

  I thought about the dead surfer, seventeen years old, lying in the medical examiner’s lab fifty miles up the coast, time of death still undetermined.

  Hewett said, “What are you fishing for, Inspector?”

  I took out the morgue shots of the unidentified teen on the autopsy table. I said, “This boy washed up in Big Sur very early this morning. He was linked to the bodies at the Ellsworth compound.”